Taylor Swift’s Performative ‘Poets Department’

The latest in pop-culture news, recaps, and reviews, plus close reads, profiles, interviews, and more from Vulture.com. [Brand Logo]( album review [Performative Poets Department]( On her new album, Taylor Swift is restless, fed up, and a little too aware of what everyone wants. Photo: Taylor Swift via YouTube In [The Tortured Poets Department](, American bard and billionaire Taylor Swift invokes the story of Cassandra, the Trojan princess who receives the gift of clairvoyance from the Greek god Apollo, a lover who later curses her never to be believed. “They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time / That I was onto something / The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line,” she sings on “Cassandra,” a folk-pop paean to going out on a limb to warn everyone about an unnamed dynasty of religious hypocrites. One of a [pair]( of songs that seem to address the schism between Swift and Kim Kardashian, “Cassandra” implies that the ancient mystic got whacked because her prophecies infuriated the masses: “So they killed Cassandra first ’cause she feared the worst / And tried to tell the town.” But in the myth, spelled out in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, the oracle survived the sack of Troy and was later murdered by Clytemnestra, the avenging wife of the tragedy’s titular king. Kanye West’s cavorting with white supremacists and Kardashian’s harrowing divorce from the man she torched Swift’s friendship to defend must feel like a lifetime “I told you so” card for the “Bad Blood” singer. But the metaphor is a stretch. People have always been suspicious of Kim and Ye. Poets assigns allegorical importance to the singer-songwriter’s struggles, leaning into a love of literary allusions and piling the weight of history onto its wounded aphorisms. Swift cherishes a delicate distortion. [read more]( [Anniversary Sale: Celebrate with $20 off unlimited access, plus get a free anniversary tote.]( [Anniversary Sale: Celebrate with $20 off unlimited access, plus get a free anniversary tote.]( The Latest TV Recaps • Vanderpump Villa: [Day-Off Disaster]( • Below Deck: [Panini Problems]( • Shōgun: [Scholar of the Wind]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Stories We Think You’ll Like [Jesse Plemons’s All-American Horror The actor’s Civil War role exploits a talent he has honed for years: being the most terrifying presence onscreen.]( By Nicholas Quah [With Challengers, Justin Kuritzkes Serves an Ace His first movie script for the sexy tennis drama has taken him from struggling playwright to in-demand screenwriter.]( By Madeline Leung Coleman [Shōgun Has a Japanese-Superiority Complex The series is determined to foreground Japanese perspectives, but it doesn’t quite know what to make of Japan’s more unsavory history.]( By Ryu Spaeth [Mehdi Hasan Wants to Debate You His aggressive interviewing style landed him a Sunday show on MSNBC. Until he started talking about Palestine.]( [The PEN America Literary Awards Are Canceled. The Writers Know Why. “I know that no amount of prestige or prize money is worth the lifelong shame of knowing you were on the wrong side of a genocide.”]( By Zoe Guy [Why Isn’t the First Shōgun (Officially) Streaming? Seems like people might want to check it out.]( By Eric Vilas-Boas [How to Watch Colin Jost Roast the Nerd Prom The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is April 27, but you don’t need tickets to see Jost’s punchable face.]( By Jason P. Frank [Baby Reindeer Creator Asks Fans to Stop Looking for Real-Life Characters “Please don’t speculate on who any of the real life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.”]( By Zoe Guy [Steve Jobs’s Ghost Doesn’t Want You to See This In his YouTube special, comedian Nathan Macintosh is as relentless as the spread of the technology he laments.]( By Hershal Pandya [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Vulture Games [Today’s Crossword]( 11-Across, Four Letters: Rihanna song … or, when tripled, Taylor Swift song Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty [Today’s Cinematrix]( Can you name an Oscar-nominated Winona Ryder movie? Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Steve Granitz/WireImage, Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic A newsletter about the perpetual Hollywood awards race, for subscribers only. [Sign up]( to get it every week. [Get the Newsletter]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe]( | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1701 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2024, All rights reserved