Taylor Swift’s new album was released last week, and obviously it received a tonne of great reviews. But one review in particular caused a stir on social media because it looks like Taylor’s team took a portion of the review to make it sound positive when it really wasn’t as raving as it seemed.
Alexandra Pollard took to Twitter to share her side of the story after Taylor quoted part of her review on social media.
“A brilliant album,” Taylor’s Instagram post read.
But it turns out that’s only part of the sentence, which reads in full “there is a brilliant album among the 18 songs, if only it had been pruned a little.”
— Alexandra Pollard (@alexjpollard) August 28, 2019
This stance on the album isn’t exactly groundbreaking. 18 songs on a record is incredibly long, and it’s rare that they’re all going to be hit tracks.
Pollard’s review discussed how the album starts to feel “baggy” around the track 14 mark. Honestly, kudos to anyone who can get to track 14 of any album.
You don’t have to please everyone. Taylor Swift has millions of fans, so who cares if one review only gave her 4/5 right?
But why the strategic crop of the review to make it sound better than it is? It’s Taylor fucking Swift, I can guarantee there would be hundreds of 5/5 reviews to choose from. Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield even called it a “career-topping masterpiece.”
Pollard told Insider that she thought Taylor’s use of her quote was “quite funny.” She also joked on Twitter that it was “close enough”, but Swifties were quick to criticise her for the tweet.
‘Swifties’, much like the ‘BTS Army’ are a very dedicated group of fans and the thought of upsetting them is very terrifying. Please don’t come for me.
It’s not uncommon to pick specific parts of reviews to make them sound slightly better than they are. It happens pretty frequently, but it seems like a weird move when you’re a huge artist who definitely would’ve received enough praise to fill a few Instagram photos.
Was Taylor’s team out of line for cropping the review? Was the reviewer out of line for calling her out? I don’t even know anymore.
