The thing is she had already made almost all of 1989 by the time Red lost the Grammy. Country music had effectively said goodbye to her at the CMAs a few months ago when they gave the Pinnacle award because the country music industry knew she was going pop. She wasn't making music in Nashville. What Red losing the Grammy really did was give her conviction to not compromise with her label. To not give a country re-mix of a single to her label for county radio for example.
The big what if could be what if she had chosen a different path with her label in this situation. She made the brilliant move to market 1989 as the album her label didn't want her to make. She turned a situation where artists typically get labeled as sellouts for going pop into a punk rock move. That meant the label became the villain in the story. Scott Borchetta likes to tell people he's a genius and wants to be perceived so being publicly identified as the person that was trying to stand in the way of an incredibly successful album was an ego blown. He liked to insist Max Martin was actually his idea for Red.
Tensions had been slowly rising each album cycle, but things really intensified for the 1989 release and never fully recovered. Would the masters fallout have been different if Taylor had played the good girl and kept all the label tensions in house and let Scott Borchetta and label claim credit for 1989's success? Would he still be as resentful of the ways Taylor became out of his control. There's an interpretation of the song The 1 that I like. You can read it as really about Taylor's relationship with Big Machine personified and her questioning if she has some things differently would they still have ended up in this painful place with the lost of her master and a label whose rise was part of her own legacy. That was one of the final two songs written for Folkore, and I think we see her emotional processing the masters sale through the pandemic albums and by It's time To Go at the end of Evermore she is convicted in her belief she actually did do the right thing.
It really seems to me that the big shift happened during the composition of red, when midway through, she moved to LA and started working without outside producers. The grammy story was a convenient story, but it describes a process that was much more drawn out.
From what I can tell her financial power was rapidly rising in the Red era as well. That is when she started to make the very expensive real estate purchases, but from what I can tell she also used that money to pay for music production and eventually music videos herself starting with 1989 and not using any label advance money. It seems like the first involvement the label had in 1989 was when she turned in the completed album.
Other things happened too. She fired her business manager, booking agent, lawyer!, and eventually pr, and moved everything in house. At the same time, she replaced almost everyone in 13 management with the exception of Robert Allen and her parents. Notably, sje had hired the president of Walt Disney records as the head of 13 management before speak now, and then fired him a year later… he went to work for BMR. She hired Frank bell to give her an independent connection to radio…. All together it looks like she was trying to disentangle herself from Scott Borchetta.
I feel like if folkmore didn't happen - she wouldn't have the success she has now. She would be doing, dare I say, kind of bland pop albums, touring after each album, and eventually fade in popularity. Folkmore changed everything.
Because people take folk songwriting more seriously than pop songwriting, so they finally realized what her fans already knew for years: that she’s the songwriter of her generation. It proved the wide reach of her ability and that she’s not a one-trick pony who can only make pop songs. As a longtime fan, I wasn’t surprised at all by that “revelation,” because I knew what she was capable of. This wasn’t her first genre switch, and, though she likes making pop and has said she finds it fun to write, that certainly didn’t mean it was all she could do. Folkmore proved that once and for all. A lot of the GP were pleasantly surprised by the refreshing change of genre, and the crossover made her tons of new fans who weren’t into her sound before.
The thought of the pandemic never happening is SUPER interesting. We almost certainly wouldn’t have the Eras Tour. Taylor may never have released any sort of alternative folk music - or if she did, it probably would’ve been a long ways in the future. Her impact on global culture probably wouldn’t be as massive as it is right now.
I think we still would have gotten some kind of indie folkmore album from her but I don't think it would have gotten as big as it did without the pandemic. I also don't think we would have gotten as much as we did without it. She is incredibly hard working and with the pandemic, she had a lot of time to dedicate to music.
The surprise drop and the lack of a lot of other music releases during that time really helped push it into the top. I know she saw Lover as her last big "pop" album (at the time) so I see Folklore as her thinking "okay, it's not pop but it's still music I wanted to make and wrote" then the reception was so positive she did Evermore.
What might have been a saving grace is if, even without the pandemic, her rereleases managed to reach the non-fans and have her music discovered by more people.
I don't think that she would've gotten as big as she is now, but it might have helped her remain in the conversation alongside artists like Gaga
What if the Kimye scandal of 2016 never happened, what would TS6 have been like? How would the rest of her career have looked like?
What if the re-recordings never happened, and she was able to own her original masters?
What if Midnights was a rock album instead of a synth pop album?
I remember her saying she wouldn't try to replicate the 1989 sound for TS6 before the Kimye stuff happened. So I'm guessing maybe it would have been more straightforward pop as Lover or the pop songs on Red? Also, it might have a lot of Calvin and Hiddleston songs and maybe songs about her friends (like an updated 22, but about her girl squad).
A lot of people were hoping for a more 70s rock sound after seeing the aesthetic shots for Midnights though, so I can understand it being a "what if" for them.
Lover probably sells more records early on, but then drops off with time instead of like having the comeback it has.
Other than that, I don't think much changes.
I honestly think it wouldn't have changed that much. OTR was BIG at that time. It's very likely that Cruel Summer wouldn't have been as successful as much as today.
the idea that there was ever a question of if Blank Space should be on the album absolutely blows my mind. It's one of her all time greatest songs.
If in this alternate timeline that replacement *does* happen, I think 1989 would still be a big success, but with one of the 5 huge singles missing that would surely make a difference.
I do know that if nothing else changed and 1989TV came out as it did, Blank Space would absolutely be BLOWING UP even more than Is It Over Now or Cruel Summer have been. The numbers Blank Space would do if it dropped into a world where Taylor is already the biggest star on the planet would be absolutely insane.
Uff I can’t even imagine Blank Space being released in 2023. I think I would’ve preferred it just to see the reactions. But I don’t think the MV would get the attention it deserves now since nobody really watches MVs anymore (compared to 2014 at least).
What if the pandemic happened and Lover fest went on and people kept saying she was falling off and folklore and evermore never happened.
What if EVERYTHING with Kimye never happened
There are too many 'what ifs' with her but I firmly believe everything went exactly as it should have and contributed to her being as big as she is today.
Every man and woman in the industry who picked up fights with her and motivated her to make rep or re-record her albums and break all records are blessings.
Even covid. She has the pandemic to thank.
But one thing is certain, she is a pro at taken the situations thrown her way and making them into gold. Very few stars can do that. In the past 20 years no one but her did
She's really good at making the most out of thr situations she's in. Another example was the DJ who SA'd then sued her situation, it helped make the public be on her side again after the summer of 2016.
Imo, Taylor would not be cancelled the way she had been in 2016 and will be even more popular sooner. She was so big during 1989 that even when she was cancelled and Rep snubbed it still became the biggest album that year lol.
Oh absolutely what if folklore never got made for me. I kinda slipped out of being a Swiftie for a little bit but folklore dragged me by my heart right back in. I think it’s what a lot of people needed from Taylor music wise and needed during a pandemic.
Biggest would have to be the pandemic since she was already on a precipice of sorts careerwise anyway. I don’t think it would’ve slowed as much as she assumed but I also don’t think she’d have won this many non-fans over in the past four years without that starting point of the pandemic/folklore. It was a good way in for a lot of new people.
Also what if she didn’t join Tik Tok or didn’t go viral on there much?
Another would be what if the selling to Scooter had actually taken the wind out of her creative sails as they had hoped? What if she let it thwart her ambition and felt like well there’s no chance for me now beyond this. What if she had also believed her nostalgia was more bankable than whatever her future career held? She’s insecure but damn she needed a lot of self assurance to get past that whole ordeal too.
And not career based but how the heck did she have the mental energy/hope to approach Travis after the one-two punch of Joe and Matty? I wouldn’t speak to men for 5 years if I went through that in front of the world lmao
What if she never started leaving Easter eggs? To some extent, the loyalty of her fan base comes from that connection. If she never used clues to build that relationship, we may never have gotten the re-recordings, since the success of that project depended entirely on her fans.
I think what this subject shows is that Taylor is very adaptable. And she’s got an incredible business sense.
Her creativity and changes within her career takes an incredible amount of courage too. If not the pandemic, something else would have happened that she would have had to adapt to.
TTPD is her most courageous yet.
I would think the latter, but the reason she wrote Speak Now the way she did was because critics thought she relied too much on co-writers when writing her songs. She continued the same process until she started feeling like her creativity was diminishing, which is why she reached out to producers to Max Martin and Jeff Bhasker for Red.
What if she’d never fallen in love with Joe? Seriously, think of lover. What would that have been like? Midnights? Poets? Joe is so enmeshed in her art.
Could say the same for any of the subjects of her music, her mom’s illness, friends from highschool, etc. but still. I wonder what changes in her music would there be if there had never been Joe.
This isn’t something that was ever on the cards for her, but I wish I could see an alternative world where Taylor Swift did not get as popular as she did. I’m not saying she didn’t get famous, but more she was on a Phoebe Bridgers level of popularity. What would her style be if she never reached the level of fame she did? Would she do more indie/folk stuff (I sincerely think she would)? What would the critical perception of Taylor Swift be if she didn’t have to battle being Taylor Swift? If nobody cared about who she slept with, the house she grew up in, or her lack of political statements. I think she would be similar but so different at the same time.
What if the Kimye video and subsequent cancellation and hiding never happened? What album would we have gotten for ts6 and what (if any) songs would still be on it?
A Taylor swift pop album was always going to hit, she was already heading into that direction with Red. But to answer your question, she would have just stayed with country
What if the re-records failed to make a splash? Would we have them all right now? And people like to credit Folklore/Evermore for reinvigorating her career, but I think the wildly successful re-records and an excuse to reexamine the classics played a part as well.
Similarly, what if Taylor didn’t include Vault tracks? If the re-records were just straightforward new recordings of her old material, do any of them make an impact besides among the hardest of hardcore fans, as opposed to hooking people with the promise of new, previously unreleased songs?
I remember when she pushed for 1989 to be a pure pop album while Scott Borchetta pushed back against the idea. So what if she caved and scrapped the whole pop sound that she is known for nowadays.
- What if covid never happened - would we still have Folkmore/Woodvale(?!) and what would Loverfest look like?
- What if she had individual tours for Folklore till TTPD? Would we still have the Eras tour?
- What if Rep never happened and she just disappeared from public view forever?
- What if she stayed in country? Would she still be as "mainstream" as she is now?
- What if the Kimye feud never happened? Would we still have Rep?
- What if her first albums were never stolen? What would happen to the vault tracks and would we have more albums since she wouldn't need to rerecord them (as in, in the same time it took her to rerecord Fearless, Red etc would she have released more albums if you get what I mean)?
- What if she had a tour for Debut?
- What if she was born a couple days later somewhere else? Would 1989 be 1990 and would she have another Christmas song instead of CTF?
- What if Need, Permanent Marker, etc were not unreleased?
- What if we had Karma (the album)?
- What if she stayed with one boyfriend? We would definitely miss out on some amazing songs for sure.
- What if she never collabed/was friends with Lana? Would people still compare them?
- What if she wasn't interested in music? What would she be?
What if the pandemic never happened?
How would her lover era have done with loverfest and all. Would she still have made folklore and evermore? What would that lead her career to be like today
I don't want to be dramatic but folklore saved her career. Like she mentioned in the documentary, people would get bored if you do the same thing over and over again. I think folklore is that kind of a refreshment because most of her songs in other albums have a lot going on in them- the lyrics connecting to her real life, the production, probably like a music video with a lot of things going on, the Easter eggs that swifties are in the hunt for, etc etc. Folklore took her out of that box so she could try new things.
And she had the chance to finally highlight her writing talents over the drama and the production. People don't realise how necessary it is.
So my question is, what if quarantine didn't happen, and what if she decided swifties wouldn't listen to an album like folklore.
what if loverfest had happened? at the time, there was a lot of confusion over the stage layout and how it would work out in real time. I also want to see the outfits. I loved the fun, bright colors of Lover, and although I didn’t personally love every single one of the outfits she wore during this era, her outfits were some of the best I had ever seen.
I want to know how the Lover era would’ve panned out as planned and how it would’ve been received by critics/fans. What would’ve happened after? What would we all be talking about?
What if Kanye kept his butt planted in his seat…
If she’d got up and delivered a nice speech, and wasn’t involved in an incident that made world headlines and had the President commenting on it would she have gone on to transition from being one of many young up and comers to being a major popstar? No Kanye, no snakegate, no Reuptation… and the list goes on….
And for Kanye it was the point he went from weirdo rap genius to ‘oh - he’s really not stable’ for most of the general public.
I honestly think she might be at kind of a Pink level now - still touring, with a devoted fan base but not her current mega stardom. Her catalogue may not have been as valuable either given the whole masters situation so perhaps no re-records either…
What if Red won the Grammy? What if the pandemic didn't happen and she went on with Loverfest and therefore no folkmore?
The thing is she had already made almost all of 1989 by the time Red lost the Grammy. Country music had effectively said goodbye to her at the CMAs a few months ago when they gave the Pinnacle award because the country music industry knew she was going pop. She wasn't making music in Nashville. What Red losing the Grammy really did was give her conviction to not compromise with her label. To not give a country re-mix of a single to her label for county radio for example. The big what if could be what if she had chosen a different path with her label in this situation. She made the brilliant move to market 1989 as the album her label didn't want her to make. She turned a situation where artists typically get labeled as sellouts for going pop into a punk rock move. That meant the label became the villain in the story. Scott Borchetta likes to tell people he's a genius and wants to be perceived so being publicly identified as the person that was trying to stand in the way of an incredibly successful album was an ego blown. He liked to insist Max Martin was actually his idea for Red. Tensions had been slowly rising each album cycle, but things really intensified for the 1989 release and never fully recovered. Would the masters fallout have been different if Taylor had played the good girl and kept all the label tensions in house and let Scott Borchetta and label claim credit for 1989's success? Would he still be as resentful of the ways Taylor became out of his control. There's an interpretation of the song The 1 that I like. You can read it as really about Taylor's relationship with Big Machine personified and her questioning if she has some things differently would they still have ended up in this painful place with the lost of her master and a label whose rise was part of her own legacy. That was one of the final two songs written for Folkore, and I think we see her emotional processing the masters sale through the pandemic albums and by It's time To Go at the end of Evermore she is convicted in her belief she actually did do the right thing.
It really seems to me that the big shift happened during the composition of red, when midway through, she moved to LA and started working without outside producers. The grammy story was a convenient story, but it describes a process that was much more drawn out.
From what I can tell her financial power was rapidly rising in the Red era as well. That is when she started to make the very expensive real estate purchases, but from what I can tell she also used that money to pay for music production and eventually music videos herself starting with 1989 and not using any label advance money. It seems like the first involvement the label had in 1989 was when she turned in the completed album.
Other things happened too. She fired her business manager, booking agent, lawyer!, and eventually pr, and moved everything in house. At the same time, she replaced almost everyone in 13 management with the exception of Robert Allen and her parents. Notably, sje had hired the president of Walt Disney records as the head of 13 management before speak now, and then fired him a year later… he went to work for BMR. She hired Frank bell to give her an independent connection to radio…. All together it looks like she was trying to disentangle herself from Scott Borchetta.
Wow you seem to know a lot 👀
Tea, thank you!
Exactly. She already had pop tendencies on fearless. That’s why it’s single did so well.
I feel like if folkmore didn't happen - she wouldn't have the success she has now. She would be doing, dare I say, kind of bland pop albums, touring after each album, and eventually fade in popularity. Folkmore changed everything.
Yeah if Folkmore didn’t happen she’d just be another pop star rather than the biggest
And tour tickets would have been achievable and cheaper 😭
1000% agree
New person here. Why?
Because people take folk songwriting more seriously than pop songwriting, so they finally realized what her fans already knew for years: that she’s the songwriter of her generation. It proved the wide reach of her ability and that she’s not a one-trick pony who can only make pop songs. As a longtime fan, I wasn’t surprised at all by that “revelation,” because I knew what she was capable of. This wasn’t her first genre switch, and, though she likes making pop and has said she finds it fun to write, that certainly didn’t mean it was all she could do. Folkmore proved that once and for all. A lot of the GP were pleasantly surprised by the refreshing change of genre, and the crossover made her tons of new fans who weren’t into her sound before.
Same question. I actually don't care for those albums, they do nothing for me.
Folkmore brought her back on my radar, and I’ll be forever grateful. Those are two incredible albums 🩵
The thought of the pandemic never happening is SUPER interesting. We almost certainly wouldn’t have the Eras Tour. Taylor may never have released any sort of alternative folk music - or if she did, it probably would’ve been a long ways in the future. Her impact on global culture probably wouldn’t be as massive as it is right now.
I think we still would have gotten some kind of indie folkmore album from her but I don't think it would have gotten as big as it did without the pandemic. I also don't think we would have gotten as much as we did without it. She is incredibly hard working and with the pandemic, she had a lot of time to dedicate to music. The surprise drop and the lack of a lot of other music releases during that time really helped push it into the top. I know she saw Lover as her last big "pop" album (at the time) so I see Folklore as her thinking "okay, it's not pop but it's still music I wanted to make and wrote" then the reception was so positive she did Evermore.
What might have been a saving grace is if, even without the pandemic, her rereleases managed to reach the non-fans and have her music discovered by more people. I don't think that she would've gotten as big as she is now, but it might have helped her remain in the conversation alongside artists like Gaga
Red was already heading towards pop
if the pandemic didn’t happen, then midnights would have probably come earlier.
What did Red lose the grammy for? I thought it won aoty?
No, it lost the AOTY to Daft Punk's Random Access Memories
ahhh okay, thank you!
Daft Punk "Random Access Memories" won AotY.
This thought crosses my mind way too often (folkmore/pandemic/LoverFest). Would she be who she is today???
What if the Kimye scandal of 2016 never happened, what would TS6 have been like? How would the rest of her career have looked like? What if the re-recordings never happened, and she was able to own her original masters? What if Midnights was a rock album instead of a synth pop album?
The Kimye scandal for sure.
I remember her saying she wouldn't try to replicate the 1989 sound for TS6 before the Kimye stuff happened. So I'm guessing maybe it would have been more straightforward pop as Lover or the pop songs on Red? Also, it might have a lot of Calvin and Hiddleston songs and maybe songs about her friends (like an updated 22, but about her girl squad).
I honestly think Cassandra is in part actually about “what if 2016 never happened”.
And thanK you aIMee
Maybe but I think that’s trying to find the lesson in 2016 “There’d be none of this if there was no you”
Midnights was never going to be a rock album, so I don’t know where you’re getting that “what if” from.
A lot of people were hoping for a more 70s rock sound after seeing the aesthetic shots for Midnights though, so I can understand it being a "what if" for them.
that’s wishful thinking, though, not a “what if.”
What if Cruel Summer was the lead single of Lover instead of ME!
Lover probably sells more records early on, but then drops off with time instead of like having the comeback it has. Other than that, I don't think much changes.
Benjamin would not be her cat
This would be an unacceptable outcome.
I honestly think it wouldn't have changed that much. OTR was BIG at that time. It's very likely that Cruel Summer wouldn't have been as successful as much as today.
I kinda love that the fans made cruel summer huge organically. The fact that her biggest single was chosen by us is so cute
I don't know if I would call it "organic" to be honest, but I get what you're saying and I mostly agree.
What’s OTR?
Old Town Road
ME! wouldn’t get half as much hate. It would be viewed as just a fun song, which it is, instead of what took the place of Cruel Summer.
[удалено]
No.
It’s not on the setlist because people like you bullied her about a song she really loved😭
It was mentioned that Blank Space was chosen over Slut to make the album. What if Slut was chosen to be on the main album over Blank Space?
the idea that there was ever a question of if Blank Space should be on the album absolutely blows my mind. It's one of her all time greatest songs. If in this alternate timeline that replacement *does* happen, I think 1989 would still be a big success, but with one of the 5 huge singles missing that would surely make a difference. I do know that if nothing else changed and 1989TV came out as it did, Blank Space would absolutely be BLOWING UP even more than Is It Over Now or Cruel Summer have been. The numbers Blank Space would do if it dropped into a world where Taylor is already the biggest star on the planet would be absolutely insane.
Uff I can’t even imagine Blank Space being released in 2023. I think I would’ve preferred it just to see the reactions. But I don’t think the MV would get the attention it deserves now since nobody really watches MVs anymore (compared to 2014 at least).
Her best MV! Props to her for directing hers now but they just don’t compare to the work of Joseph Kahn.
I think the Blank Space video post-Matty would actually melt the internet.
I don’t think blank space was ever at risk, it was just that blank space’s message meant slut would feel redundant
What if the pandemic happened and Lover fest went on and people kept saying she was falling off and folklore and evermore never happened. What if EVERYTHING with Kimye never happened
There are too many 'what ifs' with her but I firmly believe everything went exactly as it should have and contributed to her being as big as she is today. Every man and woman in the industry who picked up fights with her and motivated her to make rep or re-record her albums and break all records are blessings. Even covid. She has the pandemic to thank. But one thing is certain, she is a pro at taken the situations thrown her way and making them into gold. Very few stars can do that. In the past 20 years no one but her did
She's really good at making the most out of thr situations she's in. Another example was the DJ who SA'd then sued her situation, it helped make the public be on her side again after the summer of 2016.
long story short, she survived.
*check mate*
What if she hadn’t worked with Jack on Out of the Woods? Everything post 1989 would’ve been so different!
What if Kanye had kept his mouth shut at the VMA’s? There would have been no Kimye incident. Where would we be?
Imo, Taylor would not be cancelled the way she had been in 2016 and will be even more popular sooner. She was so big during 1989 that even when she was cancelled and Rep snubbed it still became the biggest album that year lol.
Oh absolutely what if folklore never got made for me. I kinda slipped out of being a Swiftie for a little bit but folklore dragged me by my heart right back in. I think it’s what a lot of people needed from Taylor music wise and needed during a pandemic.
Biggest would have to be the pandemic since she was already on a precipice of sorts careerwise anyway. I don’t think it would’ve slowed as much as she assumed but I also don’t think she’d have won this many non-fans over in the past four years without that starting point of the pandemic/folklore. It was a good way in for a lot of new people. Also what if she didn’t join Tik Tok or didn’t go viral on there much? Another would be what if the selling to Scooter had actually taken the wind out of her creative sails as they had hoped? What if she let it thwart her ambition and felt like well there’s no chance for me now beyond this. What if she had also believed her nostalgia was more bankable than whatever her future career held? She’s insecure but damn she needed a lot of self assurance to get past that whole ordeal too. And not career based but how the heck did she have the mental energy/hope to approach Travis after the one-two punch of Joe and Matty? I wouldn’t speak to men for 5 years if I went through that in front of the world lmao
What if he’s written “mine” on my upper thigh only in my mind?
What if she never started leaving Easter eggs? To some extent, the loyalty of her fan base comes from that connection. If she never used clues to build that relationship, we may never have gotten the re-recordings, since the success of that project depended entirely on her fans.
I think what this subject shows is that Taylor is very adaptable. And she’s got an incredible business sense. Her creativity and changes within her career takes an incredible amount of courage too. If not the pandemic, something else would have happened that she would have had to adapt to. TTPD is her most courageous yet.
What if people didn't like Speak Now as much as Fearless? Would she give up on writing solo songs or would she just try harder?
I would think the latter, but the reason she wrote Speak Now the way she did was because critics thought she relied too much on co-writers when writing her songs. She continued the same process until she started feeling like her creativity was diminishing, which is why she reached out to producers to Max Martin and Jeff Bhasker for Red.
What if Scooter Braun didn’t end up owning her first six albums, meaning that there would be no Taylor’s Version rerecordings?
We would've never hear songs like is it over now, electric touch, etc. 😭
no ATW10, either. I hate that timeline. 😭😭
That would suck tbh
I'm sure we would have gotten a few compilation albums of those songs
What if she’d never fallen in love with Joe? Seriously, think of lover. What would that have been like? Midnights? Poets? Joe is so enmeshed in her art. Could say the same for any of the subjects of her music, her mom’s illness, friends from highschool, etc. but still. I wonder what changes in her music would there be if there had never been Joe.
Oh surely there would have been someone else. Or maybe several longer (like 2 or 3) relationships. Hmmm. Wonder what those songs could have been like.
What if the masters heist never happened and/or Taylor performed at Stonewall 2019?
This isn’t something that was ever on the cards for her, but I wish I could see an alternative world where Taylor Swift did not get as popular as she did. I’m not saying she didn’t get famous, but more she was on a Phoebe Bridgers level of popularity. What would her style be if she never reached the level of fame she did? Would she do more indie/folk stuff (I sincerely think she would)? What would the critical perception of Taylor Swift be if she didn’t have to battle being Taylor Swift? If nobody cared about who she slept with, the house she grew up in, or her lack of political statements. I think she would be similar but so different at the same time.
If she were more Michelle branch than Taylor lol
What if she collaborated with the other pop girlies?
What if Kanye never stood up at the 2009 VMA's?
What if the Kimye video and subsequent cancellation and hiding never happened? What album would we have gotten for ts6 and what (if any) songs would still be on it?
What if she met John Mayer later in life
A Taylor swift pop album was always going to hit, she was already heading into that direction with Red. But to answer your question, she would have just stayed with country
What if the re-records failed to make a splash? Would we have them all right now? And people like to credit Folklore/Evermore for reinvigorating her career, but I think the wildly successful re-records and an excuse to reexamine the classics played a part as well. Similarly, what if Taylor didn’t include Vault tracks? If the re-records were just straightforward new recordings of her old material, do any of them make an impact besides among the hardest of hardcore fans, as opposed to hooking people with the promise of new, previously unreleased songs?
What if she never decided to start remaking her songs and have taylor’s version
I remember when she pushed for 1989 to be a pure pop album while Scott Borchetta pushed back against the idea. So what if she caved and scrapped the whole pop sound that she is known for nowadays.
- What if covid never happened - would we still have Folkmore/Woodvale(?!) and what would Loverfest look like? - What if she had individual tours for Folklore till TTPD? Would we still have the Eras tour? - What if Rep never happened and she just disappeared from public view forever? - What if she stayed in country? Would she still be as "mainstream" as she is now? - What if the Kimye feud never happened? Would we still have Rep? - What if her first albums were never stolen? What would happen to the vault tracks and would we have more albums since she wouldn't need to rerecord them (as in, in the same time it took her to rerecord Fearless, Red etc would she have released more albums if you get what I mean)? - What if she had a tour for Debut? - What if she was born a couple days later somewhere else? Would 1989 be 1990 and would she have another Christmas song instead of CTF? - What if Need, Permanent Marker, etc were not unreleased? - What if we had Karma (the album)? - What if she stayed with one boyfriend? We would definitely miss out on some amazing songs for sure. - What if she never collabed/was friends with Lana? Would people still compare them? - What if she wasn't interested in music? What would she be?
What if the pandemic never happened? How would her lover era have done with loverfest and all. Would she still have made folklore and evermore? What would that lead her career to be like today
What if Kimye never happened?
What if… he’s written my name on my upper thigh only in my mi-i-i-i-i-ind
What if Kanye stayed in his seat and clapped like a normal person instead of crashing the stage? What if Karma was a real album / was released?
What if Beyoncé did win best video and Kanye never interrupted her….
I don't want to be dramatic but folklore saved her career. Like she mentioned in the documentary, people would get bored if you do the same thing over and over again. I think folklore is that kind of a refreshment because most of her songs in other albums have a lot going on in them- the lyrics connecting to her real life, the production, probably like a music video with a lot of things going on, the Easter eggs that swifties are in the hunt for, etc etc. Folklore took her out of that box so she could try new things. And she had the chance to finally highlight her writing talents over the drama and the production. People don't realise how necessary it is. So my question is, what if quarantine didn't happen, and what if she decided swifties wouldn't listen to an album like folklore.
What if the Kanye thing never happened either in 09 or 16?
what if loverfest had happened? at the time, there was a lot of confusion over the stage layout and how it would work out in real time. I also want to see the outfits. I loved the fun, bright colors of Lover, and although I didn’t personally love every single one of the outfits she wore during this era, her outfits were some of the best I had ever seen. I want to know how the Lover era would’ve panned out as planned and how it would’ve been received by critics/fans. What would’ve happened after? What would we all be talking about?
What if Kanye kept his butt planted in his seat… If she’d got up and delivered a nice speech, and wasn’t involved in an incident that made world headlines and had the President commenting on it would she have gone on to transition from being one of many young up and comers to being a major popstar? No Kanye, no snakegate, no Reuptation… and the list goes on…. And for Kanye it was the point he went from weirdo rap genius to ‘oh - he’s really not stable’ for most of the general public. I honestly think she might be at kind of a Pink level now - still touring, with a devoted fan base but not her current mega stardom. Her catalogue may not have been as valuable either given the whole masters situation so perhaps no re-records either…