You can tell them anything if you just make it funny, make it rhyme.

Bo Burnham, Make Happy

Steph Curry ruined basketball1. I am not mad at him nor do I blame him. If my jump shot was better, I too would want to compete for Larry O’Brien trophies. In many ways, Curry has improved the game of basketball, but his style of play has certainly destroyed what the game once was.

Historically, basketball has been dominated by freakishly tall centers: George Mikan, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and many more. With Bird and Magic in the ‘80s, this became less true, but we are still talking about a power forward and a 6’9” point guard who could play any position on the floor. In the ‘90s and ‘00s, the most popular players were Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, but centers and power forwards were still superstars in the league: Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan, etc.

Steph, however, changed that2. No player has ever been so effortless at shooting threes, and the second most dangerous 3-point shooter in the league was his teammate, Klay Thompson. No longer could players keep their distance from a ball handler past the 3-point line. Even a half-court shot needed to be contested. The Splash Brothers widened the field of play. In doing so, the paint and the centers who dominated it became less important3.

In the modern game, having a seven-foot tall center is no longer a requirement for teams. Modern centers and power forwards play the game completely differently than their past counterparts. If you took away a few inches of height, Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, and Giannis Antetokounmpo would be similar to Luka Dončić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. A player’s position is now a mere suggestion.

And that has changed the game. Basketball is like any other sport now, and many of its players could complete in other sports. Steph Curry is already a great golfer in his spare time. The American-born version of Luka Dončić is equally likely to be an NFL tight end as an NBA player right now. And if soccer mattered in the USA, Anthony Edwards might be helping the international team make it to their first World Cup semifinal since the Great Depression. But the situation is different if you are seven foot tall.

When Kevin McHale was the coach of the Houston Rockets, he came through my register at the grocery store where I worked. At first, I thought, “That guy sure looks like Kevin McHale,” but then I realized my head was at a sixty degree angle. A 6’10” guy that looks like Kevin McHale is actually Kevin McHale. And everyone that sees you is going to know you used to play basketball even if they have never seen a minute of the ‘80s Celtics. Only so many people exist on the far sides of the height bell curve.

Chuck Klosterman explains it best when talking about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in I Wear the Black Hat:

Like so many unusually tall people, it was hard for Kareem to seem ecstatic about playing basketball. The profession didn’t feel like his choice. For agile seven-foot skeletons, basketball is rarely an obsession. It’s a game they are pressured to pursue…This is not to say that he hated the game of basketball…All it means is that Abdul-Jabbar didn’t really have any agency in the matter. There was no better option for how he could spend his life.

That phenomenon, however, inverts for those watching. Whether it be by God, the universe, their parents, or even themselves, some people are born and designed to do a specific job. As an audience member, watching them do so is special even if the personal cost is a heavy one for the man or woman on that stage.

Kendrick Lamar and SZA are playing at State Farm Stadium in Glendale. The vibes at a show this large will never match a small venue, but nowadays seeing Kendrick play in front of fewer than a thousand people is never going to happen. The Grand National Tour, however, is definitely the best large concert of 2025 I have attended and the best event I have seen at this stadium since the Eras Tour.

As an album, GNX is strong and possibly Kendrick’s best album since To Pimp a Butterfly. Despite GNX being his latest release and the namesake for this tour, that album is not the true star of the show. Personally, the fresh takes on multiple tracks from good kid, m.A.A.d city (in particular the slower versions of “Swimming Pools (Drank)” and “m.A.A.d city”) stand out, but that is because I am an older man appreciating borderline classic hip hop. Likewise, SZA is great and pairs well with K.Dot. But what truly excites the tens of thousands of attendees is basking in the afterglow of the Kendrick vs. Drake beef. The Grand National Tour is a victory lap for Kendrick.

The two songs that most energize the crowd are “euphoria” and, of course, “Not Like Us”. The only mercy shown is not playing “meet the grahams”. Fifty thousand people scream out, “Trying to strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.4”

College football has never had a #1 versus #2 game so lopsided as the war between Kendrick and Drake. The Toronto artist is no slouch when it comes to diss tracks. “Back To Back” eviscerated Meek Mill. But for Kendrick fans, the end result was not surprising. This is the same man who followed up good kid, m.A.A.d city with To Pimp a Butterfly before winning a Pulitzer Prize for DAMN5.[5]

Drake, on the other hand, writes catchy but soulless music. F.D Signifier holds nothing back in his explanation:

If Drake is your favorite rapper, you are probably a loser or at least like the most boring person that any of your friends know…Drake makes vapid, disposable music about not having real friends and feeling like you can’t trust anyone…If this is your favorite music, you probably think Transformers is like an amazing movie. You probably think vanilla ice cream is spicy…You can like Drake but to love Drake is to hate goodness…Part of Drake’s appeal is the fact that he is number one. Drake’s hardcore fans don’t really like his music on a meaningful level…You’ve never heard someone be like, “Man, I heard that new Drake album, and it changed my life.” At best, it’s like, “Man, I heard that new Drake album, and then I did another set of deadlifts.”

Buried in that criticism though is a way for Drake to make artistically meaningful work. While Drake most likely does not have the self-awareness to pull this off, the story of a teenage performer turned superstar turned pariah has a lot to say about the nature of performance in our modern world. And if there is anyone that Drake should take inspiration from it is the world’s most popular current artist: Taylor Swift

Wembley is a stadium like no other. The atmosphere is electric as soon as you escape the Wembley Park tube station and have a straight shot towards the venue. The English know how to queue, so even though crowd control is limited, everyone forms an orderly line and getting inside is easy. Though the stadium was rebuilt in the 200s, the ground still holds all that history6. 

This is my second time seeing the Eras Tour, and it is even better than the first. Taylor Swift’s last show in London is a night to remember. The new era for The Tortured Poets Department is enough to make the show feel fresh, but then both Florence Welch and Jack Antonoff are brought out as surprise guests. Naturally as well, one of the surprise songs is “So Long, London”, and this is the first time she has played the track live.

Of course as a thirtysomething man, I am not Taylor’s core demographic. The men’s toilets at Wembley have never been so empty. Tens of thousands of screaming teenage girls and millenial women surround me. So what makes Taylor Swift so interesting to me as an artist?

The recurring theme in Swift’s work about female empowerment can only be so relevant to my lived, male experience. One of my fiancée’s favorite songs from Midnights is “Bejeweled”, but that track is ranked near the bottom of the album for my own tastes. Some songs about ignoring the haters (or even turning the tide on them) like “Shake It Off” and “Look What You Made Me Do” are almost personally cloying.

Certainly, Swift can put on a masterclass at writing catchy pop. 1989, with tracks such as “Blank Space”, “Out of the Woods”, and “New Romantics”, is the best example of this. In many ways, 1989 is a near flawless album, but it is also the album of hers I find the least interesting. Perfection is boring. When looking at Michael Jackson’s discography, writing an essay about Bad is more appealing than one for Thriller.

A huge part of Swift’s appeal is the meta-narrative aspect of her songwriting. Her music is often interesting because we know or can speculate beyond the scope of the page. This is partially what engenders such obsession among her most devoted fans, inspiring them to decode these clues. “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)” is her magnum opus, but the track is basically a “Bohemian Rhapsody”-level epic about how much Jake Gyllenhaal sucks as a person. Nonetheless though, a lot of this boils down to celebrity gossip with limited depth. On the other hand, where this meta-narrative aspect excels the most is when she sings about what she knows best: being a performer.

If you were to design the perfect upbringing and early career for an eventual pop megastar, it would probably go something like this: Be born in America as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl to rich parents. Develop an early interest in music and performing. At age 12, start learning the guitar and writing songs. Also, perform the national anthem at a 76ers game for good measure. Move to Tennessee to pursue country music. Get an artist development deal from RCA Records only to be shelved. Boldly walk away from that deal. Perform at an intimate Nashville venue and get signed to a contract by a sleazy record executive. Release your first album at age 16. Get nominated for Album of the Year at the Country Music Awards. Release your second album. Win Album of the Year at the Grammys and start your appeal to a wider audience. And that, of course, is the story of Taylor Alison Swift.

While Fearless blew Swift’s reputation to new heights, Speak Now is where she truly establishes herself as a songwriter, writing every track by herself. The best song from that album is not the one about developing a crush upon first meeting the most basic, late 2000s alternative-looking man anyone has ever seen. That honor instead goes to “Long Live”, a song dedicated to her fans and touring. By this point, most of Swift’s discography is about the uncertainty she faced in relationships and high school. In contrast with songs like “Long Live” and “Mean”, she stands confidently on stage and against media criticism of her persona and work. For someone so young and early into her career, she is as unshakeable as the most seasoned veteran. Perhaps she was never anything else.

This helps propel her to the summit as she fully embraces pop with Red and 1989. By the time the 1989 World Tour and its plethora of special guests end, Taylor can make the claim as the biggest musical artist in the world. Furthermore, she has ascended to the throne with a near spotless Miss Americana image.

But as the Green Goblin warns, “The one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fall…Eventually they will hate you.” Naturally, the media and popular sentiment begin to turn, accusing her of being fake, floozy, and fucked in the head. 

Taylor strikes back with Reputation. Aesthetically, this is Taylor wrapping herself in the hate and putting on the Black Spider-Man Suit with songs such as “Look What You Made Me Do” and “I Did Something Bad”. Just below the surface though, this album is a romance about finding love while under the intense scrutiny of the media microscope. Tracks like “Delicate” and “Dress” are like Notting Hill told in reverse from the vantage point of Julia Roberts’ character. And this love story is the most nuanced, layered, and real one throughout all of Swift’s work, asking the hard question of whether love is possible with such a public life.

Those themes are continued in some of the songs on Lover with the self-titled track and “Cruel Summer”. While the peaks of that album can match Reputation, Lover is a less cohesive work.

Swift’s next album was folklore which was both her most critically adored and least autobiographical focusing on fictional characters such as Betty, Inez, and James. One real life person Swift touches on though is Rebekah Harkness who is the subject of “the last great american dynasty”. Nonetheless, the twist of the song is that Swift herself now owns Holiday House, the former domicile of the famous widow and inheritor of the Standard Oil fortune. Even when Swift tries not to write about herself, her work always comes back to her own identity. Escape is impossible. Even up in the Lake District of England, “invisible string” points out that Swift still gets told she “looked like an American singer”. Swift often gets criticized for being too personal with her work, but every artist does this. Swift is just more honest about doing so7.

The theme of performance, however, is best captured on a single song from her ninth album, evermore. “marjorie” is an intimate look at Swift’s relationship with her opera singer grandmother, the cost of being a showgirl, and the weight we carry from loved ones past. No song in her discography is better. However according to Spotify numbers, “marjorie” is not even a top 5 most played song on one of her least popular albums. Hearing those notes live on the first night of the Eras Tour was a shock. But I believe the song must be one of Taylor’s personal favorites. She could not pass on making a tribute to her grandmother in front of tens of thousands each night on tour.

folklore and evermore are the creative peaks of Swift’s career, but her album Midnights is no slouch either. Often, the lead single from a Taylor Swift album is a miss. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, “Shake It Off”, and “Look What You Made Me Do” are catchy but vapid compared to other tracks on those albums. For Midnights though, the most interesting song by far is the first single, “Anti-Hero”, because it is the sort of song that requires an artist to have spent a huge amount of time in the spotlight. In the first act of the story, the all-American 1989 Taylor reaches the commercial peak. The second act is the fall from grace with her Reputation era and clothing herself in the persona of the bad girl. “Anti-Hero” and Midnights as a whole is about the cost of wearing that persona. The bad bitch is just as fake as the the perfect angel. After all, “it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.” That song is about reconciling with who you truly are, warts and all. At a certain point, every superstar has to put on armor to survive. Only the truly great ones discover they do not need it any longer.

And that is the Taylor Swift who we saw on the Eras tour. Unlike in her 1989 era, this time the throne is undisputed. Taylor Swift is the biggest artist in the world and not just limited to the medium of music. Putting out a greatest hits tour is usually something done by aging artists trying to hold on to their relevance. Here though it was a coronation. This was the culmination of the story that started when Taylor Swift first picked up a guitar.

But like Tony Stark said, “A part of the journey is the end.” While on the Eras Tour, Swift releases The Tortured Poets Department. Especially when we take in to account the double-album anthology version, the album can be too long with many weak spots8, but this is also the album with the most revealing moments. TTPD is self-indulgent, but you will not ever hear me complaining about that9. “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” is a catchy look at having to go out on stage again and again after a relationship has fallen apart: “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, ‘More!’” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” is about being a lab rat created to perform and the anger that invokes: “I was tame, I was gentle ’til the circus life made me mean. ‘Don’t you worry folks, we took out all her teeth.’ Who’s afraid of little old me? Well, you should be.” And “The Prophecy” is about getting everything you ever wanted, finding it does not fulfill you, and wanting to change the path that brought you here: “Please, I’ve been on my knees. Change the prophecy. Don’t want money. Just someone who wants my company.” The cracks have started to form.

The story of Taylor Swift is watching someone born and crafted to do something actually get there. This is King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. This is LeBron James living up to the hype of that first Sports Illustrated cover. This is the Lisan al-Gaib overthrowing Emperor Christopher Walken. Yet reaching the summit does not guarantee happiness. In the words of Morpheus, “But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their hearts desire, their dream…But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.”

I am a procrastinator. Originally, I started writing this essay before The Life of a Showgirl released. I thought that album would be about these themes. What is the cost of going on stage? What is the price you pay for pouring your heart out onto the page? The Life of a Showgirl is not that. The first half of the album is catchy enough, but the second half is held down by weak lyricism. More than that though, TLoaS just does not live up to the concept its title and artwork evoke.

In an indirect way though, this album is a natural sequel to The Tortured Poets Department and the end of this story. Those songs sound like someone who has found her contentment away from the stage. The brooding, interesting work has been replaced with common, everyday happiness. This is someone that has learnt to walk away and “tell the world to leave us the fuck alone” rather than “drown[ing] in the melancholy” of her past life.

There is a very good chance that Taylor comes back from the critical setback that is TLoaS with an artistic resurgence. That, however, will be a different story to tell. The story of the chosen one pop legend has already been told. And that story looks a lot like a tragedy.

I still have not answered the damn question: Why do I care about Taylor Swift? Or more precisely, why are the themes of being a performer so interesting to someone that has never wanted to perform?

The last two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion are genius. Rather than show what happens in the narrative, the final episodes take place completely inside the minds of the main characters. This is experimental art at its best, asking what a story looks like when it is 100% character development and 0% plot. Episode 25 takes place across the minds of all three main characters: Shinji, Asuka, and Rei. Episode 26 narrows down to focus mainly on Shinji10. We get to see an inner view of our main characters, but we also get to watch how these characters see each other. Naturally, a wide gap exists between these personas. Taking this even further, a gulf exists between the ways each character sees themselves and what they discover they truly are. This gets to one of the deepest questions of human existence: Are you the person that says the thoughts inside your head, or are you the one that listens to those thoughts? The truth is that who you are is an amalgamation of all the possible viewpoints people have on you including your own.

If you’re reading this, you don’t know me. But you also do. Likewise, the Taylor Swift in my head is different than the one in yours, and both are certainly different than the one she holds in her own mind. Yet none of them are perfectly accurate. To be human is to put on a performance. We put on a persona all the time, even to ourselves.

With the advent of social media, this has gotten even worse. Bo Burnham talks about this directly in Make Happy:

Social media…it’s just the market’s answer to a generation that demanded to perform. So the market said, “Here, perform everything to each other all the time for no reason.” It’s prison; it’s horrific. It is performer and audience melded together. What do we want more than to lie in our bed at the end of the day and just watch our life as a satisfied audience member? I know very little about anything, but what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience…you should do it.

Burnham himself has said that the reason he made the film Eighth Grade after Make Happy was because middle school girls were coming up and telling him they understood exactly what he was talking about on stage. They may understand it better than most, but the truth is we are all trapped inside this prison. And this is why the themes of being a performer can resonate even if you cannot dance, act out a scene, or play an instrument.

In the final song from Swift’s latest album, the young, fictionalized main character visits a performer named Kitty and expresses her desire to follow in Kitty’s footsteps. Kitty responds, “You’re sweeter than a peach, but you don’t know the life of a showgirl.” By the end of the song, the protagonist has achieved her dreams and declares, “I’m married to the hustle, and now I know the life of a showgirl.” But this education is just as true for the audience. Taylor Swift is the ultimate, prototypical performer, but her struggles are not unique. She’s not better than you. She is you.

  1. And this is not solely because youth basketball players will jack up 3-pointers despite their already abysmal 15% field goal percentage. ↩︎
  2. Though LeBron’s career and superstar emergence was several years before Curry’s, their duels in the NBA Finals and combined Team USA appearances will inextricably link their legacies. Most likely, their retirements will be within a few years of each other, further tying them together and defining the ‘10s as the LeBron-Steph era. Nonetheless, LeBron will have had little impact on the playstyle of the league. No player nor team can try to emulate a freakishly athletic and durable basketball player who can take on any position or role. A chess grandmaster does not game plan on the assumption that they will have five queens on his or her side of the board. ↩︎
  3. Arguably, James Harden and the Rockets were more influential to the adoption of small ball than Steph Curry and the Warriors. Golden State made a lot of threes; Houston took a lot of threes which is the more approachable strategy. Daryl Morey definitively proved the obvious mathematical truth that 40% of 3 is bigger than 55% of 2. Nonetheless, history is usually written by the victors. In a world where the 2016 Rockets merely had a bad 3-point shooting Game 7 instead of an atrocious one, the history of basketball would tell a different story. But that world is not our own. ↩︎
  4. A hundred years from now the most famous Super Bowl halftime show moment will be either that line or a downpour starting during “Purple Rain”. If I were Drake, I would desperately be arguing that Prince is still an underrated artist to strengthen the latter and downplay the former. ↩︎
  5. While I do not love DAMN as much as many Kendrick fans, gkmc and TPaB is an incredible 1-2 punch. I would put that pair of albums up there with OK Computer/Kid A and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/The Beatles (The White Album) in the all time back-to-back albums list. ↩︎
  6. Most of which is heartbreaking losses and frustrating draws from the England national team. ↩︎
  7. If you are paying attention, this essay says far more about myself than Taylor Swift. ↩︎
  8. Fans will disagree on what those weak spots are. ↩︎
  9. My own writing is self-indulgent to the point of being masturbatory. After all, this essay had two damn intros. ↩︎
  10. For anyone that has watched NGE: Yes, this is a very debatable interpretation. After the Human Instrumentality Project is completed and everyone turns into orange Tang, we are probably seeing thoughts from all the characters in the show melded into one. The point I am trying to make still stands regardless. ↩︎