Category: Viral

Kyrie Irving was among the most outspoken NBA players during the hiatus when it came to voicing concerns about the league’s restart plan. Irving raised questions about whether the restart would be in the best interest of players, particularly amid the growing Black Lives Matter movement and the importance of NBA players continuing to be a prominent voice in that movement.

While the majority of NBA players decided to enter the bubble, the same conversations were happening on the WNBA side where a number of players opted out, both for health concerns and for social justice reasons. While NBA players that opted out had already received a significant portion of their salary for the season, WNBA players opting out were risking their entire season’s pay — in a league where players are just seeing a raise from a CBA ratified this offseason.

As such, those players do not have the potential savings of NBA players who chose not to play in the restart, and Irving wants to make sure that they are given some financial security and assistance. As such, he launched the KAI Empowerment Initiative, which is funded fully by Irving with $1.5 million that will be allocated to players that opted out of whatever reason.

“Whether a person decided to fight for social justice, play basketball, focus on physical or mental health, or simply connect with their families, this initiative can hopefully support their priorities and decisions,” Irving said in a statement on Monday.

The program will also provide a financial literacy program to players through UBS, and they’ll be able to apply online through August 11, 2020. It’s a strong show of support from Irving and will provide players who had to make a very difficult decision to sit out the season without pay with some financial security that will surely be much appreciated.

The first four seasons of Dexter are very good (the John Lithgow season is the exception, because it’s great). Unfortunately, the Showtime series continued for four more seasons, culminating in a horrible cop-out of an ending. Once you see the lumberjack beard, you can’t forget the lumberjack beard, let alone the infamous treadmill scene from a few episodes earlier. No conversation about the worst TV finales ever is complete without “Remember the Monsters?” (which has a nearly identical IMDb user rating as “The Iron Throne”), although the episode does have its defenders.

Dexter star Yvonne Strahovski, who played fellow serial killer Hannah, was recently asked what it’s like to be associated with a — to put it charitably — “polarizing” finale.

“I appreciate both sides. I got a little bit of an insight into why they did what they did… It was just sort of about having Dexter have nobody and that that was kind of the ultimate jail in a way for him to not have anybody left. And then I get the fans as well,” the Handmaid’s Tale actress said during an episode of Collider Ladies Night. “I get that perhaps it wasn’t sort of the most dramatic ending that they had longed for. Maybe they wanted to see more blood and gore… It’s not my responsibility [laughs], so it doesn’t really bother me whether people liked it or not. It’s just something that I was a part of.”

Dexter had its problems near the ends of its run, its many, many problems, but the acting was never an issue. Strahovski, then best known for her role on Chuck, was a late-season highlight, and she and Michael C. Hall had strong chemistry together. Besides, she’s not the one who decided a 45-year-old man should be a child’s stunt double.

I needed to see it again.

(Via Collider)

Classifying Beyonce as an artist is one of the most impossible tasks any music fan could ever undertake. As one of the biggest stars on the planet, Beyonce could easily be considered a pop star, but she’s also one of music’s most distinctive artists, with a singular sound easily identifiable as her own despite its massive diversity. Queen Bey could deliver a throwback R&B jam as easily as she could fire off a proto-country ballad or a New Orleans bounce bop, yet you’ll always know it’s her — and could only ever be her.

Each body of Beyonce’s work is an eclectic artistic statement that traverses such a broad range of styles that each individual track could easily fall into two or three genres on its own. Whether she is snapping off intense assertive bars as on “Flawless” or kicking and screaming on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” Beyonce has shown throughout her catalog that she’s a stylistic chameleon who can execute both pitch-perfect riffs on any genre she tries on for size, or craft hits that defy attempts at categorizing them at just one thing.

But that’s what we’re going to try to do here: Figure out just which songs belong under which umbrella. The point isn’t to make square pegs fit into round holes, though — it’s to highlight Beyonce’s gift as blowing up the very concept that music should fit into neat little boxes in the first place. She doesn’t belong in a box as an artist, but here are the songs that best highlight her ability to both fit in and stand out — sticking to her solo output, naturally, or we’d be here all week.

Pop

By far, the majority of Beyonce’s music falls into the hazily defined category of pop music. She’s a big fan of stadium-filling anthems, triumphant brass, and heavy synth punctuated by booming percussion. While “pop” music as it stands today sounds much like an offshoot of R&B with hip-hop elements, many of Beyonce’s pop songs combine multiple elements of varied genres, with big, catchy choruses and sweeping, David Foster-esque flourishes. This is where much of Beyonce’s most well-known material lands, by virtue of being both popular and harder to fit into other categories. It’s also the broadest class of Beyonce music, from booming empowerment anthems to operatic ballads and of course, the dance floor-filling smashes.

Songs: “Crazy In Love,” “Naughty Girl,” “Deja Vu,” “Get Me Bodied,” “Upgrade U,” “Ring The Alarm,” “Freakum Dress,” “Check Up On It,” “Halo,” “Broken-Hearted Girl,” “Ave Maria,” “Satellites,” “Single Ladies,” “Radio,” “Diva,” “Sweet Dreams,” “Video Phone,” “Hello,” “Scared Of Lonely,” “Schoolin’ Life,” “Countdown,” “I Miss You,” “I Care,” “1+1,” “End Of Time,” “Run The World (Girls),” “Best Thing I Never Had,” “Start Over,” “I Was Here,” “Pretty Hurts,” “Haunted,” “Jealous,” “Mine,” “XO,” “Heaven,” “Blue,” “Pray You Catch Me,” “Love Drought,” “Sandcastles,” “Forward”

R&B

Beyonce’s R&B output runs a close second to her pop material — in many ways, it often overlaps it. But her R&B numbers tend to be more understated than her pop songs and crop up a lot more in the earlier part of her solo career. Due to the near-spoken delivery of many of her R&B songs, there’s also a lot of crossover with her more straightforward hip-hop efforts. The defining characteristic of her R&B songs, though, is content: The blues are as evident a through-line as any in Beyonce’s long and storied career.

Songs: “Hip-Hop Star,” “Be With You,” “Me, Myself And I,” “Yes,” “Signs,” “Speechless,” “That’s How You Like It,” “The Closer I Get To You,” “Dangerously In Love,” “Suga Mama,” “Kitty Kat,” “Green Light,” “Resentment,” “If I Were A Boy,” “Ego,” “Love On Top,” “Party,” “Dance For You,” “Rather Die Young,” “Blow,” “No Angel,” “Rocket,” “Superpower,” “All Night”

Hip-Hop

I have said before and I maintain that Beyonce has not only always been a rapper, but that she is also the primary pioneer of the singsong style that dominates the landscape today. Go all the way back to some of her verses on Destiny’s Child’s breakout albums Writing On The Wall and Survivor, and those deliveries sound an awful lot like the chatterbox styles employed by many of today’s most prominent rap names. That said, Beyonce rarely tapped into a full rap persona until her 2014 self-titled album, where “Flawless” and “7/11” sound a lot more like New Orleans bounce than straight-up hip-hop. Even so, she’s so confident with her chanting bar work, these ones probably live up to the standard well enough to warrant inclusion.

Songs: “Drunk In Love,” “Partition,” “Flawless,” “7/11,” “Sorry,” “6 Inch,” “Freedom,” “Formation”

Rock

A later entry to her oeuvre, Beyonce dabbled in harder-edged guitar stuff on Lemonade alongside Jack White. While it’s a small-ish part of her overall catalog, it’s also important because it highlights how 13 years into her solo career, Beyonce is still growing as an artist, incorporating new sounds to suit her new moods. Clearly, even the mostly stoic artist, activist, mother, and wife likes to thrash every now and then. While this probably won’t ever become the most expansive part of her discography, it’s fun to imagine a latter-day Bey going full Ozzy Osbourne for a side project and really cutting loose, Aggretsuko style. There’s some soft-rock stuff earlier in her career, too.

Songs: “Smash Into You,” “Don’t Hurt Yourself”

Country

Another part of Beyonce’s output that has recently expanded is Beyonce’s country work, thanks to the recently-renamed The Chicks and “Daddy Lessons.” But, the roots of her interest in the genre can be seen as far back as her album B’Day, where “Irreplaceable” found Stargate strumming an acoustic guitar in a very Western-ish way as Beyonce delivered lyrics that wouldn’t sound out of place at a Carrie Underwood concert. While “everything you own in the box to the left” is hardly a “Louisville Slugger to both headlights,” Beyonce did eventually graduate to letting the ol’ hot sauce out of her bag to do some damage in the video for “Hold Up.”

Songs: “Irreplaceable,” “Disappear,” “That’s Why You’re Beautiful,” “Daddy Lessons”

Reggae/Dancehall

Speaking of “Hold Up,” that Lemonade standout was the second time Beyonce slipped Caribbean-influenced songs onto her albums. Starting from her earliest collaboration with Sean Paul, Bey later dipped into that well for the aforementioned “Hold Up,” evolving her relationship with dancehall riddims to eventually incorporate more roots reggae and thread some elements of dub throughout. It’s a lane she would do well to return to on future projects.

Songs: “Baby Boy,” “Hold Up”

So what genre is Beyonce anyway? If anything, this exercise shows that distinguishing most of these songs into individual genres falls short of capturing the entire picture. At this point, Beyonce is a genre. And no matter what style of music she tackles next, she will find a way to make it her own.

As the quarantine persists and many shops remain closed, St. Vincent, aka Grammy Award-winning musician Annie Clark, gave fans a way to transport themselves back to one aspect of pre-pandemic life. The singer shared a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the time when music lovers could spend hours messing around on different instruments in guitar shops by sharing a snippet of herself playing Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” on electric guitar.

Sharing the clip to social media, Clark wrote: “Since guitar stores have been closed, I thought you might have missed the sound of someone fumbling through ‘stairway to heaven,’” The singer continued to give an “honorable mention” to the songs “Smoke On The Water,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Black Dog,” and “Wherever I May Roam.”

Clark is clearly a Zeppelin fan as this isn’t the first time the singer has shared a clip of herself performing one of their songs in recent months. Back in May, the musician shared an acoustic and “moderately-played, half-remembered partial-cover” of the group’s Houses Of The Holy track “Dancing Days” from the side of her van.

Watch St. Vincent play “Stairway To Heaven” above.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Major League Baseball season is just four days old, but it is now in serious danger of being put on hold.

The Miami Marlins had four players scratched due to positive COVID-19 tests from Sunday’s game against the Phillies, including their starting pitcher, and somehow still managed to pull out an 11-6 win on the road. However, the Marlins, concerned of an outbreak within the team, stayed in Philadelphia rather than traveling home on Sunday night ahead of their home opener against the Orioles to await the next round of testing results.

Unfortunately, the fears of an internal outbreak were warranted, as results indicated Monday that, in total, 11 players and two coaches tested positive — of the 33 players that traveled, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. As a result, Miami’s game with Baltimore was postponed, as was the Phillies scheduled game with the Yankees.

As Karl Ravech notes, the MLB season likely hinges on whether the Phillies, who played the Marlins last night, have any positive test results. The issue is, as we have learned, it’s possible to test negative for a few days before eventually testing positive, so Philadelphia is likely days away from being fully in the clear, even if their next round of test results come back negative.

With baseball not in a bubble environment, there was always enhanced risk of an outbreak because of how slow testing can show a positive case. Juan Soto of the Nationals was the first player to test positive ahead of the Thursday opener against the Yankees — after having practiced with the team — as baseball hoped that would be an isolated incident. Unfortunately, the Marlins — who had been in Atlanta for scrimmages prior to heading to Philly — were not as lucky and when cases arrived in their locker room, the virus spread to a third of the team.

Baseball will apparently press on with the 26 other teams, but it sadly seems like the clock is ticking on the season. There will reportedly be a league-wide call among the owners on Monday afternoon to discuss the situation further, and determine how the league will proceed.

For now, we can simply hope the Marlins players who contracted the virus remain asymptomatic or only battle mild cases and the Phillies avoid an outbreak of their own, but baseball’s nightmare scenario for the opening weekend appears to have arrived.

British grime pioneer Wiley may have a tough time repairing his career after posting a series of anti-Semitic tweets on Friday, as his management team at A-List Management have dropped him as a client and his label’s distribution partner, ADA Worldwide (Alternative Distribution Alliance) also kicked him to the curb in the wake of his day-long tirade.

John Woolf, who has managed Wiley for years, tweeted, “Following Wiley’s anti semitic tweets today we at [A-List Management] have cut all ties with him. There is no place in society for antisemitism.” Meanwhile, a spokesperson for ADA said in a statement, “We oppose antisemitism and any form of discrimination and racism. While Wiley controls and releases his music through his own label, he has a digital distribution agreement with ADA and we are terminating that agreement.”

Wiley’s outburst also sparked an outcry from members of the UK’s government. BBC reports that dozens of British celebrities and entertainers joined a boycott of Twitter, calling on the platform to take steps to address anti-Semitism and racism. Even the Prime Minister chimed in via a representative, saying, “Twitter needs to do better.”

Meanwhile, the majority of Wiley’s tweets referencing conspiracy theories about Jewish people secretly controlling the world were removed, while Wiley himself has not tweeted since, suggesting his access may have been suspended. The criticism of Wiley’s actions has also extended to calls to revoke his membership in The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which he was awarded in 2018.

Lollapalooza tried its best to go forward with its festival this year, as they were one of the last major American fests to announce its 2020 event had been canceled. While there won’t be an in-person event this year, the Chicago fest is taking their show global and online with a livestream event, called “Lolla2020.”

Lollapalooza describes the show as “a free four-night broadcast event” that kicks off this week, on July 30. They shared a poster for the event, and it features Arcade Fire, ASAP Rocky, Brockhampton, Chance The Rapper, The Cure, Ellie Goulding, Fontaines DC, Future, Gunna, HER, Hinds, Imagine Dragons, Jamila Woods, Jane’s Addiction, Josh Homme, Kali Uchis, Kehlani, Khalid, LCD Soundsystem, Lorde, Idles’ Mark Bowen, Metallica, Mxmtoon, Outkast, Paul McCartney, Pink Sweats, Polo G, Run The Jewels, Tenacious D, Tove Lo, Tyler The Creator, Vic Mensa, White Reaper, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The Chicago Tribune notes the livestream will feature “favorite sets from previous festivals (including international editions), original performances and classic sets.” The fest hasn’t made it clear which artists on the poster will be performing original sets and which will be represented by archival footage, but the Tribune notes LCD Soundsystem, Chance the Rapper, Metallica, Outkast, and Paul McCartney’s appearances will be archival, while HER, Kali Uchis, Kaskade, Louis The Child, and Vic Mensa will perform new sets.

Check out the full poster above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Why is Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia so grumpy? That’s one of many answers that one might expect from The Witcher: Blood Origin show as book series author Andrzej Sapkowski’s world transforms into a full-fledged Netflix fantasy franchise. Actually, I’m being slightly obnoxious at the moment. Viewers already realize that not only must Geralt co-exist with the loathsome-yet-catchy “Toss A Coin” song, but he must also deal with a society that treats him with contempt, despite his invaluable monster-hunting services to the continent. That’s where the origin story of the first Witcher comes in, to show us exactly what the profession has internalized throughout potion-laden travels.

As an upcoming six-part limited series, Blood Origin, aims to bring that legacy to life in a universe that not only includes video games but will also soon include an animated, feature length movie called Nightmare of the Wolf. However, Blood Origin will be a live-action affair that arrives with this logline:

Set in an elven world 1200 years before the world of The Witcher, Blood Origin will tell a story lost to time – the origin of the very first Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal “conjunction of the spheres,” when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one.

More elves? One can’t beat that, along with the promise to present human arrival as “cataclysmic,” according to showrunner Declan de Barra, who will executive produce alongside The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. Sapkowski will do the creative consulting thing, and this sounds like a take on how history can be rewritten and, later, resurfaced with a “forgotten” label. We can also expect a lesson on the unending fallout that results from colonization, wrapped up in an aesthetically pleasing bow. Perhaps a few bathtubs as well? One never knows.

The Witcher: Blood Origin will shoot in the United Kingdom with release details to come.

Idles have been creative when it comes to keeping themselves busy during the pandemic. Aside from sharing music videos, the group’s Joe Talbot has launched an online talk show that has featured and will feature guests like Chrvches, Lauren Mayberry, Sharon Van Etten, Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, and others. Now the group is expanding their online video empire with a new series, Dumb & Drumber.

The premise of the show is described as “the show where [Idles drummer Jon Beavis] and [bassist Adam Devonshire] go head to head in a music quiz against other band’s rhythm sections.” The debut episode premiered over the weekend, and their first competitors were The National bandmates and brothers Scott and Bryan Devendorf, who play bass and drums, respectively.

Meanwhile, the other pair of brothers in The National, Bryce and Aaron Dessner, was involved in one of the year’s biggest albums: Taylor Swift’s Folklore. Aaron co-wrote and produced the majority of Swift’s surprise release, while Bryce contributed orchestration to the record. Aaron said of working with Swift, “I was excited and honored when Taylor approached me in late April about maybe writing some songs remotely together. […] I’ve rarely been so inspired by someone and it’s still hard to believe this even happened — these songs came together in such a challenging time. […] I’m very proud of all these songs and profoundly grateful to Taylor for inviting me into and trusting me in her process. She is one of the most talented, hardworking and deeply caring artists I’ve ever encountered. There’s a palpable humanity and warmth and raw emotion in these songs that I hope you’ll love and take comfort in as much as I do.”

Watch the premiere of Dumb & Drumber above.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Communal moments are a rarity in 2020. It’s an obvious repercussion from a world turned upside down, where months into a pandemic, many are still holding tight to “safer at home” and social isolation recommendations. Music festivals are non-existent, the movie theater experience is threatening to disappear altogether, and even gathering with our closest friends and family, be it for an intimate meal or a raucous house party, all violate common-sense best practices for keeping the most vulnerable around us safe. IRL congregating has largely been limited to essential protests around the country, with participants taking what is viewed as essential risks in order to bring about much-needed societal change that’s been centuries in the making.

As such, communal moments in 2020 are largely limited to the virtual world. Verzuz battles and Club Quarantine have allowed fans to congregate and debate on social platforms. Artists like Post Malone, Mark Ronson, and Nick Cave have pushed boundaries as to what is possible from streaming events. Movies like Palm Springs, The Old Guard, and The King Of Staten Island or TV events like The Last Dance have provided cultural currency that most can share, with the relatively sparse offerings of entertainment making it feel like literally everyone is watching the same things. Some album releases have managed to attain greater synchronicity, but few hold so much cultural cachet as to deserve a custom emoji for their trending Twitter hashtag.

On Thursday night, that hand-drawn “T” and “S” could be seen up and down the timeline. Music fans and critics across genres unveiled hot takes, quoted lyrics like Myspace teens writing on the back of textbooks or crafting the perfect AIM away message, and debated Folklore‘s place in the unimpeachable Taylor Swift canon. For a couple hours, it felt like we were all together, experiencing something that did not equate to injustice or existential dread or the imminent death of thousands. While escapism is undoubtedly a privilege, taking that brief opportunity to exist in someone else’s orbit felt good for the collective soul, the reciprocal of the isolation that proved so inspiring to Swift’s songwriting.

It’s a strange dichotomy that a period away from a canceled tour that would have seen her creating her very own festival, as well as headlining some of the biggest international events in existence, could, in turn, bring so many people together. And just as it has been for her last four album releases, everyone from day ones to uninvested tourists held an opinion on where the Nashville songwriting great should be headed. You can’t get a Swift song cycle without some bemoaning her interest in contemporary pop textures, hoping for a step back closer to her mainstream country roots, despite the fact that her recent turn to outspoken political activism has all but burned that bridge (good riddance, I say). But for her fans, the ones that Swift speaks directly to through endless Easter eggs and social media outreach, there is the understanding that every step she takes is necessary for the journey. There is never going to be a “back” — an artist like Taylor Swift only knows forward motion. And even with Folklore, the most timeless work she’s ever created, a turn away from mainstream pop isn’t as much of a statement as it is a necessity, reflecting the way the album was created and the times that it was created in.

The album follows a return to critical favor (Lover) after a short run as a critical punching bag (Reputation), incorporating help from artists she’s long admired and amplified — both The National, whose Aaron Dessner produces and writes on the majority of the album, and Bon Iver, who guests on one song, have been featuring regularly on Taylor Swift playlists for years — as well as her “musical family” member Jack Antonoff. But even with new people in tow, Swift never loses herself in the palette of others. “The Last Great American Dynasty” and “Cardigan” are both deeply rooted in the vivid details and melodic warmth that characterizes much of her music, even if they benefit from Dessner’s talent for turning slow-burn builds into huge emotional payoffs. And it’s a flex to have Bon Iver barely sound like himself for the first half of “Exile,” avoiding his characteristic falsetto in favor of the cruise-control ease that makes his best work feel as comforting as a dusty welcome mat. When he belts “so step right up” at the song’s midpoint, try not to imagine clouds parting to reveal the vibrant, affirming sunshine.

It’s a narrative that will find many men “finally” giving Swift a chance, praising her for conforming to their ideal of what a female pop artist should sound like. There’s something inherently frustrating in that it takes her aligning with indie-cred to get respect from those corners, as if she hasn’t packed album after album with wise-beyond-her-years observations and sturdy melodies that would sound great against the backdrop of most collaborators and production choices. In her recent Netflix documentary Miss Americana, Swift gave a view inside her songwriting process, where a song like her widely-derided Lover first single “Me!” is shown to be unexpectedly dexterous outside of its commercial-ready bombast and Brandon Urie feature. Most of Swift’s songs follow this same pattern, the kind of tunes that are vigorous and intricate, that can sound equally captivating accompanied by lone acoustic strums or piano plucks as they are when bolstered by a dance routine under stadium lights. When it comes to Taylor Swift, people have often conflated not liking her style or presentation with disliking the song or the artist, and an album where the sonic choices around her are subtle and dialed down jukes those notions. But be wary of anyone that calls this album a songwriting breakthrough or a return to form.

All that said, maybe Folklore is a songwriting breakthrough and a return to form. Many of the strongest moments throughout Folklore echo Swift’s previous heights, whether it’s the scarves now becoming sweaters or teen romances getting the retrospective wisdom they deserve. And while her lyrical buttons are their typically masterful self (or, as on “Mirrorball,” an extended metaphor transports the audience to Swift’s universe), the choices she makes with her voice are often as captivating as what she’s saying. This can be the unexpected falsetto of “Illicit Affairs,” the playful lilts of “August,” or the little yelp at the end of the first verse in “Epiphany.” On the most cohesive album she’s ever made, she’s fully aware that the record lacks for levity, and these assorted vocal ticks provide balance to a tone that is mostly rooted in general seriousness.

But even as she breaks free into new genre territory, and displays influences from the contemporary indie artists she’s chosen as collaborators, nothing about Folklore reads like culture vulturing. Some of the best songs of the album, “The Last Great American Dynasty” and “Betty,” thrive in the specific storytelling she’s been crafting since she was a teenager. Many of the other songs drift from the spare sonics into rapid-fire pop cadences she’s been perfecting since Red. While moments here and there find parallels to other indie stars, there isn’t a song on the record that another artist could write.

That’s why some of the discourse surrounding the album in its first few days of release has been so disappointing. Across social media platforms, indie music gatekeepers and artists have taken shots at Swift for infiltrating a scene where female-led indie-folk is having a moment, displaying all the pretension and exclusivity that gives the community a bad name. In reality, Swift’s “indie album” will only serve to provide more opportunities to those that work in a similar space as interest is raised, and will not impede the forward momentum of anyone. And, it’s particularly telling that the people she’s working with — Vernon, Dessner, Antonoff — are known for fostering creative communities and welcoming surprising collaborators into their worlds.

There’s a lesson we can all take there, about inclusion and open-mindedness, but that’s hardly the point of Folklore. The lack of a rollout paints it as both the most low-key and instantly impactful album of her career, one crafted during impossible times and used as an opportunity to make music with her heroes, free of many the expectations she’s set for herself. Folklore will likely wind up being her album that reaches the widest cross-section of music fans yet, and while the indie world might still be lifting up their drawbridge, don’t worry, because the Swifties are ready to welcome anyone new to the party with open arms. There is no bandwagon here, only fans of one of the last decade’s defining figures who’s still finding ways to shatter expectations. All aboard.

Folklore is out now on Republic. Get it here.