She’s testing the limits of the old line about bad publicity.
Taylor Swift, the pop music megastar who’s dominated headlines to an embarrassing degree so far this year, is making a different kind of news with the lyrics from the new album released on Friday.
And one line in particular has fans in an uproar.
In a song called “I Hate It Here” — a title that will bring a smile to anyone’s face — Swift describes what sounds like being the wet blanket at a high school party.
“My friends used to play a game where we would pick a decade we wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid,” she sings.
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As USA Today reported, the song is from “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” — a “deluxe version” of her album.
It sounds like a joke — the 1830s don’t exactly jump out as one of the earth-shaking decades in American history (welcome to the Union, Arkansas and Michigan!), and the part about “without all the racists” borders on surreal considering it described an era where chattel slavery was the “peculiar institution” in half the country.
But joking or not, the line drew predictable social media backlash in a cultural moment that has made Swift an important figure for some reason.
“y’all .. there are so many wrong things about this,” one user wrote.
