If you’re feeling a shift in the air today, don’t worry: that’s not another seismic event, but the kinetic energy of millions of Swifties mobilizing around the globe to welcome Taylor Swift’s latest albums, The Tortured Poets Department and The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, into her oeuvre. Everyone has been buzzing about the drop … Read more
I guess it would take Taylor Swift to make it official: 2024 is the year of the diss track. January ended with an all-out blood bath (and, mostly, a horror show) between Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion after years of subtle shots between the two. Then Ice Spice and Latto entered the ring, and … Read more
Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, dropped today, and it’s full of the kinds of astute observations about millennial existence that we’ve come to expect from the pop star. Case in point: in her duet with Florence Welch, “Florida!!!”, she sings: “My friends all smell of weed or little babies.” Can you imagine … Read more
People may occasionally call her pop confessionals “cringe,” or wonder if she’s oversharing—but in the tradition of many great poets before her, Swift’s bread and butter is in the gratuitous myth-making of her personal life. Penned with her trusted associates, Jack Antonoff (of the band Bleachers) and Aaron Dessner (of the band The National), Swift … Read more
Her sartorial transformation is just one of many in the Regency romp’s next chapter: there’s also Colin himself, who returns from his European adventures as a more rugged and worldly suitor, trading his Bridgerton baby blues for earthier shades; Eloise, whose outfits begin to mirror the flamboyance of Cressida’s; and Kate Bridgerton, née Sharma (Simone … Read more
Great war films—and I’d call Alex Garland’s Civil War a great and totally modern war film—should be discomfiting. That’s the moral calculus: War is hell, and any depiction of it should be tinted with the reality of violence and death. It’s how you get something as operatic and brutal as Platoon or the frightful poetry … Read more
Before donning a dark bouffant for Sofia Coppola’s 2023 film Priscilla, about the contentious relationship between Elvis and Priscilla Presley, Cailee Spaeny suited up for a different kind of battle on the set of Alex Garland’s Civil War. Starring in the film opposite Kirsten Dunst, the 25-year-old Missouri native spent months dodging flash blanks and … Read more
“When you’re an artist, there’s no HR Department,” Maggie Rogers jokingly says. “There’s no normal path. It’s all sort of self determined.” She’s wearing an earth-toned greenish sweater, and her shaggy hair is shoulder-length, her smile wide. Rogers laughs often. In a February Instagram post, Rogers elaborated on the images and ideas she was conjuring … Read more
Yet his monologue wasn’t only that: While Youssef’s comments about Palestine were clearly heartfelt and genuine, that anecdote ends with a joke about his buddy Brian’s dog. (And, leading up to it, there are references to—among other things—Ramadan, Michigan vape shops, wanting a trans woman for president, and Uber drivers.) He deftly manages to toe … Read more
Yet this spare plot description does little to capture the effect of this lovely film, which lingers long after the final, heartbreaking scene. Less a plot-driven work than one to surrender to, it’s sure to draw more converts to the devoted order of Rohrwacher. From her home base in the remote Italian countryside, Rohrwacher—rosy-cheeked, with … Read more
