Growing up in Generation Z, it’s nearly impossible to avoid Taylor Swift. Even if you’re not actively a fan of hers, she’s everywhere in the music industry and has been for nearly the past 20 years. Like it or not, she’s effectively become the face of music in this decade and is easily this century’s most commercially successful artist.

As such, the amount of discourse that her latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” has generated is wholly unsurprising to me. It sold 2.74 million copies in the first week — the second-most ever since 1991.

What has been interesting, though, is seeing how seemingly polarizing this release has been and the conversations it’s brought up that appear to question her legitimacy as a songwriter.

I have never completely understood the Taylor Swift hype. I say none of this from a place of malice: In a social media era that can feel so vicious, it’s easy for people on the internet to conflate statements of someone simply not being a fan of an artist into sentiments of unnecessary levels of hate and investment.

I actually think she’s a decent person to be one of the biggest faces of music in our generation, and I appreciate how she goes out of her way to show love to artists whose musical styles vary vastly from her own. It’s not that deep, but I’ve just never found her work as consistently interesting as her fame would suggest.

Her fans go so far as to compare her to Michael Jackson — an artist that had a near-universal pull — which is ludicrous to me, seeing as how specific Taylor’s audience has been for her whole career.

A couple of years ago, I had an extended conversation with a friend of mine, who’s a fan of Swift’s, saying all of the things I just explained — that I didn’t understand how her appeal was so widespread. She concluded by saying, in the most respectful way possible, that I’m not just not the target audience as a guy.

I don’t disagree with this, but not being the target audience for a lot of other artists hasn’t stopped me from loving their work and appreciating their artistry; I’m most certainly not the target audience for Ariana Grande, Beyoncé or Mariah Carey, but that didn’t stop them from reaching the top 15 on my Apple Music Replay artists last year.

“Nonsense” by Sabrina Carpenter was also in my top 20 most-listened-to songs in 2025. I don’t have to be able to relate to a song to appreciate its story, creativity and sound. Enjoyable music is enjoyable music.

I do like some of her songs: “Cruel Summer” and “Style” are both catchy, and I think “You Belong With Me” and “cardigan” are captivatingly written.

However, while I think that she can be an immersive songwriter, I’ve never thought Taylor to be a remarkable singer, compelling personality or even necessarily the most consistently cohesive lyricist, despite her narrative songwriting capabilities.

It is for this exact reason that I was surprised to see devoted fans and haters alike flame Swift’s album on social media for lyrics that fans deemed to be off-putting. Phrases like “I’m not a bad bitch / And this isn’t savage” on “Eldest Daughter” have elicited winces and side-eyes from listeners online.

The same is true for the entirety of the song “Wood,” where fans said she came off like a poor man’s Sabrina Carpenter, and on “Wi$h Li$t,” where she goes on about the life she wants with fiancé Travis Kelce in a way that feels cheesy — talking about “trad wife” fantasies while using Gen Z lingo. It came across as out-of-touch and corny even to Swifties, and, frankly, I’m inclined to agree.

However, my issue with this criticism is that I feel like Swift has always been like this. It’s not something unique to this album: Every time I’ve listened to songs of hers, I’ve come across verses that are out of touch and awkward. My aforementioned friend actually told me that her awkwardness is the very quality that makes her more relatable, and that it was part of why she resonated so much with her music.

But when I heard “The Life of a Showgirl” for the first time, it didn’t sound that much more cheesy than the songs I had heard growing up. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s how I felt as someone who’s been largely detached from her as an artist. She’s always been many of the things she’s just now receiving criticism for.

Nostalgia clouds us all: there are songs that I liked as a kid that haven’t aged as well as I once remembered them. Of course, I still like listening to them as an adult because of the memories I attach to them, but if I heard Justin Bieber’s “That Should Be Me” or “Don’t Let Her Get Away” from “Let it Shine” (2012) for the first time all of these years later, I probably wouldn’t think they were nearly as profound.

Ultimately, it’s up to fans of hers to figure out if Taylor Swift has actually changed in a way that makes her less compelling or if the landscape around her has changed in a way that makes her less palatable to them than she once was.

Kailen Hicks is a junior writing about current trends, conflicts and discourse around music in his column “Noteworthy Noise,” which runs every other Wednesday.