Music
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Read time: About 17 minutes Firing on all cylinders. Living your best life. Self-care. YOLO. These words may be the ones of wellness influencers and corporate emails. Yet they also capture the experience of being self-actualized, an idea propagated by psychologist Abraham Maslow through his hierarchy of needs. The way I’d describe being self-actualized is Read more
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Read time: About 20 minutes Real talk: The title of this essay is *not* clickbait. If you’re new around here, welcome. As you may have guessed from the name of this blog, Taylor Swift is, in my opinion, the greatest songwriter to have ever lived. And it’s through the many years, the many songs, the Read more
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Read time: Approximately 17 minutes If you’ve ever been invited to a dinner party at a friend’s house, I know you brought a bottle of wine. Why would I know that? You’ve never told me about your friends and why should I know anything about your purchases? It’s because bringing a gift for a host Read more
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A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (although I may have been in Midtown Manhattan at the time), I logged in to a pre-sale queue for tickets to see Kacey Musgraves on her Deeper Well tour. I’d seen Kacey twice before: once at the legendary Apollo Theater (nosebleed seats) and another Read more
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Hot take: Meghan Trainor should be more famous than she is. Hear me out. Over the course of about a decade and six studio albums, Meghan Trainor has promoted a necessary – even urgent, given the ongoing assault on a woman’s right to agency in the United States – narrative of female empowerment, all while Read more
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When GUTS was first released in 2023, I remember thinking, “This is the album of the year.” I hadn’t heard anything so lyrically tight in a long time, and I loved the cross-genre appeal of the entire record. So when the GRAMMY nominations came out and Olivia Rodrigo snagged a bunch, including one for Album Read more
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Why do we do what we do? The “hierarchy of needs” theory articulates the levers of human motivation. Moving from the pyramid base upward, they change from deficiency needs (a means to an end) to growth ones (psychological in nature). Self-actualization – achieving one’s full potential – is at the top. Though self-actualization may be Read more
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When 1989 (hereafter called 1989 OG) came out in 2014, it was a smashing success. The album sold about a million copies in its first week, and went on to earn Taylor her second Album of the Year Award at the GRAMMYs. It was called a pop tour de force and the rumored relationship at Read more
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I remember watching Taylor Swift’s New York University commencement address and thinking, “This is new.” Throughout the speech, she drew back the curtain and provided an unvarnished, somewhat self-loathing look at herself, in her most vulnerable form. She said, “I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective all Read more
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I remember the first time I saw the Old 97’s live. It must have been around 2009, 2010, down at South Street Seaport for some god-awful summer festival. Usually, the acts they get are subpar to subzero, but I was impressed by the Old 97’s. Following the show, the first song I downloaded was “Question,” Read more
Taylor's Ham 