The Cost of Guaranteed Success: Taylor Swift and the Marvel-ism of Pop Music

Last spring, in the midst of heated debates over The Tortured Poets Department—the 11th studio album by arguably the most famous woman in music, Taylor Swift—I came across a YouTube video titled “Taylor Swift is becoming the Marvel of pop music” by the channel “honest.” As a “Swiftie” since childhood, as well as a diehard Marvel fan, I was not looking for a double criticism of two of my favorite brands and quickly skipped over the video. However, a year later, after the release of The Life of a Showgirl, the comparison hasn’t left my mind. As both Taylor Swift and Marvel reached unimaginable heights of success, both monetarily and culturally, the troubling question arises: Does artistic vision suffer when a brand is guaranteed success? 

When art becomes synonymous with empire, something shifts in how it’s made and how the public receives it. For both Taylor Swift over the past three years and Marvel in their late 2010s peak, they no longer had to question whether people would show up. People's mere anticipation led to sold out movie theaters and stadiums. But when success becomes a foregone conclusion, the creative stakes can start to feel lower. That’s not to say that either lacks intention or artistry. Swift’s talent with the pen remains undeniable, and Marvel can still craft compelling narratives that resonate on a global scale. Despite their abilities, there’s a growing sense that both are locked in an endless loop of self-referencing expansion: albums and re-recordings, phases and multiverses, easter eggs and infinite references. Every music release or new movie feels less like an artistic revelation and more like another installment in a preordained saga, something to be decoded and debated rather than felt and enjoyed. 

The Tortured Poets Department should have been a victory lap for Taylor Swift. Released in the middle of the highest-grossing world tour of all time, The Eras Tour, the album came at the peak of Swift’s career. Not only did the tour solidify her legacy of over a decade of albums and hits, but it also expanded her impact and placed her among the legends of commercial success. And while in terms of sales and charting, the album brought in her biggest numbers yet, the public and critical reception of the album paled in comparison to its predecessors. Many fans praised its ambition but questioned its focus: the sprawling thirty-one-track project with an over 2-hour run time often felt more exhaustive than expressive. Critics pointed out that its length diluted the emotional sharpness that once defined Swift’s writing, turning what could have been a reflection on fame and heartbreak into an overextended project dripping in self-reference. For casual listeners, many mentioned the album felt almost impenetrable, as if understanding it required a working knowledge of Swift’s lore, relationships, and easter eggs. In its attempt to capture everything, The Tortured Poets Department revealed a deeper issue: when the brand demands constant output, the art can lose its sense of precision and purpose.

Trying to explain the complexities of The Tortured Poets Department to a non-Swiftie reminds me all too well of when I recommend a new Marvel movie to a friend: as I must first try to explain over a decade's worth of MCU information, dozens of characters, and the structure of the ever-growing and constantly confusing multiverse. While those of us who’ve been there since 2008’s Iron Man can still mostly follow (though often with slight hesitation) the different branches of the universe, Marvel has struggled in the past years with creating new movies that don’t require knowledge of over 112 hours of movies and TV shows to provide clarity or enjoyment. The studio struck gold with the first three phases of the MCU (if you ignore Thor: The Dark World), crafting a careful, decade-long arc that culminated in Infinity War and Endgame—a genuine cultural global event that rewarded loyal fans while remaining accessible enough for casual audiences to join in. But after that crescendo, the momentum began to falter. The endless wave of Disney+ spin-offs (WandaVision, Loki, Secret Invasion, Ms. Marvel, etc.) blurred the line between essential viewing and fatigue. What once felt like a cohesive cinematic universe began to feel like homework. Even as an original fan, I felt as if keeping up with all the different storylines was work with little reward. Instead of consolidating, the brand expanded even further, attempting to build new franchises within and introduce new casts that attempted to capture the magic of the original Avengers, to no avail. Box office numbers slipped, critical reception waned, and the cultural urgency that once made Marvel untouchable seemed to fade. It’s hard not to wonder if Taylor Swift could ever face a similar fate. While her absolute dominance shows no sign of slowing, her most recent drop shows that while she still commands global attention, the signs of overexposure hover in the background. 

The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift's 12th studio album, was clearly meant to remedy the main critiques of her previous album. 12 tracks, no deluxes (at least so far), switching from her tried and true producer Jack Antonoff back to the Max Martin—who produced her pop juggernaut 1989—and returning to bright and bold visuals: The Life of a Showgirl was gearing up to be another pop reckoning in Taylor’s discography. Without a single note of music released, the record had over 2 million pre-orders in the U.S. alone. Dressed in glitter, adorned in merchandise, listening parties in motion: millions of Swifties waited with bated breath on release night. After visuals of Swift in bejeweled showgirls outfits, and promises on the New Heights podcast that the album “comes from the most infectious, joyful, wild and dramatic place I was at in my life,” and that it is “all about infectious pop melodies while keeping the quality storytelling of folklore” , the anticipation for this record grew. And Swift kept these promises… for three tracks. While the album opens with three pop bangers that started a paint a picture of a bright and bold record, the following tracks delved into a confusing world of cringy and immature lyrics, diss-tracks, politically-questionable references, and an overall lack of cohesion that left even devoted fans unsure of what story she was trying to tell. What should have been a cohesive return to form instead unraveled into something completely hollow. For every flash of brilliance in the first few tracks on the record, there was a lyric (or in some cases, entire songs such as Eldest Daughter) that felt senseless and below Swift’s own high standards. The record’s length, meant to counter The Tortured Poets Department’s excess, only highlighted how much the pressure to please both critics and fans seemed to weigh on her music. 

It’s hard not to see echoes of Marvel’s decline here too: the desperate balancing act between innovation and expectation, between storytelling and commercial success. For now, Swift’s reign remains unshaken, as the album broke Adele’s record this week with the most first-week sales of all time, but the pattern in the shift in quality itself feels familiar. Swift has a long history of craving critical praise and accolades, but this most recent record seems to be a new era for her. She has the market cornered, a pop monopoly, and with her reign seemingly secured, the days of evolving and working towards new heights are fading fast. It seems Taylor’s vast success has caused her to treat her artistic output the way a company does a product. There’s no need to push herself as an artist when the commercial success has made her a corporation instead of an artist. The question is: if this trend of decreasing artistic quality continues, will the commercial success continue to follow? When creation becomes consumption and every release means another global phenomenon, even the most powerful universes risk imploding under their own perfection. And if Marvel is any indication, no empire, no matter how beloved, can expand forever without losing touch with the heart and care that built it.

honest YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5IK1ba6xEc 

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Kelsey Perriello is a junior in the college studying economics and government.