Taylor Swift’s 1989 reminds me of 2014, the year of its release, which is to say that it reminds me of Tinder. That’s when the dating app, founded two years earlier, settled into ultra-popularity: It was logging 1 billion “swipes” a day as singles smudged their thumbs over pictures of strangers, judging and being judged. Tinder turned the classic, nervous thrill of the dating experience into a game, one that millions of people could play at once. Then, with uncanny timing, Swift released an album all about fun and flaky romance, helping listeners bounce along to their next potential rejection.

The enduring success of Swift’s fifth album—now out as a rerecorded Taylor’s Version—makes it easy to forget how perfectly it fit a particular cultural moment. Marketed as her full turn from country to “official pop,” it incorporated the synthetic sounds of her titular birth year and the tried-and-true melodic tricks of the producers Max Martin and Shellback. With 12.3 million units sold and three Hot 100 No. 1 hits (“Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” and “Bad Blood”), it remains her most popular release, and its rerecorded version just gave Swift the biggest streaming day for any artist in Spotify history. But the album’s incredible reach has also undercut its reputation as art: Many critics think of 1989 as lovable but generic.

The truth is that the album is underrated in its specificity. Swift’s earlier albums approached romance from an adolescent vantage, telling of storybook heights and crushing lows; a lot of her songs were about realizing that Prince Charming had exploited her. Then came 1989, with a fresh sound and point of view, aligned with a broader generational adventure. She sang about flirtations of equals, about being a fine fish in a teeming sea—and, in doing so, helped push pop forward as a storytelling medium.

The two opening songs captured the giddiness of moving to a new city, walking into a hot party, or downloading Tinder around the same time as every other single. The idealism of “Welcome to New York,” grating as its monotonous melody was, set up the song’s complex, saucy foil, “Blank Space,” which cast a satirical eye over a pool of potential mates. That song’s tough backbeat and warm chorus—“So it’s gonna be forever / Or it’s gonna go down in flames”—conveyed determination to explore in spite of inevitable disappointment and, for Swift in particular, disapproval. According to the liner notes of the 1989 rerelease, Swift wanted to defy people who judged her for “dating like a normal young woman.”

Of course, most normal young women don’t kiss Kennedys and boy-banders. But Swift always knew how to connect her own weird life to the zeitgeist. Dating is intrinsically a maddening exercise—but in 2014, it really was evolving, mainstreaming all sorts of sociological lingo. Everyone was ghosting (breaking up by going quiet) and trying to DTR (define the relationship). Boundaries were becoming porous; the desire for commitment competed with the limitless first dates at one’s fingertips. Swift’s track “New Romantics” was like a manifesto for embracing the chaos: “We need love, but all we want is danger / We team up, then switch sides like a record changer.”

[Read: Taylor Swift and the sad dads]

Switching, swiping, surfing uncertainty—these are complex maneuvers for hooky dance-pop to capture, but Swift had the songwriting chops to pull it off. The heart of 1989 lay in adrenaline-shot anthems such as “All You Had to Do Was Stay” and “How You Get the Girl,” both of which addressed an indecisive ex with a sigh of Your loss. On “I Wish You Would,” Swift herself was the side-switcher, singing in an uneven cadence over fidgety guitars. The album’s biggest emotional wallop came on “Out of the Woods,” whose spiraling chorus rendered he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not nervousness as being as powerful and serious as heartbreak itself.

Vulnerable as they were, these songs also radiated invincibility, or what Swift’s new liner notes describe as the “right kind of naïveté.” This chipper feeling made the album pop as much as the synth beats and explosive choruses did. The country, folk, and rock traditions that Swift previously drew upon aspired to a sense of timelessness, but she was now channeling influences that were synonymous with the term disposable. A better term might have been resilient: Touchstones such as Debbie Gibson’s “Only in My Dreams” and Madonna’s “Borderline” skip along the surface of heartbreak, telling the listener that love—including the love of life itself—is stronger than loss.

Pop titans of the early 2010s such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga were also selling shots of motivation, though stridently and abstractly. In joining them, Swift didn’t abandon detail, narrative, or irony. Listen to how, even on the slick single “Style,” she was able to nestle in a scene of dialogue that was heavy with implied backstory (“He says, ‘What you heard is true, but I / Can’t stop thinking ’bout you and I’ / I said, ‘I’ve been there too a few times’”), whether drawn from real life or wholly fictional. The album fused the singer-songwriter archetype with that of the domineering diva, popularizing a model that today’s young stars take for granted.

1989 (Taylor’s Version) slightly breaks the youthful spell. The original album’s production had the bright artificiality of Candy Crush, but Swift and her current studio partner Christopher Rowe opt for a roomier, live-band sound in the rerecording. The snares on “Blank Space” sound like actual instruments, not beats arranged on a screen, which sort of undermines the song’s appeal as a cheeky homage to contemporary hip-hop. On the original “Shake It Off,” Swift came off like some funny cartoon version of herself, but on the new version, the illusion is pierced: Swift is just some mortal singing knowingly dippy lyrics from an echoing stage.

Then again, 1989 always conveyed a fantasy that had to end. Five bonus tracks, pulled “from the vault,” indicate the emotions Swift left off of the original document: sadness, burnout, a desperate hunger for stability. All are solid songs on their own, but they’re also samey, mid-tempo, and defeated in a way that most of 1989 wasn’t. On “Say Don’t Go,” getting ghosted hurts, badly: “Your silence has me screamin’, screamin’.” The provocative title of “‘Slut!’” belies a quiet, moving subversion of the original 1989’s restlessness: The lyrics describe just another fling, but the sound conveys an ache for comfy, lasting devotion.

Was Swift thinking about Tinder when writing this music, or am I bringing my own baggage to the relisten? Clues suggest that she was borrowing her normie friends’ phones: On the bonus track “Is It Over Now?” she glimpses an ex’s “profile” on a stranger’s face (a potential double entendre?) and exasperatedly references “300 awkward blind dates” (has Taylor Swift ever been on a blind date?). In any case, 1989 charmingly nailed a shared experience of dating as a marketplace. Even the malaise that lurks in the new version of the album is relatable: Being desired is fun, but eventually, one ceases to want to be a commodity.

How does Taylor's Version of the hit album compare to the original, and why has she re-recorded it?

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One week ago, Taylor Swift’s concert film, The Eras Tour, opened in theaters across the country. Within days, it had become the most successful concert film of all time, grossing more than $90 million in North America on its first weekend. I spoke with my colleague David Sims, who covers culture for The Atlantic, about what the success of the movie says about the future of movie theaters, and what made right now such a good time for Swift to release it.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Biden’s inflection point Another domino falls in Georgia. You can learn to be photogenic.

Hard to Repeat

Lora Kelley: There has been a lot of dire news about the future of movie theaters in recent years. Are blockbuster theatrical releases for movies such as Barbie and The Eras Tour a sign that theaters are on the up again?

David Sims: These hit movies are a sign of rebound. There has been a general sense of positivity regarding ticket sales lately, especially after sales reached historic lows early in the pandemic. Barbie and Taylor Swift, in particular, appeal to young people, whom Hollywood is obsessed with getting into the theater.

Audiences are responding to stuff that is a little different from the cinematic universes and franchises that Hollywood has been very reliant on for the past 10 years. Interest is declining in superhero movies and long-running franchises. But rather than that meaning the end of big ticket sales in Hollywood, other movies are filling the gap.

Lora: What can a movie theater offer that streaming cannot?

David: The Eras Tour could easily have been released as a TV series on a streaming service. But Taylor Swift, quite smartly, seemed to realize that the group experience is very crucial to her fandom—We’re all in it together; we all get all the references; we understand the contours of the tour and the eras—and that this would be best experienced in a movie theater. The magic of the theater experience is always going to be that you’re in a dark room with lots of other people who are enjoying it, and you all enjoy it together.

Taylor Swift partnered with the theater chain AMC, which is basically functioning as a distributor. If you distribute through a studio, it takes a large cut of your money. Instead, Swift went to AMC and said, Why don’t you just put this in theaters directly, and I’ll get about 57 percent of ticket sales, which is a good deal. The amount of pure profit you can make with a successful movie remains staggering. Releasing something on streaming or home video, you can make money. But there’s a reason movie-theater releases have been the primary model for 100 years.

Lora: Taylor Swift is obviously extremely famous, and she’s proved skilled at mobilizing her own following. Is her approach to this movie replicable, or is this a one-off phenomenon?

David: Taylor Swift is possibly peerless in terms of universal recognition and cross-generational appeal. In three days, Eras became the most successful concert film ever made. But I don’t think this project is a one-off. There are other celebrities who have great means who can try things like this. The concert film of Beyoncé’s tour, Renaissance, is coming out in theaters on December 1. Her tour is over, so it’s more of a capper. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift has a tour that is still happening—it’s hard to go see it, and it’s expensive, but it’s still going on.

Concert movies do not usually do very well at the box office. But for musicians, there’s basically no downside to it. You are paying very little to film your concert. You put it in theaters, and then you get the money. And people who couldn’t see your concert live get to access it, which is nice.

Also, Hollywood has been on strike for almost six months. A lot of movies have been cleared out, because the striking actors can’t promote them. Taylor Swift’s team came in and basically said, If we put out a movie right now, we will be the biggest story of the month in cinema. The timing part of this may be hard to repeat.

Related:

Taylor Swift did what Hollywood studios could not. The 22 most exciting films to watch this season

Today’s News

Jim Jordan lost his third vote for speaker of the House and is no longer the party’s nominee. President Joe Biden is requesting $106 billion in emergency funding from Congress primarily to aid Israel and Ukraine, as well as for U.S. border security. Kenneth Chesebro became the second former Trump lawyer to plead guilty in the Georgia-election case.

Dispatches

The Books Briefing: Louise Glück wrote with authority, Emma Sarappo explains. The poet loved using myth, history, and legend in her verse Work in Progress: Turns out you can tame inflation without triggering a recession, Rogé Karma writes. Will the Federal Reserve accept the good news?

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Evening Read

Guy Le Querrec / Magnum

AI Is About to Photoshop Your Memories

By Charlie Warzel

Google’s latest Pixel phones, the ad wants you to know, come standard with a suite of new generative-AI photo-editing tools. With a few taps, you can move people around in the frame like the mom does with her son, or use the “Magic Eraser” to get rid of a pesky photobomber. “Best Take,” a feature that snaps a bunch of images at once and isolates each person’s face, allows you to merge photos so that everyone appears to be perfectly looking at the camera at the same time. Combined, these features mostly reflect the photographer’s intent at the time of capture. But is the end result … real?

Of course, there’s nothing particularly scandalous about editing a family photo. Anyone sufficiently trained in Photoshop has been able to do something similar for decades; likewise, smartphones and photo apps have long offered the ability to touch up a picture until it’s transformed, even “yassified.” Yet tools like Magic Editor will likely soon become standard across devices, making it dramatically easier to perfect our photos—and thus to gently rewrite small details from our lives.

Read the full article.

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Culture Break

Guy Le Querrec / Magnum

Listen. The late, great American composer Carla Bley’s 1977 record, Dinner Music.

Watch. Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s best-selling Killers of the Flower Moon (in theaters) explores the rot beneath the myth of American exceptionalism.

Play our daily crossword.

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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Is RFK Jr., the conspiracist scion of American political royalty, merely a nuisance, or will he present a genuine threat in 2024?

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

China changed its mind about World War II. What is Israel trying to accomplish? Jim Jordan could have a long fight ahead.

A Wild Card

The Kennedy family is synonymous with the Democratic Party. And, for a time, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. framed his long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination as that of a “Kennedy Democrat” who believes in strong unions and the middle class. But last week, he broke with the party.

RFK Jr., who rose to prominence as a respected environmental lawyer before veering into conspiracism and anti-vaccine activism around 2005, said last Monday that he is now running for president as a third-party candidate. “We declare independence from the cynical elites who betray our home and who amplify our divisions,” he said, announcing his decision in Philadelphia. “And finally, we declare independence from the two political parties.” Putting aside the irony of a Kennedy criticizing elites, RFK Jr.’s announcement could add an element of uncertainty into the near-inevitable rematch between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024. My colleague John Hendrickson, who profiled Kennedy in June and has covered his campaign, told me that, because of various state-level qualifying rules, Kennedy does not appear to have a viable path to collecting the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency as an independent candidate. But even if the possibility of Kennedy actually becoming president is moot, he “could siphon voters away from Biden and Trump, and make it harder for either of them to hit 270,” John said. In a presidential race that may be close, especially in key swing states, a wild-card factor could cause headaches for both sides.

An independent run like RFK Jr.’s could also damage the American public’s already fragile trust in the integrity of the electoral system. As Jesse Wegman wrote in The New York Times this week, if a single candidate is unable to garner 270 electoral votes, a little-known provision in the Twelfth Amendment would kick in, enabling the House to elect the president; each state would cast one vote, and their tally would decide the presidency. “This is about as far from the principle of majority rule as you can get,” Wegman writes, noting that Thomas Jefferson called the provision “the most dangerous blot in our Constitution.”

The likely rematch between Trump and Biden is unwelcome news for many voters: “Americans are suffering a bit of 2020 PTSD, and the prospect of replaying that whole year over again is filling people with dread,” John told me. Poll results released by the Monmouth University Polling Institute earlier this month found that just 19 percent of voters are very enthusiastic about Trump running as the party nominee, and 14 percent are very enthusiastic about Biden. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s favorability ratings have at times surpassed those of both Trump and Biden. But Jon Krosnick, a political-science professor at Stanford University, told me that Kennedy will likely take such a small number of votes from Trump and Biden that his presence will prove inconsequential. “The only way he’s going to be influential in the outcome of the election is if he participates in debates,” which would give him a major platform for his ideas, Krosnick told me. Those experts who do believe that Kennedy could hurt the major-party candidates are divided on whether his presence in the race might inspire anti-vax or libertarian voters to divert their votes from Trump, or cause Biden-weary Democrats to jump ship, hurting the incumbent.

Third-party candidates have always been on the sidelines of American politics. Krosnick explained that sometimes, votes for them make no difference in electoral outcomes, because they tend to attract voters who just wouldn’t have voted otherwise. But these candidates have exerted power at key moments. No candidate from outside the two dominant parties has ever won a presidential election, but third-party candidates have sometimes served as “spoilers,” pulling votes from candidates in close matchups. In 2000, Ralph Nader, who received some 97,000 votes, siphoned votes in the close race—the difference in Florida was about 500 votes—between George Bush and Al Gore. In 2016, Jill Stein garnered votes that could have helped Hillary Clinton in her race against Trump.

“Some third-party independent candidate could arrive at that moment and grab the spotlight” in 2024, but “Robert Kennedy doesn’t strike me as that type of candidate,” Krosnick said. Kennedy isn’t the only third-party contender entering the fray: A third-party centrist group called No Labels has reportedly raised $60 million and qualified for 11 states’ ballots. Some Democrats are threatened by this: No Labels is “going to help the other guy,” Biden told ProPublica. And in July, my colleague Russell Berman wrote that, according to surveys and polling, a moderate independent candidate could capture a decisive number of votes in a close race. Cornel West, the intellectual and activist, is also running; he switched from the Green Party to an independent run earlier this month.

“Extreme polarization,” Krosnick told me, “does make this a special moment in history.” Some voters, desperate for an alternative to Trump or Biden, may vote for whomever they genuinely hope to see in the White House—even if that person has no chance of winning. People who vote for Kennedy, Krosnick said, are voters who think, “I don’t care whether he wins or not. I will feel best about myself if I vote for him.”

Related:

The first MAGA Democrat Joe Lieberman weighs the Trump risk.

Today’s News

Jim Jordan did not secure enough Republican votes to become speaker of the House in a first vote. At least 500 people were killed by an airstrike at a hospital in Gaza City, according to Palestinian authorities; Israel says the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket from the group Islamic Jihad. President Biden will visit Israel tomorrow. Ukraine struck Russian helicopters in its eastern region using long-range missiles newly supplied by the United States.

Evening Read

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Sources: Elise Hardy; Shalom Ormsby; Tim Platt; dobok / Getty

An Awkward Evolutionary Theory for One of Pregnancy’s Biggest Complications

By Katherine J. Wu

In the early 1990s, while studying preeclampsia in Guadeloupe, Pierre-Yves Robillard hit upon a realization that seemed to shake the foundations of his field. Preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that causes some 500,000 fetal deaths and 70,000 maternal deaths around the world each year, had for decades been regarded as a condition most common among new mothers, whose bodies were mounting an inappropriate attack on a first baby. But Robillard, now a neonatologist and epidemiologist at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de La Réunion, on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, kept seeing the condition crop up during second, third, or fourth pregnancies—a pattern that a few other studies had documented, but had yet to fully explain. Then, Robillard noticed something else. “These women had changed the father,” he told me. The catalyst in these cases of preeclampsia, he eventually surmised, wasn’t the newness of pregnancy. It was the newness of paternal genetic material that, maybe, the mother hadn’t had enough exposure to before.

Robillard’s idea was unconventional not only because it challenged the dogma of the time, but because it implied certain evolutionary consequences … If preeclampsia is a kind of immune overreaction, then perhaps unprotected sex is the world’s most unconventional allergy shot.

Read the full article.

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Culture Break

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Read. When you’re frustrated with the status quo, read these books.

Watch. Taylor Swift’s record-breaking concert film (in theaters) did what Hollywood studios could not.

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Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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In the face of dual strikes over the summer from writers and actors unions, many Hollywood studios retreated rather than negotiating for a quick resolution, delaying some of their biggest fall blockbusters. Movies such as Kraven the Hunter, Dune: Part Two, a Ghostbusters sequel, and others were booted from 2023. That left gaping holes in the calendar, prompting serious fears of another setback for theaters after they’d just begun to bounce back from the pandemic. Then came Taylor Swift.

[Read: What made Taylor Swift’s concert unbelievable]

On August 31, the singer, who is in the midst of a global tour, announced that a concert film would be released in theaters October 13—a canny move that essentially saved exhibitors’ necks for the rest of the year. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is a 168-minute rendering of an experience that millions missed out on, filmed by Sam Wrench over the course of three performances at SoFi Stadium, in Los Angeles. Swift independently financed the movie (at a cost of about $10 million to $20 million) and is presenting it as a one-of-a-kind event: You can only see it Thursdays through Sundays, your ticket costs $19.89 (a reference to Swift’s birthday and the album named for it), and you can get a free poster.  

Presales were immediate and enormous, with AMC Theaters’ ticket app crashing right as sales began and AMC’s stock briefly spiking after the announcement. The hype built to levels approaching that of Barbie’s release last summer, and some box-office tracking briefly predicted a record-smashing $145 million opening. Although lower, the final number was still remarkably robust. The Eras Tour grossed about $97 million last weekend, according to early estimates, which immediately makes it the most successful concert film of all time. The next highest, 2011’s Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, made only $73 million total; The Eras Tour could end up tripling that figure.

The emphasis on presales is probably why it came in slightly below expectations. Much of Swift’s army of fans made sure to book well in advance, meaning there was less walk-up traffic than a typical release might get. But the film won an A+ CinemaScore, which indicates positive word of mouth, and its competition over the next few weeks will be relatively thin: mostly awards-focused films aimed at older audiences (including Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, and David Fincher’s The Killer). Every other blockbuster had been moved out of the way, either because of studio intransigence during the strikes or simply to dodge the Swift tidal wave (The Exorcist: Believer jumped up one week to avoid it).

For Swift, the release is a home run, partly because she negotiated a favorable split with AMC, getting 57 percent of ticket sales. By not working with a major studio, she doesn’t have to sacrifice any gross to them, and she doesn’t have to rely on their marketing arm (nor does she need to, given that she commands enough of a following herself). But the Eras film is an even bigger win for the theater chains, which keep 100 percent of concessions sales (which is where profit really lies for them) and, more important, can shore up their business in what was looking like a dire moment.

[Read: The 22 most exciting films to watch this season]

The releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer in the summer of 2023 were a moment of total joy for companies such as AMC and Regal, luring back droves of ticket-buyers and reminding them of the communal thrill of going to the movies rather than waiting to watch them at home. The Eras Tour is another fine example of that experience, with fans encouraged to sing, dance, and swap friendship bracelets during the showings—in fact, Swift guaranteed a 13-week exclusive theatrical window as part of negotiations.

For traditional studios, The Eras Tour might be the most profound example of the money that’s been left on the table because of dragged-out negotiations with the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. The WGA strike finally ended on September 27, on terms regarded as massively favorable for the union, but the long duration of that labor action was almost entirely due to studios refusing to even negotiate: Once honchos such as Bob Iger and David Zaslav got in a room with the union, talks wrapped in a manner of days. The same song and dance is now playing out with SAG, further holding up the release calendar and production on some of next year’s blockbusters. In the meantime, theaters and celebrities are finding ways to sell tickets and make money without the help of a Disney or a Warner Bros. The story of Hollywood ticket sales in 2023 has largely been one of a successful bounce-back, but that’s despite studio inaction, not because of it.

The first Saturday Night Live episode since the end of the months-long writers’ strike started with a somber message from the series alum Pete Davidson. He began his cold open by referencing “the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza,” then quickly addressed the elephant in Studio 8H: “I know what you’re thinking—who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?”

But however preposterous that premise might sound, Davidson’s cold open and his later monologue made the case for what entertainers—and comedians, especially—can offer audiences in moments of crisis. The 29-year-old comic reminded viewers that his own life had been shaped by a violent attack: When he was 7, Davidson lost his father, a firefighter who died on 9/11. “I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering—Israeli children and Palestinian children—and it took me back to a really horrible, horrible place,” he said.

He recalled his mother trying anything she could to lift his spirits after his father died, including buying him what she thought was a Disney movie but was actually an Eddie Murphy stand-up special. And though the subject matter wasn’t appropriate for a child his age, the 8-year-old Davidson got to keep the tape because Murphy’s comedy elicited laughter in him for the first time in a long while. “I don’t understand it—I really don’t, and I never will—but sometimes comedy is really the only way forward through tragedy,” he said, before offering the SNL audience an earnest reflection on the show’s relevance during such times. “Tonight I’m going to do what I’ve always done in the face of tragedy, and that’s try to be funny. Remember, I said ‘try.’”

Though Davidson left the series last year after its 47th season, he ended up being the perfect host for its much-anticipated Season 49 premiere because of how deftly he navigated the tonally disparate material that the episode called for. With alternately subdued and zany delivery, he shepherded SNL through difficult news, silly hijinks, and a surprise appearance from Taylor Swift. In a later monologue, Davidson pivoted from the heaviness of his cold open to focus on a more lighthearted (and oft-repeated) feature of his early life: “A lot of people ask me—and by that, I mean two—is this what I wanted to do when I grew up, and no,” he said. “I’m from Staten Island; my dream was to be a construction worker. It was! You know, hopefully work for a construction company for like eight years, and then, if I’m lucky, fall off a ladder, sue the city for $6 mill, settle for three.”

In the sketch following his monologue, Davidson joined several cast members on a mock filming of Fox NFL Sunday. The crew of sports commentators attempted to discuss a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Jets without focusing on the biggest NFL news of the era: It sure does seem like Taylor Swift is dating the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. The sketch played on the strangeness of the pop-cultural moment, skewering the NFL fans who’ve responded with bizarre vitriol to the coupling and gently teasing the Swifties who’ve analyzed each “Traylor” move with all the intensity of, well, sports commentators.

While the other Fox NFL Sunday anchors at least tried to keep their fandom in check, Davidson’s Kenny Ditullio joined the broadcast from MetLife Stadium, where he stood wearing a pink sequined cowboy hat, pink sweater wrapped around his waist, and pink polo shirt popping out from underneath a crew neck. Devastated because Swift hadn’t made an appearance at the game, he told the others, “There was a rumor online she was coming to cheer on Travis Kelce’s brother, Jason, who plays for the Eagles, duh. But so far no sign of blondie—I’m starting to wonder why I’m even here!”

[Read: Where would SNL be without Kenan Thompson?]

Davidson’s willingness to lean into the character’s silliness, analyzing Swift’s facial expressions and gestures instead of the actual game he was meant to cover, was particularly amusing given that the sketch ended with a cameo of Kelce himself: After Kenan Thompson’s Curt Menefee grew frustrated with his peers’ refusal to discuss anything but Swift, he insisted that the show would bring on “someone who actually wants to talk football”—and the camera cut to Kelce, who offered a quick “Yes, please!” in reply. In fact, both Kelce and Swift appeared momentarily in the episode. Swift introduced the show’s musical guest (and her collaborator), the Bronx rapper Ice Spice, who brought a delightfully youthful energy to the stage alongside the Nigerian singer Rema as the pair of 23-year-olds performed their new song, “Pretty Girl.”

But despite Swift and Kelce’s collective star power, neither brought as much energy to the premiere as Davidson. His sketches were the highlights of the night, which saw the series really finding its footing again after an extended hiatus. “I’m Just Pete,” a play on the stellar Barbie dance interlude, began with him giddily walking the SNL halls with a cake that read Excited For a Fun Week! But before he could present the cake to his colleagues, Davidson overheard them mocking his post-SNL career. “No one cares about the work I do / I made a show with Joe Pesci too / And no one streams but my mom,” he sang, despondently sitting on a re-creation of the Barbie set.

The entire sketch saw Davidson making fun of … Davidson, in vignettes that got gradually more outrageous: “I’m just Pete / Anywhere else I’d be a three,” he sang indignantly, “But I guess I’m hot for dudes in comedy, because it’s an ugly industry.” The entire time, Davidson was fully committed to the bit. He was well aware of his reputation as an unlikely lothario, and “I’m Just Pete” deployed his sordid personal life to hilarious effect because Davidson isn’t afraid to laugh at himself. Considering the rest of the subjects that the show tackles, it’s hard not to want more of that.

As Taylor Swift prepares to release a re-recorded version of 1989, here's a look behind the songs.

Taylor Swift's tour is not only rocking stadiums but also fuelling a hospitality surge. With the concerts predicted to generate $5 billion in consumer spending in the US alone, what kind of windfall can Europe expect?

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is predicted to become the highest-grossing movie of 2023.

Before she decided to sue Lizzo for sexual harassment, assault, and a number of other offenses earlier this year, the backup dancer Arianna Davis wondered if she was blowing her concerns with her work environment out of proportion. Touring with the widely beloved rapper and singer, she had witnessed some bizarre things: The lawsuit she filed with two other dancers includes the words “bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas.” (More on that in a bit; Lizzo has denied all the allegations.) But something about her experience seemed familiar, like it fit a script. Davis told CNN, “I just chalked it up to, you know, Oh, Lizzo might be a diva.”

Davis was voicing a common idea: Some kinds of artists can’t help but make the people around them feel a bit like trash. The term diva has long been tinged with misogyny and awe, and rather than grow obsolete with the progress of pop-culture feminism over the years, it has only become more relevant. Today I have a book out called On Divas, focused on soloists—mostly women—who voice their desires in ways that cause spectacle and controversy. I didn’t set out to write so frequently about these sorts of performers. But it kept happening, probably because divas are the most important entertainers of our time—though, as Lizzos’s scandal shows, the demands of divadom are in flux.

This year, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have embarked on tours so popular that they may have had an inflationary economic impact, while an unprecedented number of female rappers have settled into success. These women are part of a tradition of ambition and excellence—Beyoncé once sang that a “diva is a female version of a hustler”—but they also represent a new type. Historically, many divas have carried an air of tragic drama as they’ve struggled against male abuse, captivity, or objectification; think Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears. The patriarchy has hardly disappeared, but today’s divas have successfully foregrounded triumphant narratives of independence and leadership. Just as the #MeToo movement called a whole pantheon of male bosses into question—exposing the abuses of rock stars and CEOs alike—pop’s women were achieving rare levels of clout as artists, businesswomen, and political figures. With new achievements came new expectations.

[Read: The pop music you listen to really does matter]

The notion of “diva behavior”—so often code that dismisses feminine aggression as irrational—has subtly shifted. Female pop stars are still expected to cause trouble, flouting norms and making demands, but preferably in a purposeful, warriorlike way, such as when Swift sicced her fanbase on the music mogul Scooter Braun. Drawing from hip-hop and queer lingo, fans simultaneously anoint their faves as bad bitch and mother (even if the diva doesn’t have kids). The message: We want women who go their own way, but bring everyone along; we want tough, confrontational nurturers.

Lizzo, who built a niche following in the 2010s before hitting the mainstream in 2019, seemed to perfect that archetype. Her hits helped further popularize bad bitch, a term that flips an insult into a point of pride; in a world that invents nasty labels for women who speak their minds, to be bad is good. In Lizzo’s case, she treated the attributes that people might try to diss her for—weight, gender, skin color, loudness, sexual openness, an interest in the flute—as badges of honor. But Lizzo’s defiance was not just her own; she offered it as an inspiring example, layered with significance. Singing of body acceptance and selling an inclusive line of shapewear, she navigated the paradox of modern divadom: being worshipped as singular, but remaking the world so that people could dream of following in her trail. That was, in fact, the supposed point of the 2022 TV show Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, a reality competition in which the singer auditioned women as backup dancers. “Girls that look like me don’t get representation,” she said in a trailer. “Time to pull up my sleeves and find them myself.”

Representation is, on one level, a symbolic idea, reflecting the kinds of heroes a culture chooses to foster. But, on another level, the term is not abstract at all: It calls for the actual employment of real people. Two of the dancers now suing her were on that show. If their allegations turn out to be true, they’ll be a reminder that divas can be just another kind of boss, more invested in exercising power over people than freeing them.

So back to the bananas, mentioned in a lawsuit filed on August 1 by three of Lizzo’s former dancers: Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez. They allege that, while on tour in Amsterdam, Lizzo invited her dancers to a club. She urged her “cast members to take turns touching the nude performers, catching dildos launched from the performers’ vaginas, and eating bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas,” and particularly pressured one of the claimants, Davis, to do so against her will.

For some people—including, perhaps, many listeners of Lizzo’s music—partying with a pop star in the Red Light district may sound like a fun story. But this is one of a few allegations that portray the tour environment as having no boundaries and being ruled by whim. Lizzo’s dance captain, Shirlene Quigley, who’s also being sued, allegedly badgered her employees with a baffling combination of sexual comments and Christian proselytizing (Quigley called the accusations “false”). Allegedly, Lizzo and the choreographer, Tanisha Scott, gave feedback that Davis says she took to be critical of her weight and mental health. And one of the lawsuit’s claims is of physical intimidation: When Rodriguez said she was going to quit over a decision the star had made, Lizzo allegedly approached her, cracked her knuckles, balled her fists, and said “You’re lucky. You’re so fucking lucky!” and “Bye, bitch!” The dancer, according to the complaint, felt the star would’ve attacked her if others hadn’t intervened.

Lizzo’s response to the suit is tellingly defiant. In addition to denying the accusations in court, on Instagram, she dismissed the “false allegations” while touting her own “hard work and high standards,” saying, “Sometimes I have to make hard decisions but it’s never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable.” She added, “I am very open with my sexuality and expressing myself but I cannot accept or allow people to use that openness to make me out to be something I am not.” The statement was as much a denial as an assertion. As in all things, Lizzo would not apologize for being herself, even if it upsets some people.

If Lizzo did cultivate a sexually charged cult of personality on tour, she wouldn’t be the first singer to do so. Look to Madonna: Truth or Dare, Madonna’s legendary 1991 documentary that, like a lot of Madonna’s works, solidified and transmitted an idea of pop success that still influences today’s stars. The movie largely focuses on the relationship between the queen of pop and the dancers on tour with her. And that relationship was intimate—and, viewed today, a bit questionable.

[Read: What Madonna knows]

Truth or Dare is most famous for a scene in which Madonna deep-throats a glass bottle while hanging out with her crew. In that same scene, she asks a dancer for graphic details about his sex life and makes him flash her. Elsewhere in the documentary, she commands her employees to get into bed with her, and kisses and cuddles them. All in all, working for Madonna seems to resemble attending a slumber party hosted by a charming narcissist who conflates sexual intimacy with control—which is, as it turns out, exactly the persona projected in her songs.

Indeed, the movie presents her coy domination of her dancers as intrinsic to what makes her successful. Being rude, not nice, is Madonna’s brand: At one point, she playfully asks an assistant, “You think you can work for a bitch?” But she is also shown as a font of tough, society-improving love. Likely picking up on the ballroom slang of the many queer people of color she employed, Madonna refers to herself as a mother to her dancers. Her parental duties extended to her music and performances, where she spoke out for sexual freedom and gay rights.

More than three decades later, few could argue that work hasn’t helped break all sorts of social barriers. But working for a liberator clearly wasn’t always fun. A number of dancers sued Madonna after Truth or Dare’s release, alleging invasion of privacy and emotional distress (the suit was settled out of court). In the movie, she throws around homophobic slurs, and in one scene, the sole straight dancer in her contingent seems hurt by her condescending attitude. “Every goddamn day, you throw this little fag stuff on me,” he says. Madonna remarks, “Oh God, I love having children to watch over.”

Bad-boss behavior never got Madonna canceled; rather, it became part of her enduring legend. Tales of high-handed and harsh conduct are endemic to celebrity culture, especially in the cases of canonical divas such Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand. Many a star has weathered bullying allegations from employees without much notice outside Page Six. (Surely some misbehaving men are spared even that.) But for a few reasons, the recent allegations against Lizzo now seem like an existential threat to her, throwing her entire value proposition into jeopardy.

Other accusers have come forward since the dancers’ lawsuit. The documentarian Sophia Nahli Allison publicly stated that she’d found the singer to be “arrogant, self-centered, and unkind.” In September, a former employee in Lizzo’s wardrobe department also filed a suit alleging an “unsafe, sexually charged workplace culture.” (Lizzo’s representative labeled those claims an “absurd publicity stunt.”) Though some industry figures have signaled ongoing loyalty toward Lizzo—she just won a humanitarian award—many fans are heartbroken. The feminist website Pajiba offered a “heavy, disappointed sigh” when breaking news of the dancers’ allegations to its readers.

The disappointment is rooted in two issues. One is the appearance of hypocrisy: the notion that a public champion of inclusivity would foster a climate of body-shaming and racism (on the latter point, the dancers’ lawsuit alleges that Lizzo’s managers took extra scrutiny toward Black employees). The body-shaming allegation indeed does have an explosive ring to it—but as Tirhakah Love at Vulture points out, the details are a bit vague. The lawsuit only describes Lizzo and her choreographer asking Davis why she had become “less bubbly and vivacious,” which the dancer interpreted as referring to her weight gain. Determining the intent of such comments from afar is impossible.

What’s more important, as Love writes, is that Lizzo now seems like a “mean girl.” We are, it has been said, amid a #MeanToo reckoning, in which a number of prominent employers have been put on blast for bullying the people who work for them. The consequences have not been even: Ellen DeGeneres’s reputation cratered following workplace-related allegations in 2020, but public reaction has been muted to a recent Rolling Stone report about Jimmy Fallon’s on-set outbursts (both hosts apologized to their crew without commenting directly on particular allegations). But a few post-#MeToo cultural tides really are converging of late: a reinvigorated movement for workers’ rights, a broader awareness of how power hierarchies can go wrong.

Lizzo, and many of the divas of our moment, have in some ways surfed those tides. Their success is expected to replace old and toxic paradigms of stardom—the pop princess controlled by svengalis, or the self-indulgent rock god and his groupies—with fierce, competent egalitarianism. This isn’t really a fair expectation, but it’s also kind of a beautiful one. If what’s alleged against her is true, Lizzo would be wise to reevaluate her management style. But either way, she and her peers face a deeper challenge: making the fantasy they represent real.