We read every Taylor Swift thinkpiece so you don't have to

For years the hidden messages scattered throughout the liner notes of Taylor Swift albums have been pored over and scrutinised by her more obsessive fans (or Swifties as they like to be known) in the relative safety of dedicated forums and Tumblr pages. At this very moment, however, it feels like the internet itself is just one giant Taylor Swift Tumblr page, with the secret messages hidden in the booklet of new album 1989 written up as explanatory features, her lyrical tropes cobbled together with some snazzy graphics and some fairly amazing, Tumblr-ready 80s re-imaginings of 1989’s album artwork cropping up on MTV. There’s even an article investigating Swift’s apparent lack of a belly button and how this relates to the new album. As with Lady Gaga in her purple patch from 2009 to 2011, everything Swift does, says or wears is fodder for another thinkpiece, while her cultural cachet is such that her songs have fully crossed over into the realm of pop it’s OK for proper (mainly male) music critics to write about.

In fact the sheer volume of reviews written by male journalists was flagged up by Jezebel, who found it odd that publications couldn’t find any female humans to write about a female pop star who often writes about what it’s like to be female. Swift herself touched on it in a roundabout way when she recently called noted cultural commentator Olly Murs “sexist” after he suggested she should probably stop writing songs about her ex-boyfriends. And yet Swift touted 1989 as the album to move her away from the lyrical exploration of failed relationships with famous men and into something a little more carefree, a move that Vulture’s Lindsay Zoladz suggests in her review takes away some of her shine and moves her into the world of more everyday pop (ironically, Bad Blood, the song on 1989 about the music world’s most polite “beef”, sounds like a Katy Perry album track).

Absorbing some of the hyperbole that exists on fan forums, and maybe mimicking the way you’d imagine Swift and her good friend Lorde might discuss an album, perhaps the most interesting review of 1989 comes from the Hairpin. Consisting of what reads like a Google chat between writers Jane Hu and Jen Vafidis, and demurely titled A Reasonable Conversation About Taylor Swift’s New Album, Which is the Best Album Ever, it’s an enjoyably relaxed dissection of every song on the album (on Out of the Woods; “It simultaneously enacts loss AND hope”).

Perhaps critics feel more comfortable writing about Swift in this conversational way now because Swift herself seems to have relaxed into being a pop star. Not only did she hold her own against the hitherto hidden comedic talents of chef Jamie Oliver for a recent charity skit, she also showed that rare but important quality in a pop star; some self-awareness. Having launched her own Tumblr page to help promote 1989, one of the first things she posted was a picture of her in a “no its Becky” [sic] T-shirt, a play on a somewhat convoluted internet meme I’ll leave Time magazine to explain. In fact, as pointed out by Vulture , Taylor’s now the real queen of social media, addressing her millions of fans as friends, allowing them to feel part of her everyday life in the same way she’s always done through her lyrics, and generally embodying all the traits any teenage girl would want in a sensible older friend with a penchant for cupcakes. She’s even made a gif-ready instructional video for MTV called Taylor Swift Defines the Internet.

Clearly it’s debatable how authentic all this is and there have been missteps, notably the lukewarm reaction to gentrification anthem and 1989 opener Welcome To New York, a song that’s helped land her the role of New York City’s global welcome ambassador but also inspired this tongue-in-cheek New York walking tour around Taylor’s favourite areas (ie a 5km radius of New York’s more bijou spots). Social media is often about projection and revealing snippets of information in order to keep other bits secret, but this new sort of loveable dork schtick that Swift seems to be constructing around this album shouldn’t detract from her talents as a songwriter and musician (as outlined neatly by 1989 collaborator Imogen Heap) or her importance to a record industry on its knees. Early forecasts for the first week sales of 1989 in America put it at around the 750,000 mark, a figure that quickly improved to 900,000 and now looks as if it could reach 1.2m, a feat made more remarkable considering no artist album has sold upwards of a million copies all year (the album is also available for just 99c until Tuesday, so that might have helped too). As outlined by this New York Times piece, 1989’s importance can’t be overstated, especially for a music industry denied an Adele album until next year.

Then there’s the humble mash-up. Despite the fact that it peaked as a cultural phenomenon just as Swift was approaching puberty, it’s still a pretty good barometer of a pop star’s cultural significance. So while David Rees places her delicately phrased lyrics over skittering backdrops lifted from the Aphex Twin’s oeuvre, perhaps the most telling musical amalgam fuses Out Of The Woods and XO. While Beyoncé dominated the end of last year with her surprise self-titled album, utilising a release strategy involving the musical equivalent of jumping out from behind a bush and smashing a cake into every fan’s face, as 2014 draws to a close pop – and the internet – belongs to Taylor Swift.