Take my advice, Taylor Swift: sometimes it’s best to stay quiet

Lately, I’ve been thinking about disappearing.

Earlier this year, shortly before I started writing this column, I said farewell to the listeners of a podcast I’d co-hosted with a friend. Every week (just about) for three years, we had uploaded at least one episode of at least an hour in which I talked about the movies and books and TV shows and meals and drinks and ideas I’d been consuming.

I fired off quick takes and broadcast my opinion for other people to (hopefully) enjoy.

One of the impulses that had taken over, when I decided to hang up my microphone and end my contribution to the show, was to be a bit more quiet. (The irony of taking on a regular newspaper column as I was preparing to zip my lips is not lost on me.) I wanted to make more than I consumed, I didn’t want to feel obliged to have an opinion about everything, and I wanted to give myself space to be a bit less visible and a little less of a consumable resource.

That was more than six months ago now, and I’ve been thinking about it again recently, as the volume of opinions about Taylor Swift’s new album reached levels I hadn’t seen before. In early October, Swift released The Life of a Showgirl, an album she recorded on her very brief windows of free time during the European leg of Eras, a live tour in which she performed for more than three hours a night, for 21 months. It was a feat of endurance that brought in more than $US2 billion. She was inescapable during that time. She released new versions of old albums and a brand new one too.

Less than a year after hanging up the spangly bodysuit, she had a whole new album to share. I’m assuming a lot about her when I say this, but it feels to me like there wasn’t a whole lot of life that Swift could have lived in that time. And the album reflects it.

In her book Mood Machine, about the history and shady dealings behind the streaming giant Spotify, journalist Liz Pelly writes that these platforms reward artists who provide “a constant drip of shorter, quick-hit releases to engagement-bait and trigger playlist algo-recs” instead of thoughtful, slower work. These are “harsh and anti-art” conditions, she writes, that essentially turn the artists who could be defining and reflecting our culture into employees for the platforms.

It feels to me like there wasn’t a whole lot of life that Swift could have lived in that time.

The same day Swift’s record was released, I sat down to interview a musician who is experiencing her first taste of fame. As we discussed her debut album, one I’ve connected to deeply this year, we talked about the need for artists to go away for a while so they have something to write about again. The trap many fall into is so familiar it’s often bundled into “second album syndrome” or “the sophomore slump”, wherein musicians who find success on their first go-around spend the next year/s of their life – if they’re lucky – touring and promoting and talking about that work.

When the lights go down and the label asks for another record, the fragments of life they have to draw from as inspiration amount to green rooms and hotel lobbies and soundchecks. It was so refreshing to hear of a truly green songwriter identifying that writing songs required more time living life before she sent out her next dispatch.

The world we live in doesn’t encourage breaks like this. Engagement and algorithms and fickle fan preferences rely on constant material, new posts and songs and nuggets of information. After decades in the game, it’s no wonder an artist as inventive and creative as Swift sometimes goes to the well, sees it’s looking a little dry and retreats into her own imagined grudges as inspiration.

It’s been four years since Michaela Coel issued a plea and encouragement to her fellow writers to retreat from the pressure to perform and produce, while accepting an Emmy for her series I May Destroy You.

“In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible — for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success — don’t be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while,” she said. “See what comes to you in the silence.”

It might be too early to know what comes from sitting in silence, and granted I’ve not exactly closed the shutters and turned out the lights of late, but the appeal has never seemed greater. The algorithms and content machines might be bottomless and insatiable voids, but maybe we can ignore the pressure to try to fill them on a constant and infinite release schedule.