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And Finally Artist News
Taylor Swift makes fans pay for white noise
By Aly Barchi | Published on Thursday 23 October 2014
In phase II of Taylor Swift’s deeply evil and slightly deranged experiment testing her fans’ ability to stay loyal to all-things T-Swizzy, in the face of a load of smoke and mirrors trickery and, let’s face it, total bullshit, the ‘Shake It Off’ star released a track earlier this week with a radical new sonic aesthetic.
Radical in that the song, priced at $1.29 per download, titled ‘Track 3’, and a special preview of Swift’s immeasurably-hyped new LP ‘1989’, was eight seconds of static. Or white noise. Or BASICALLY CRACKLY SILENCE. Which didn’t stop it from topping the iTunes chart in Canada within minutes of it going on sale (in Canada only).
So I guess Taylor’s sweet, faithful Canadian Swifties pass the ultimate test and win the big game; tolerating Swift’s nation-by-nation approach to promoting her new long player, cited after British fans wondered where the “available to all on iTunes NOW” ‘1989’ preview track ‘Out Of The Woods’ was last week (when it wasn’t available in the UK).
Slate writer Forrest Wickman, by the way, thinks the ‘Track 3’ trick was down to “some sort of glitch” in Canada’s iTunes, which is always possible I suppose.
Or it might be a publicity ploy, as if ‘1989’ hasn’t been shoved into the public consciousness quite enough already. And maybe if it’s played backwards you hear Taylor Swift whispering a satanic incantation… um, backwards. Like I said, it’s all a big, evil, scheme. And most importantly of all, can ‘1989’ please just be released already? I mean, really. Sick of it now.
