Everything is oldies

Indignity Vol. 5, No. 178

Tom Scocca, JOE MACLEOD

06 Oct 2025 — 6 min read

Photo illustration. Taylor Swift photo: Angela George via Wikipedia

CULTURAL HISTORY DEP'T.

When Can You Be Disappointed by an Album?

TAYLOR SWIFT RELEASED a new album, and people seem to be less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic about it. Fine! Taylor Swift has been a young person's artist, performing as a young person, for a very long time now. Her first album, Taylor Swift, was released in 2006—seven years before someone who is now 12 years old was born.

Seven years before I was born, the Rolling Stones released the United Kingdom and United States versions of their debut album, The Rolling Stones or England's Newest Hit Makers. When I was 12, in 1983, the Stones put out Undercover. The Baltimore Sun called it "the most exciting Stones album in more than a decade" and wrote that "the Rolling Stones have stopped resting on their laurels and turned in a stunning reminder of what made them important in the first place."

That is to say, when the Rolling Stones had been around as long as Taylor Swift has, they were generally understood to be years past their expiration date. The Cincinnati Enquirer dissented from the Sun only as to whether the new album was any sort of recovery, calling it "the slickest and the saddest album of the group's long and increasingly undistinguished career," reviewing it jointly with Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace ("pure drivel"). The Beatles' first album had come out 20 years before.

When Bob Dylan had been making records for as many years as Taylor Swift has, he was wrapping up his Christian-music phase with Shot of Love ("the first reasonable album since his conversion" — the Guardian). When Elvis Presley had been making records for as many years as Taylor Swift has, he was in a barbiturate coma.

The expectation that a popular musician should have staying power is something relatively new. Music hits because someone has brought a particular energy and sensibility to a particular moment in time. Back in college, a friend and I used to categorize work from bands we liked as "Starting to Suck"—a merciless category, a category for snotty 20-year-olds, naming the moment that the thrilling upward force of musical and cultural inspiration was no longer enough to overcome gravity. The albums were still good, you still played and enjoyed the music, but inside that enjoyment was the knowledge that you were working a little harder to enjoy it. Maybe you could feel the artists straining too: Trompe le Monde? Starting to Suck. Honey's Dead? Starting to Suck.

R.E.M., I maintained, had Started to Suck with Green. Little did we know! But even the next phase of R.E.M.'s success didn't carry them to longevity like Taylor Swift's. Nineteen years into R.E.M.'s recording career, Bill Berry was gone and their most recent record was Reveal. Couldn't name a song off that one at gunpoint.

POST THIS ON BLUESKY AND TELL EVERYONE YOUR FAVE INDIGNITY ALBUM

WEATHER REVIEWS

A patch of clear blue sky, very very slightly washed out.

New York City, October 5, 2025

★★★ The October air had the damp smell and feel of the seaside in July. The blue of the sky was just a bit muted and hazy; a harsh summer glare bounced off the midday streets; summer dresses were back and even a pair of sandals. By afternoon the air had dried and the sun had lowered enough to chase off the feeling of being in the wrong season, if not to establish the feeling of being in the proper one. The shadows were long and dark, and reading glasses were still necessary even sitting out in the daylight. Someone had gone to the trouble of slinging up a hammock in the Park. Brown and withered sunflower leaves looked like tobacco. A Mister Softee truck played in what was now the dusk, before dinner was even made.

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.

HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast!

Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!

ADVICE DEP'T.

HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from Buffalo Cookery: A Collection of Choice Recipes Carefully Selected, by St. Luke's Sunday-School Ladies' Auxiliary, Buffalo, Wyoming in 1916 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

CHEESE SANDWICHES
Mrs. C. H. Parmelee

Into a cooked salad dressing grate sufficient cheese to make a rich, smooth paste. Add, if desired, chopped pickle or olives. Spread between thin slices of bread.

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .