Show And Tell: On 'Lover,' Taylor Swift Lets Listeners In On Her Own Terms

I have no idea what it is like to be a pop star; I don't know what it feels like to be seen by (but rarely known by) billions of people. I front an obscure underground rock band called Priests. While Taylor Swift performs in stadiums and has, through a deal with major record label Universal, an exclusive licensing deal for deluxe versions of her album with Target, Priests performs in tiny clubs and we, its members, run our own record label. (We recently celebrated a new distribution deal that gets our releases into larger chain stores at all.) Swift has 85 million Twitter followers and 121 million Instagram followers; I recently asked our 4000 Twitter followers (only half-jokingly) if anyone paid for bot accounts to follow us on Instagram, since we've reached 10,000 followers and I find it highly unlikely that that many people even know we exist.

So the expectations, the audience size and paychecks for Swift and me are all quite different. But I know about being a performer who is also a songwriter, and how the desires of the performer-self can directly. . Whatever form it takes, the art, for me, comes from the friction between these opposing poles of desire: The songwriter always wants to show while the performer always wants to tell.