Taylor Swift misquoted me, I found it funny and pointed it out – and then all hell broke loose

It’s a strange feeling to review a pop star’s album, only to find that your words have been posted to their 121 million followers on Instagram. It’s stranger still when those words feel oddly unfamiliar.

Last week, I reviewed Taylor’s Swift’s seventh album, Lover. It was something of a military operation – the album was so top secret that a high-clearance publicist had to bring it to the office on an iPod, supervise me while I listened, and then whisk it away again. I liked it. After the excellent, embittered Reputation, it was nice to hear Swift excited to be earnest again, and my four-star review reflected that.

But to me, the album wasn’t perfect. For one thing, it was too long. “At around track 14, Lover starts to feel baggy,” I wrote. “There is a brilliant album among the 18 songs, if only it had been pruned a little.”

A few days later, I was amused to discover that Swift had taken my pruning advice to heart. She hadn’t pruned the album, however, only my review. She posted just three words of it on Instagram: “A brilliant album – Alexandra Pollard, The Independent.”

“Amused” was the extent of my feelings on the matter. It was cheeky, but it comes with the territory. I’m not the first reporter to have a review exaggerated, and the blow is softened a bit when it’s the biggest pop star on the planet. When I tweeted it with the comment, “Close enough!”, I expected that a few dozen people would find it funny. Little did I know.

In 24 hours, the post racked up just under 10,000 likes, and was seen by over a million people. Many of them found it as funny as I did, understanding that I wasn’t out for blood. But others weren’t so amused.

Hardcore Swift fans began pouring into my mentions, making personal comments and calling me just about every gendered expletive you can imagine. Someone suggested I kill myself. Another threatened to leak my home address and phone number. They cursed me. Literally. “Your blood is used for the sacrifice of the sheep, and you will experience eternal torment,” is just one of the curses put on me, so I’ll be steering clear of farm animals for a while.

If it wasn’t for the fact I’ve been on the receiving end of fan attacks before, it would have been quite horrible. Luckily, I knew they’d soon get bored, and turn on some other poor soul.

When the Twitter storm reached its nadir, news outlets started reaching out, asking how it felt to have my words cherry-picked by Taylor Swift. “Pollard didn’t have much to say on the matter,” read an article in Business Insider, “except that she thought it was ‘quite funny.’” I only wish everyone else felt the same.

Yours,

Alexandra Pollard

Arts writer and commissioning editor