Mailbag: Is It Time For Taylor Swift To Retire the “Hater” Narrative? Plus Rihanna’s legacy & more!

DJ Louie XIV (0:11)

Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where we completely overanalyze all of your favorite pop stars and then rank them in the official Pop Pantheon. This is your host, DJ Louie XIV. Reminding you to please rate, review and subscribe. Follow us on social media at Pop Pantheon Pod, buy our merch at poppantheonpod.com. And as we discussed last week, we are about to make some shifts to our Patreon tiers. So if you want to get in and subscribe at our old Patreon tier prices before we make some shifts for new subscribers starting on November 1st, you should get that done in the near future.

Also, Gorgeous Gorgeous is having a Halloween party on October 30th at the Sultan's Room in Bushwick. And tickets, I have to say, are moving very, very fast for that. So if you do want to come to that, I would recommend getting them soon. That's gonna be really fun. We're gonna be having a party in the main room. We're having drag queen karaoke. It's gonna be a whole spooky, gay, queer vibe in there. So looking forward to that.

Russ Martin (1:10)

Louie, have Omri and Lala chosen something for you to wear as a costume yet?

DJ Louie XIV (1:15)

No, we're not talking about that.

Russ Martin (1:16)

Can we get on the group chat? Don't put that out.

DJ Louie XIV (1:18)

No, you know I don't do.

Russ Martin (1:19)

I'm gonna get you into Halloween.

Stephanie (1:21)

I support Lala and Omri.

Russ Martin (1:23)

I am on their team.

DJ Louie XIV (1:25)

Everybody close to me conspires against me.

Russ Martin (1:28)

The management of the DJ Louie XIV corporation, the ink is saying Halloween matters.

DJ Louie XIV (1:39)

Here's my thing. I actually love, I hate to use this term, but like spooky season. I'm a fall girl, love horror movies. I love the spirit of Halloween. I just like do not like dressing up. I just don't derive any joy from it at all. I find it burdensome. I find it honestly like painful.

Maybe it's like a queer trauma resurfacing kind of vibe where it's like, I do not like being told what to wear. Like I never want to be told what to wear. Like even if I'm DJing a wedding and somebody even gives me like a loose dress code, I have to like talk myself, I have to like walk off a ledge. Like I have to be like, like I did a wedding a couple of years ago and like it was actually an after party and it was like kind of cowboy western themed. And the only request was that I wear a cowboy hat. Like they weren't asking me to, you know, do any sort of full costume. And I like literally, like it was painful. I had to like push back and be like, may I pick the cowboy hat? Like may I, like I was like, it was, like I just have a really hard time with that.

Russ Martin (2:46)

You can be anything you want for Halloween. You can choose the costume.

DJ Louie XIV (2:48)

I know, but I don't want to be anything besides like, I just don't, I don't know. Okay, here's what, here, just to put a bow on this. If I had unlimited resources and like a costumer to like put together like something really fab, maybe, but I will never make it a priority. I will never spend money on an outfit that I'm gonna wear once, like in that way.

And so like I'll never be able to make it in the way that is fun for me. Like if I was Heidi Klum or whatever, I could like invest $10,000 into this, and someone could do everything for me, maybe that would make it fun for me.

Russ Martin (3:27)

Well, I'm excited to see what Omri and Lala wear. Sorry for bringing up Halloween trauma, but welcome to the mailbag.

DJ Louie XIV (3:35)

Russ, I've run five miles this morning. I have literally three drinks. I have my post-run electrolyte beverage. I have the remainder of this morning's cold brew.

And I have the fresh caffeine-free diet coke that I just poured myself. So to say I'm ready to go would be a fucking understatement.

Russ Martin (4:01)

All right, well, let's start off by pulling a call about one of the most controversial pop stars of the moment. This call comes from Stephanie.

Stephanie (4:14)

Hi, Louie and Russ. This is Stephanie in Virginia. I just got done listening to Taylor's new quote unquote songs. And I really try not to hate on Taylor just for the sake of hating on her. But she has got to retire the word haters from her vocabulary. And I'm talking about the song Cleveland in particular. This narrative, she's trying to perpetuate that the haters are against her and Travis and like rooting against her happiness. Like she won, she got the man. Like this is embarrassing. Like first of all, if anybody is rooting against you being happy with Travis, like those are teenagers on the internet or something, like it's embarrassing for her to be engaging with that. And I don't think that's really happening. And I don't think she thinks it's happening. I think she just likes that as a narrative because as Louie has said, she likes to position herself as the underdog, which is fucking ridiculous at this point. But also the idea that like I won, I got the ring, I got the man.