Bring back our pop girls! The latter half of 2022 still has a lot in store for us, especially for sad girl autumn or, in our case, the blue “ber” months.
Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Meghan Trainor have all announced that they’re dropping new albums in October. But get this—all on the 21st. If there’s going to be a fight on the charts, which pop queen will reign supreme?
Taylor Swift announced the upcoming release of “Midnights” on Aug. 29 and described the album as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” She added in her message for fans, “We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t—right this minute—about to make some fateful life-altering mistake.”
From the sound of it, “Folklore” is going to have strong competition for the title of Swift’s saddest album. The news came on the same day Swift won MTV Video Music Awards’ Video of the Year for “All Too Well: The Short Film.” We could be getting ahead of ourselves, but what if we get an expansion of the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe along with the album?
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “The Loneliest Time” also teases emotional devastation. In her Aug. 3 announcement, Jepsen wrote, “I’m quite fascinated by loneliness. It can be really beautiful when you turn it over and look at it. Just like love, it can cause some extreme human reactions.”
The upcoming album is billed as Jepsen’s “most introspective body of work to date.” So far, we’ve heard “Beach House” and “Western Wind,” which give different but equally interesting perspectives on a breakup. With a Rufus Wainwright feature on the title track, we can already tell that we’ll be bringing out the tissues.
The underdog on the list is new mom Meghan Trainor with “Takin’ It Back.” Although she promises a return to her doo-wop influences from her “All About That Bass” era for the album, Trainor did include the sad pre-release track “Bad for Me” which is about cutting off a toxic family relationship.
“I feel like my songwriting is much better since I had a C-section,” Trainor said in an interview with Rolling Stone. Although mom guilt is a recurring topic in the album, she says it’s still going to sound like a party. Trainor doesn’t have as big a fanbase as the other artists on this list but she *might* just stand out if she drops something less serious.
Of course, we don’t really have to pit queens against each other like stans do. We can cry dance or just cry, period, to all the albums. Since Oct. 21 falls on a Friday, we can even schedule a listening party with friends just to make sure everybody stays hydrated.
Art by Ella Lambio
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