There's a few golden rules of the internet. Don't click on the links when you're illegally streaming something. Make sure you've got your ad blocker on. Don't pick fights on social media with teenagers that get themselves a little too invested in pop stars.
Irish trad group Lankum managed to break that third rule last night by making a joke about Taylor Swift - and attracting the ire of her Twitter stans in the process. Naturally, the results were bonkers.
Lankum posted a quite simple, self-deprecating joke after a fan pointed out the similarities between the covers of their 2017 album Between the Earth and Sky and Tay-Tay's recent release Folklore. They responded by joking about the video for their Cold Old Fire and her work, which, surprise surprise, the Swifties did not take as a joke. It's almost like being a monolithic devotional group to someone who barely knows you exist doesn't exactly encourage subtlety.
The comments that exploded afterwards were hilarious to say the least. Plenty of them seemed to think that Lankum were piggy-backing on the success of Taylor Swift to gains trends or follows or something: "me when i can't sell albums so I need to use Taylors name for attention" wrote one, while another posted "Yes every artist uses Taylor for clout because they know that she's the biggest artist of this generation and they will never achieve half the shit she has in her career but go off".
Seems weird though, because I don't think I know a single Taylor Swift song, whereas I know plenty of Lankum's tracks. Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.
Other's lasered in on Lankum's lack of success: "aww taylor doing charity to flops again? hope it was worth the 4 streams u gained and congrats on the first and probably last trend" was representative of the many comments that called them "flops".
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Firstly, LOL that people use the word "flop" to describe anything other than mediocre football transfers that don't work out, and secondly, where were these people when Lankum won two gongs at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards 2018? Does that seem like the sort of thing "flops" would do? Does being named the 8th best band in the 2020 Irish Times 50 Best Irish Acts In Order mean nothing? Taylor Swift didn't make that list, I can tell you.
We did reach out to Lankum for comment, but understandably they decided that their brush with standom was one not to be repeated.
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Ireland, Taylor Swift
