From the Group Chat: Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Book, Spotify Wrapped, and “Black Doves”

EDITOR’S NOTE

Happy Sunday. I’ll be honest, my head’s still spinning with all the rumors surrounding Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan’s reported breakup. (Between Keoghan's statement and the influencer caught in the middle speaking out, it's been...a lot.) Thankfully, the internet offers plenty of distractions, starting with: this deep dive into 2025’s biggest heel trends (excuse me, curved wedges??), the “fashion girl trick” for wearing stovepipe pants (they’re surprisingly versatile), and Lily-Rose Depp’s old money-esque blasé waves (finally, a trendy hairstyle I can get behind). And, in advance of holiday travel, I’ll be sending the internet’s definitive guide to airport rules to every person I know — because if you’re not eating pizza at 9 am in Terminal A, you’re doing it wrong.

— Taylor Trudon / Writer, Culture & Lifestyle / Brooklyn, NY 

👔 Just when you thought sock length was the biggest intergenerational fashion debate, another equally divisive accessory decided to enter the chat.

💍 From shuttle rides longer than 15 minutes to “a TMZ-style videographer,” here are the things wedding guests secretly (or not-so-secretly) hate. 

🧸 A convincing case for replacing your emotional support water bottle with…“emotional support accessories.” 

✂️ The only thing more perplexing than the newly popular "mixie" haircut (aka, a mullet-pixie)? “Hitchcock blonde,” “mushroom brown,” and more of 2025’s top hair color trends.

🥊 Get ready to rumble: Knee-high, lace-up “boxing shoes” are about to be everywhere. And they are very much not a knockout.

It’s no secret Taylor Swift fans love a good surprise — and The Eras Tour Book delivers plenty of them. Just…not the kind Swifties were hoping for. Ever since the $40 coffee-table volume was released on Black Friday, disappointed fans have taken to social media to vent about what’s now being called The Errors Tour Book. The glorified concert merch is full of blurry, low-res images (which some have alleged are just screenshots of the Eras Tour movie), amateur-level graphic design (in the words of one Redditor, it looks like “something a fan made on Shutterfly”), and enough typos to make us wonder if Swift’s cats accidentally stepped on her keyboard before it went to print. And because Swifties are a, shall we say, passionate bunch, there are minutes-long TikToks and entire Reddit threads dedicated to the many glaring oversights in The Book That Clearly Escaped Tree Paine’s Sign-Off, including: missing pages, spreads where Swift disappears into the book’s crease, misspelled song names, passages that surely the very literary Swift couldn’t have written, and way too many mistakes on the page devoted to the surprise-songs section of the tour. 

Of course, the number of egregious errors is particularly off-brand for the Duchess of Details, who famously weaves meticulously coded messages and Easter eggs into virtually every project she drops. So naturally, we can’t help but wonder: How could there be so many careless slipups in such a high-profile book? Was the book just a slapdash attempt to cash in on holiday sales? Or, is this an unintended consequence of bypassing traditional publishers? (In true Swift fashion, she opted to self-publish the book.) And last but certainly not least: Will Swift’s team republish new ones? TBD, but it seems unlikely — given that some 800,000-plus copies were sold over Thanksgiving weekend, making it the one of the biggest nonfiction book debuts on record. Yes, even with all the typos. Fingers crossed tonight’s Eras Tour finale goes smoother.

It brings us no pleasure to report that Spotify Wrapped has entered its Flop Era. For any Apple Music listeners (congrats, you’ve officially earned gloating rights), we’ll explain: On Wednesday, Spotify unveiled its annual Wrapped campaign — something you probably already gathered from Instagram Stories. But instead of the cleverly organized, pop culture-inspired, extremely personalized package, this year’s data dump was lackluster at best, resembling a last-minute group project scrapped together with the help of ChatGPT. While many assumed the slightly delayed release would mean cool new features, users were served the “most boring visuals and slideshow in years” with some notable metrics (like a person’s top music genres and albums) missing entirely. But perhaps most confounding? Rather than Sound Towns, Listening Personalities, or Audio Auras, users were given their Music Evolution — or, three musical phases that “uniquely defined your year.” Except, spoiler, everyone went through a “Pink Pilates Princess Roller Skating Pop,” “Cinnamon Softcore Art Deco,” or some equally confounding, extremely word-salad-sounding phase. That led the internet — which, no surprise, had a meme field day — to speculate that an overreliance on AI and a significantly reduced staff may have been to blame. Who knows if that’s true (for the record, Spotify hasn’t commented on the backlash), but perhaps it’s time to wrap, well, Wrapped.

In this very imaginary Wheel of Fortune episode, the category is “Unexpected Internet Boyfriends” and you need two consonants and two vowels. The answer? N-I-K-K-O, aka Vanna White’s 30-year-old son.

Calling all Love Actually fans. We never thought we’d see the day, but Keira Knightley is delivering some new holiday entertainment. And, fair warning, it’s pretty different but just as captivating. In Netflix’s twisty British spy thriller, Black Doves — which is set in London during Christmastime — Knightley plays Helen Webb, a devoted mother of twins and the very posh wife of the UK defense secretary. And while Helen’s day-to-day may look picture-perfect from the outside, she’s leading a double life — as a professional spy for the Black Doves, a shadowy organization that sells the British government’s secrets to the highest bidder. When her secret lover is assassinated, Helen’s life suddenly becomes a lot more complicated. So her boss enlists former Black Dove Sam (Ben Whishaw, aka the voice of Paddington Bear) to come out of retirement to protect her. Together, they embark on a revenge mission in what’s described as “a remarkably fresh, exciting, and laugh-out-loud funny caper.”

Deep breaths. Wayfair’s holiday gift guide is chock-full of budget-friendly, quality gifts for everyone on your list — even those impossible-to-please giftees. They rounded up presents by price point (under $20, under $50, under $100) and personality (the foodie, the self-care enthusiast, the pet-obsessed), so that gift-giving won’t feel like a second job. Stress-free shopping, right this way.*

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Unleash your competitive side with today’s games and puzzles. Choose from an anagram word search, digital jigsaw puzzle, or crossword (with a twist). Better yet: Try them all.