The Bizarre Consequences of Painting the World's Most Popular Anti-Taylor Swift Mural
With a heavy heart, Australian-based artist Lushsux painted a commemorative mural in Melbourne to honor Taylor Swift, whose career suffered a deadly blow thanks to Kim Kardashian West (aka the queen of receipts).
Photos of the mural — which depicts Swift's birth year as well as the apparent year of her demise below her misspelled name, "Taylor Smith" — made waves online Wednesday morning, with the Cut writing, "May Taylor Smith live on in our hearts, our memories and our dreams. We promise to never forget her."
Already, the artist behind it all said they've received backlash from the pop singer's attorneys, as well as from the singer's enormous online fandom.
"It was your typical cease and desist, confusing legalese, threat email," Lushsux told Mic about the immediate response from Swift's lawyers. "I was just taking the piss, obviously."
But it's not just lawyers suiting up in defense of the embattled pop star: Swift's legion of devoted followers have began attacking Lushsux across social media.
"Taylor Swift has some psuedo-Hitler-Youth-type organization of young fans hell-bent on, like, some kind of jihad against me and that mural," Lushsux said. These ultra-Swift stans, who describe themselves as Swifties, "are forming cells right now in my city hatching plans to go down and ruin the wall," according to Lushsux.
It seems that someone — likely not a Swiftie — has already done that. To the artist's credit, Lushsux attempted to keep Swift's memorial pure and unblemished, writing underneath the mural, "No tags. Please respect the dead." But of course, the city's most savage taggers haven't heeded her request.
Within 24 hours of Lushsux's first Instagram post of the art, the mural had already been given a face-lift.
Even in the face of mounting legal threats and an angry fan army, Lushsux seems to be loving the chaos the mural has created. "It's comedy gold," the artist said of their creation.
At this point, the race is on to create the best mutation. All internet onlookers can ask for is for Lushsux's mural to not be unceremoniously returned to blank space, baby.
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