Fake Charity Nerd Girl

it took a couple listens of gold rush to realize that “at dinner parties I call you out on your contrarian shit” is Taylor’s daydream about her unattainable crush

the Eliza vibes in tolerate it

-

I greet you with a battle hero’s welcome

//

Thank you for all your service

-

While you were out building other worlds, where was I?

//

I don’t pretend to know the challenges you’re facing, the worlds you keep erasing and creating

-

Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life

//

Let me be a part of the narrative in the story they will write someday

also, here are some really good country songs:

• When It Rains It Pours, Luke Combs: I don’t know of any song that does a better job of “take sadness and transmute it into pure joy.” like there are a lot of songs that are like “I was sad about this breakup, but now I’m doing better.” harder to pull off “I was sad about this breakup and that was dumb because it was awesome and life is just so good.”
• I Want Crazy, Hunter Hayes: “I don’t want good and I don’t want good enough, I want can’t sleep can’t breathe without your love.” it’s just a beautifully distilled defense of Red-era TS in her battle against Lover-era TS.
• Somewhere in My Car, Keith Urban: just how can you not have feelings when you hear the transition to the first chorus. “but in my mind, we’re somewhere in my car”
• Mama’s Broken Heart, Miranda Lambert: just love the sentiment of I could choose to be elegant and composed like Jackie Kennedy, but instead I’m going to be as dramatic as I can because why the fuck not

I feel like I post a lot about Taylor Swift on here, but not much about other music that is good. So have some takes on non-TSwift albums I like:

Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves

• I really like her earlier country stuff too
• but man on this album she just has it all figured out, like musically and emotionally??
• Slow Burn is one of the most perfect songs ever and the only reason I don’t listen to it more is because I’m afraid it will lose its power to chill me out
• it also has a special resonance with my life due to the line “in Tennessee, the sun’s going down, but in Beijing they’re headed out to work”
• Butterflies is just so … lovely
• “now you’re lifting me up instead of holding me down, stealing my heart instead of stealing my crown, untangled all the strings round my wings that were tied”
  
• Space Cowboy and Lonely Weekend are like … straightforward but still Too Real
• Wonder Woman is just … I love the exact thing it’s expressing and don’t know any other songs that express that exact thing
• of like “of course I want us to support each other in our personal growth, and I want to be as strong as I possibly can for you … but also, I need our relationship not to depend on that and I want us to just be there for each other despite all the flaws”

Emotion, Carly Rae Jepsen

• ok I was going to pick my favorite lyrics to gush about but then I realized they’re all pretty dumb
• but I guess the music is good enough that I don’t notice which is pretty impressive

Norman Fucking Rockwell, Lana Del Rey

• I feel conflicted about professing my love for this album because I feel like it’s related to my identification with some sort of Sad Girl persona that I’ve been trying to avoid identifying with but
• it’s good
• Happiness is a butterfly… I feel like if I had to pick one song that perfectly embodied “sadness” this would be up there
• “I said don’t be a jerk, don’t call me a taxi, sitting in your sweatshirt, crying in the backseat”
  
• it reminds me of Last Kiss actually: the imagery of wearing his clothing accompanied by utterly pathetic desperation
• hope is a dangerous thing: I just love the drama of “writing in blood on the walls cause the ink in my pen don’t work in my notepad”
• also, video calling your dad and feeling weird about your far away and glamorous life
• love all the California references
• Norman Fucking Rockwell … oof
• Mariners Apartment Complex just takes all the sad girl energy and turns it into power and it’s beautiful

So, what do I think of folklore?

Mostly, not as much as her previous albums; it feels a bit more forgettable; there weren’t any songs that I listened to once and knew I would be obsessed with, like Blank Space on 1989 or Dress on Reputation or Cruel Summer on Lover.

But the more I listen to it, the more I feel like Taylor and I have quietly ended up on the same wavelength, you know?

I’ve talked before about the conflict I’ve felt whenever I feel like we’re in different emotional places; when she’s being immature and petty when I want to grow, or when she’s happy and chilled out and I need to work through my angst.

But this album, to the extent that it’s about Taylor, feels like it presents a … Therapy Taylor? Trying to work through her problems, and deal with her megasuccess, and yeah, okay.

Therapy Taylor:

• I never had the courage of my convictions, as long as danger is near
  
• I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit
• pouring out my heart to a stranger, but I didn’t pour the whiskey

My favorite song right now is peace which everyone compares to The Archer but I keep thinking of Miss Americana?

I guess it’s the vision of “love doesn’t have to be boring: love is about having an ally in your quest for world domination; someone who will be on your side against your enemies, haters on twitter, own worst self, etc, etc” 

very initial thoughts on folklore, I’ve only listened to the first half once:

• wow the 1 hit me … right at the beginning of the album, “you know the greatest loves of all time are over now” … I teared up there
• was that … another song about marrying into New England old money families ………
• holy shit mirrorball
• this album is so white
• I don’t yet know what the theme/idea is besides “so white”

I only bought this personality so you could take it off

I was wonderstruck from our first hello
Always faking smiles so you’d never know
Waiting by your back door, wanting so much more
Hoping you did too

I spent hours meditating on the color of your eyes
There’s not a fact about you that I didn’t memorize
I was up at half past two writing lyrics about you
And that was when I knew

That we were in a Taylor Swift song
My skirt was short and our glances were long
I knew without a doubt, I had it figured out
I just wish I knew which one

We looked for places we couldn’t be found
Elevators and storage rooms became holy ground
But whispers turn to talk, and people throw rocks
At things that shine

We knew our hands were tied, but that didn’t stop our dance
We were devils rolling dice in a twisted game of chance
And every winter night alone was a cut deep to the bone
Knowing you weren’t mine

But I knew we were in a Taylor Swift song
Riding shotgun on a road that was treacherous and long
I knew without a doubt, I had it figured out
I just wish I knew which one

Now we avoid meeting eyes in the middle of a crowd
And the silence between us is deafeningly loud
And it rains in your bedroom so I never get dry
I just wish I knew why

Maybe I was just dreaming before you let me down
And I’ll wake up lying on the cold hard ground
Realize that I was a mess living in your game of chess
Til I got away

Or is this the point where I’m braced for goodbye
But you meet me in the rain to say you want to really try?
Say that we can work it out, say you don’t want to be without me
So you’ll stay

Or maybe we just got to the end of the drive
Nothing lasts forever, but god were we alive
And I’ll be there in a dress, my head laid on your chest
In all your dreams

Just remember whispered words in the middle of the night
And how we were in color when the world was black and white
And when you hear a Taylor Swift song
Remember me

At first I thought I Think He Knows was kind or boringly straightforward but I’ve come around a bit; I think it works in the context of the rest of her oeuvre (like much of Lover).

It presents her current relationship as akin to a teenage romance, with the “skipping down 16th Avenue” and the explicit “it’s like I’m 17.”

But in her teenage crushes, the guy never knew; her earlier songs are filled with tortured longing, and she’s always great at keeping her secret. See:

• I fake a smile so he won’t see
• I wonder if he knows he’s all I think about at night
• I think he can see through everything but my heart
• all this time how could you not know, baby?

etc. The idea that the guy in these songs could find out is terrifying.

And now it’s just … fine? “I think he knows,” shrug, good that saves me the trouble of telling him. She’s realized that she’s not a teenager anymore and people aren’t as oblivious as they used to be, and that’s okay, because now she’s secure enough not to be scared of displaying vulnerability, and mature enough to appreciate the joy of just getting each other, and wearing your heart on your sleeve, and not giving a fuck.

Earlier I said that the outro of Death by a Thousand Cuts was “very Teardrops on my Guitar” and yeah let’s talk about that.

I think of making the outro a fragment of a verse as a signature Taylor thing, but in fact she’s done it less and less over time–until Lover. Let’s see, I count:

• 4 on Taylor Swift
• 3 on Fearless
• 3 on Speak Now
• 2 on Red
• 0 on 1989
• 1 on Reputation
• and 4 on Lover, more than she’s had since her debut album.

So, why? I think there’s a sort of traditional verse-chorus-bridge song structure she’s working from. The verse introduces the song. The chorus provides the central theme. The bridge builds to an emotional climax–and then by returning to the chorus and the central message, the song can end on a note of resolution. If she’s violating that, it’s to subvert our narrative expectations. 

Ending on a verse feels jarring. It disrupts the narrative progression and introduces a sense of stasis and circularity: instead of ending at the end, we’ve gone around in a circle and come back to the beginning.

It also feels ruminative in a way that calls attention to the (often highlighted, in Taylor’s case) metanarrative of her writing process. You get the feeling that she started writing this song to solve a problem, and now the song is written and nothing has actually changed, and all there is to do is go back and perfect the verses.

So I think you see this less when she’s changing or moving somehow, and more when she’s spinning her wheels, needing to process whatever she has to process through writing before she can move on. Over time she’s gotten increasingly self-assured, and you see Confident Taylor on Lover too; obviously on songs like Me! and IFTYE, but also on songs like Lover or Daylight, where she just knows what she wants to say.

But then there are the songs with verse as outro:

• The Archer
• “who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?”
• Cornelia Street:
• “I’m so terrified of if you ever walk away … that’s the kinda heartbreak time could never mend”
  
• Miss Americana
• “you and me, that’s my whole world”
• Death by a Thousand Cuts
• “I ask the traffic lights if it’ll be all right, they say I don’t know”

It feels like after years of trying to shed her vulnerability, she’s ended up in an immensely vulnerable place. She doesn’t know if she would be okay without Joe, and she doesn’t know what to do about that. And her just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks is how we ended up with this mess of an album, but at the end of the day she’s stuck.

To get more concrete, current ranking of Lover songs based on how much I actually want to listen to them:

• Cruel Summer
• throwback to 1989 in the best possible way
• that Out of the Woods-esque bridge tho
• having the bridge in there twice almost feels like getting to eat two desserts but I’ll take it
• “and if I bleed you’ll be the last to know”
  
• the “it’s cool” reminds me of Delicate
• “I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you”
  
• “I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?”
  
• Paper Rings
• kind of annoying but really catchy
• “I’ve read all of the books beside your bed”
  
• somehow the line “I want your complications too” is annoying me. What are Joe’s complications? Does he have a personality besides “British?”
• Death by a Thousand Cuts
• liking this one more and more
• “my time, my wine, my spirit, my trust; tryna find a part of me you didn’t take up”
  
• the outro is very Teardrops on my Guitar
• the traffic lights thing reminds me of Somewhere in My Car
• Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince
• so not here for the political themes but there’s something that makes me wanna keep listening to it
• Daylight
• because I feel like it’s the thesis statement of the album in some sense?
• Lover
• complaints are similar to Paper Rings but it’s also catchy
• London Boy
• hate to admit it but it’s fun
• Soon You’ll Get Better
• not a song I need in my life but it’s good for what it is
• False God
• right now it’s boring but I feel like I might start liking it at some point
• I Think He Knows
• kinda forgettable so far
• You Need to Calm Down
• ehh
• The Archer, Cornelia Street, It’s Nice to Have a Friend, Afterglow
• boring
• I Forgot That You Existed
• I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I’m glad this exists as a breakup song option
• Me!
• I like how everyone has already collectively agreed to pretend this song never happened

There’s a clear religion motif that kinda feels like a callback to 1989? Specifically with the heaven/hell imagery. Let’s see, 1989 had:

• magic, madness, heaven, sin
• heaven can’t help me now … handsome as hell
• could end in burning flames or paradise

I feel like Cruel Summer and False God are a continuation of this strand of 1989? Jaded Taylor, doing things she knows are bad because they feel so damn good.

Now I’m all about that, and Cruel Summer is absolutely my favorite song on Lover but it actually does feel like it could be on 1989 and that lack of progression is interesting

(oh man, also note “cut the headlights” vs “come and pick me up, no headlights”)

Interesting that in addition to the explicit “I’ll drive” on this album, there are multiple other songs that imply she’s driving: Death by a Thousand Cuts (”I take the long way home, I ask the traffic lights if it’ll be all right, they say I don’t know”) and Cornelia Street (”I turned around before I hit the tunnel”) (okay going back to that one maybe she was just in a cab?)

It almost feels intentional, but sort of awkwardly thrown in there, since it’s clear that these days all her real experiences of transit involve sitting in backseats.

The color imagery on Lover is interesting. (Obviously there’s the political angle, but let’s put that aside.)

Blue is obviously a sad color, and it’s been referenced as such in her past work (”losing him was blue like I’ve never known”). 

On Reputation, we get “my love had been frozen; deep blue but you painted me golden” in a presumed reference to Joe.

Then Lover … really goes all out with relationship with Joe = blue? It’s in like every song:

• “we paint the town blue”
• “I’m with you even if it makes me blue”
  
• “I blew things out of proportion, now you’re blue”
  
• “it’s blue, the feeling I’ve got”
  
• “my heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue”
  

not to even mention all the references we’ve gotten to his eye color.

Only on the last song, Daylight, does she resolve the tension here and complete the transition with “I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden.”

But why does she take the whole album to do that when it was already spoiled on Reputation? And why do we keep coming back to blue even in otherwise happy, tension-free songs? It’s kinda weird.

Initial thoughts on Lover:

Maybe she’s an image-crafting, shapeshifting genius but it sure does feel like she writes what she knows, and her life right now is obsessively maintaining her valuable brand, living happily, with her bland British blue-eyed boyfriend, and sometimes getting triggered by people tweeting about politics.

I’m glad she’s happy but like

it feels like she’s not even 30, and already her life is what it’s going to be. She can’t be a bigger star than she is, the bigger she gets the more she just attracts haters, she’s slept with all the celebrities worth sleeping with and now her life is about deciding whether to bother taking down the Christmas lights, I mean, it’s only January.

I think her best songs are about longing. Usually for love, but not just that; “someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me”; “in your life you’ll do things greater than dating a boy on the football team.” 

I know that there’s a time of your life for that longing, and a time of your life for settling down with someone and going to the pub to watch rugby with his school friends. There’s a part of me that thinks that it’s good and right that she’s completed this phase of her evolution, from all-American high school girl all the way to you know, 30-year-old white woman who’s into wine and real estate and engagement rings.

There’s another part of me that’s angry she’s chosen this pastel life over burning red. What happened to screaming, and fighting, and kissing in the rain?

Maybe if you’re still doing that when you’re 30, it’s just sad.

it’s hard to enjoy Ours the same way when you realize it’s literally the prequel to Dear John

I’m used to thinking of opposition to smoking in media as kind of dumb, but a month ago I started listening obsessively to all of Kacey Musgraves’ oeuvre, and last week I told someone I was thinking maybe I should start doing nicotine, and it took until today when I was listening to Blowin’ Smoke to make the connection.

(I might be unusually susceptible to this, since I really like the rituals/aesthetics surrounding drug use. I also particularly enjoy songs about alcohol.)

O Abigail, dear friend without compare,

You gave away your heart and soon you found

His courtship left you soaring through the air;

His kisses made your glist’ning world spin round.

When his undying love your swain professed

You trusted him, youth rendering you blind.

Too innocent, you gave all you possessed

To someone who abruptly changed his mind.

One of the many trials that youth brings

Is wanting nothing more than to be wanted.

Just know that you are meant for greater things

Than faithless men by whom your dreams are haunted.

In time your heart’s contusions shall be healed,

And through misfortune your true self revealed.

Your reputation ought to keep me far

Away, but there seems little I can do.

With all the world I’m ever on my guard,

But I cannot but let it down with you.

I wish you could forget your every care—

Drop everything, and meet me in the rain.

I’d run my fingers gently through your hair;

Your lips on mine would soon assuage my pain.

You’d keep your eyes on me; though it be wrong,

Still there are sins that feel less wrong than right.

You’d lead me up the stairs. I’d go along,

And whisper softly that we’ll make tonight

A memory for when you’re gone awhile,

For I see sparks fly every time you smile.

My mother warned me I had lost my senses;

In my blind optimism I said no.

My friends recited all of your offenses;

I scorned their call to run and would not go.

But now you’re gone I see it all so clearly—

At nineteen I was too young, don’t you agree?

In my stupidity I loved you dearly,

So I played your twisted games till I was free.

For every girl who’s given you her heart,

There is a pair of lifeless, burnt-out eyes,

But I stole your tinder ere the flames could start—

Like fireworks I’ll shine in empty skies,

Those skies that once were gray and now are blue.

To start afresh, I’ve written this for you.

[unfinished]

So let our love eternal be, or let

It die in flames, for only at its end

Can we weigh joy and pain, compute regret,

see if the high was worth the scars to tend.

I cannot tell how many men I’ve kissed,

But there’s still room to add you to the list.

I’ve heard feminists approvingly cite Girl in a Country Song, but today I actually listened to the lyrics and apparently it’s actually just criticizing the way hip-hop-influenced and sexualized bro country objectifies women and calling for a return to the traditional days of chivalry in country music, so

what she says: i’m fine

what she means: taylor swift traditionally releases new albums in the fall (specifically october for every album except fearless) every other year. fall 2016 came and went and nothing. do you think ed sheeran’s comment implying she would release an album this year had any basis in fact. what about when gigi hadid said that she was in the studio in september. is it going to be a surprise album release. she’s been through so much this year with calvin harris and tom hiddleston i hope she’s okay what if she has writer’s block

When Taylor Swift sings about love (when she sings) cars inevitably enter the picture. On her first album cars are happiness, comfort, nostalgia. In Tim McGraw she reminisces about being in the passenger’s seat of an old Chevy truck; in Our Song she contentedly rides shotgun with her hair undone in the front seat of his car; in the similarly idyllic Mary’s Song she sings, “2 am riding in your truck, and all I need is you next to me.”

(On a tangential note, Taylor really likes the time 2 am, this is one of like five references in her work, more if you count 2:30 am and 1:58 am. Also note the trucks, this is the only album that mentions trucks afaik. In her most recent work, the model of the car is not usually specified, but you get the feeling it’s expensive.)

The other cars on this album are in Teardrops on My Guitar (“I drive home alone,” symbolizing that she’s alone. Not much to say about that) and Picture to Burn. In the latter she sings, “I hate that stupid old pickup truck you never let me drive,” which is interesting because in all the happy car references she is clearly riding shotgun and doesn’t seem unhappy about that, while the one instance of her driving is clearly unhappy. Does this to some extent undermine the happy songs on this album? Is riding shotgun a sort of illusory happiness, one that doesn’t actually bring her fulfillment? Is this line expressing an intent to exercise more agency, in relationships and/or in life? We’ll come back to this.

The role of cars and driving doesn’t change much on Fearless and Speak Now. The former’s title song features more happy shotgun riding: she sings, “So baby drive slow … I wanna stay right here in this passenger’s seat.” Same in Back to December: “I think about summer, all the beautiful times I watched you laughing from the passenger’s side.” Fifteen twists this trope slightly with the self-awareness that she shows more of on every album; she feels like flying at the prospect of going on her very first date, with a ~senior boy~ who has a ~car~, and ends up getting her heart broken when he tells her he loves her and she believes him.

Now Red is where the role of cars really changes. There’s no awareness up to this point that 30,000 Americans die in cars every year, often from doing stupid shit like putting their hands on their girlfriends’ hearts instead of on the steering wheel where they’re supposed to be. On Red, cars are dangerous and love ends in heartbreak. In All Too Well, she and her love interest of the moment get lost driving, and he almost runs a red light because he’s looking at her. In Red, another devastated post-breakup song, she sings, “loving you was like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street.” She’s become aware of the dangers of love now, but she’s not doing the smart/cautious thing: she still has hope. This is most obvious in Treacherous, when she considers the danger, but decides that “nothing safe is worth the drive.”

On 1989 cars are still dangerous, but she’s not surprised or saddened by that fact anymore; she seeks out and embraces the danger. In Style her paramour drives without headlights and “can’t keep his wild eyes on the road”: she knows “exactly where it leads” but gets in the car with him anyway. In Wildest Dreams, driving, like her short-lived fling, is about adventure: she sings, “let’s get out of this town, drive out of the city, away from the crowds, heaven can’t help me now.” She can see the end (of the ride, of the relationship) as it begins, but doesn’t let that stop her. In Out of the Woods, a snowmobile accident (I’m counting it as a car ok) leads to “twenty stitches in a hospital room,” but the song isn’t about regret or mistakes. It’s about inevitability, the way they were “built to fall apart and fall back together.” In a world of black and white, how can you regret finding screaming color?

And getting back to the Picture to Burn issue I said I’d get back to … she still doesn’t drive on this album. It’s “you come and pick me up,” “remember when you hit the brakes too soon,” “you drove us off the road,” “in your car, windows down, you pass my street.” I’m conflicted about the fact that she never drives. On the one hand, yay traditional gender roles practiced between consenting adults, and (at least in my opinion) Taylor has always been about being true to herself rather than being a Strong Woman, and that’s part of why I like her. 2015 Feminist Taylor is a stronger, better person than 2006 Taylor, but I think she’s grown in an authentic way, while still being open about her vulnerabilities. 

On the other hand, 2006 Taylor said she wanted to drive the truck! Why doesn’t she just drive the truck?

When I was researching this I came across this cover on Youtube which … idk how much relevance it has because she didn’t write it but I’m just really interested in her choice to cover it. It’s all about the excitement of driving! Which she never does! Also in this song her father is the one teaching her to drive, and she is able to drive only because her father “lets” her which is another whole thing.

Also, she’s always been into cars (clearly) but there are especially a lot of cars on her most recent album. Doesn’t she know real New Yorkers take the subway?

i remember when we broke up

the first time
saying, “this is it, i’ve had enough,”

‘cause like
we hadn’t seen each other in a month
when you

said you

needed

space

                                     what