Taylor Swift, Art, Intention, and the State of the Soul
That new Taylor Swift album is … something else
Hi. Let me introduce myself. My name is Rachael, and I’m a general essayist. Mostly, I think about human connections, technology and its ever-evolving impact on humans, politics and its intersection with culture, and other bits of random ephemera that catch my attention. I also write fiction, and that drops pretty regularly.
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I am not a fan of Taylor Swift. I decided to give her a fair shake, and listen to a few interviews in preparation for this, and I remain as firmly convinced of my stance prior to listening to her new album as I was before.
Until “Evermore”, I had never really listened to a full album; I’m not even sure I finished listening to that one when it came out. Once in a while, I’d listen to a few of her singles — “Style” was the only song I’d liked of anything she’d done, and it had this catchy nature to it that I guiltily, quietly, enjoyed to myself. It did not occur to me to proclaim my undying love of Swift and her lyrical styling; there are other contemporary artists I respect more, for very different reasons. I’ve never gone to a concert, or dreamed of doing such a thing, or desired to drop the kind of money required for a Swift ticket to go see an artist. Taylor Swift is an entertainer and a performer, worth over a billion dollars, who has had a level of cultural impact that I mostly don’t pay attention to, as her music isn’t my style.
Rodrigo y Gabriella, she is not.
Swift is not trying to be these people, nor they her.
But they are different kinds of entertainers and artists, all the same.
Her visual storytelling in the cadre of music videos she’s produced over the years is often humorous and tongue-in-cheek, taking shots at or making visual comedy of the types of criticisms and ridiculous theories that have circulated about her for years. It takes a certain level of self-awareness and a sense of humor to play well with those opinions and falsehoods. She does seem fairly savvy in how to use her assets in terms of effectively mixing branding, storytelling, and her art with flair and verve.
In my journeys across the internet, there was a review from The Guardian regarding her recent album release, The Life of a Showgirl. There’s the usual fangirling, to be sure, and The Guardian is fair but not fawning over the mediocrity of the album. As I said, I’m not a Swiftie; I don’t get into fan theories dismantling every piece of lyric she’s written attempting to decode the nuances and secrets of her life; listening to her in an interview does not make me feel as though my intellect has been enriched. It wasn’t until
’ piece last week about the false persona of English major intellectual that Swift peddles did I bother to take notice of her work (Swift, not Libes).Libes noticed it, and so did my husband, who affirmed when I brought it up the other day, that Swift badly misuses literary references (emphasis mine). A sample from one of Swift’s earliest and well-known hits, “Love Story”:
That you were Romeo, you were throwin’ pebbles
And my daddy said, “Stay away from Juliet”
And I was cryin’ on the staircase
Beggin’ you, “Please don’t go, “ and I saidRomeo, take me somewhere we can be alone
I’ll be waiting, all there’s left to do is run
You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess
It’s a love story, baby, just say, “Yes”So I sneak out to the garden to see you
We keep quiet, ‘cause we’re dead if they knew
So close your eyes
Escape this town for a little while, oh oh‘Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter
And my daddy said, “Stay away from Juliet”
But you were everything to me
I was beggin’ you, “Please don’t go, “ and I said
Libes dives into and analyzes this far better than I could do it justice, since she’s read more than I and I think has more literary analysis practice and mental space than I do to dedicate to this task. Her point is roughly that Swift’s use of literary reference is a terrible bastardization of what, those literary references, are about.
Anyone who has ever read either “Romeo and Juliet” or “The Scarlet Letter” would be able to patently recognize these two things are not like the other, and have little in common, outside of being 1) tragedies, 2) about illicit love affairs, and at a very shallow, surface level, vis a vis the song, 3) about social ostracism and the perceptions of others.
One deals with teenagers who, as Libes puts it, “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” through a series of poor miscommunications, insta-lust, and highly charged, poorly reasoned decisions that ends in them committing suicide. It’s a warning to and about the pitfalls of impetuous, rash choices made by children, over the course of a few days, lest we forget the timeline of this story. It is a tragedy, not a guide.
“The Scarlet Letter” cannot be quickly summed here, but its basic premise as a classic of American literature, is one that deals with prejudice, sin, guilt, the violation of social norms, and repentance, among other themes. Hester Prynne has an affair with a man who is not her husband and conceives a child. As a punishment for having a child out of wedlock, and the commission of a sin, Prynne is forced to pin a scarlet ‘A’ to her dress in public, and endure the community’s scorn, contempt, and shunning. The novel deals with her efforts to repent and atone for the sin, despite the hardships she endures. This is a gross oversimplification, but in no capacity is a song about two teenagers in love, prone to their overactive emotions, related to a woman who has committed a sin, violated her covenant of marriage to her husband, and is being publicly shunned by her religious community … well, relevant. The lyrics of the song don’t really give much clue as to why this boy the narrator is infatuated with is bad or why her father disapproves. Generally, fathers disapproving of boys with bad reputations have good reasons, if they’re not helicopter knee-jerk, or controlling. They do so because they love their child and are looking out for her welfare. Good, intentional parents and guardians do that. And despite the stereotypes, if you remember what teenage boys are like, often they do stupid things and will hound girls they date (not all of them) for sex. It wasn’t my experience, but more than enough of my high school friends related their experiences and it did not always sound pleasant. Good dads know what’s what.
“Reputation” and “Lover”
As I have said, I am not a fan, and am not going to deeply dive into all of Swift’s lyrics.
But my curiosity was piqued. Who is this cultural juggernaut that hundreds of thousands of fans (more likely millions, but I like to be conservative in my estimates), the world over, pack stadiums and pay for vastly overpriced, inflated tickets to see?
While doing the mundane but satisfying task of dishes and kitchen cleanup, I listened through “Reputation” and almost all of “Lover”. At the time of its release, “Reputation” was not well-received, if I remember correctly, and had quite a bit of scorn and mud slung at it. From my not-a-fan-don’t-give-a-damn listen whilst working, it was a surprisingly good album. She’s good with a catchy turn of clever phrase, and does turn things in ways that one doesn’t expect.
“Look What You Made Me Do” is supposed to be a riff on betrayal and vengeance on people who hurt and use, as well as commentary how she can no longer trust the people around her, the same with “I Did Something Bad”. “Don’t Blame Me”, “Delicate”, and “Gorgeous” were all catchy in their various riffs on romantic relationships.
But it’s more than catchy hooks and interesting lyrics.
For a long time, I’ve felt about Taylor Swift the way I do about most “fadish”-like things — be it “Hamilton”, “Wicked”, or “Hairspray”, which all enjoyed cult-like levels of obsession by the theater kid, well-to-do snobs who thought they were cool because they loved “cool thing” and could rub it in your nose because you had not attended a performance or seen it or, in my case, generally didn’t know what it was until it bled through into non-hype culture so thoroughly it could not be ignored, even if you were under a rock. Call me a weird nerd, but I like my movies and music with a dash of cult-status and off-beat storytelling, though there are more than a few that were only worth watching once, and some I will never watch because of the content — here’s looking at you “Event Horizon”.
Her music is flashy and shiny, and it’s over-saturation makes my angsty, secret Daria-feeling self roll my eyes and crack jokes at the things’ expense.
Playing to One’s Strengths
Taylor Swift is a performer; she knows how to use what she has well to great effect. She is not a phenomenal vocalist. I’ve heard women in my choir with greater range and nearly as many years of experience sing better; but technical proficiency and skill is not quite the same as emotional expression and the wielding of that like a scalpel, versus a cudgel.
On a cold listen, it strikes me that Swift’s lyrics do a couple of things.
They tell a story.
They often tap into the experiences of women in the modern world as we currently experience it.
They give voice and permission to a range of dark emotional complexities current modern young women feel related to their modern experiences with dating, love, sex, and relationships.
More than a far share of the songs I listened to on those two albums (“Reputation” and “Lover”) were about romantic relationships and love (or lust) in some form. Many of them detailed wanting someone who doesn’t want you, envy, toying with someone, being toyed with, vengeance, revenge.
To listen is to vicariously live out the emotional trappings of vices we’re often discouraged from engaging in, though a more skillful Christian commentator than myself would probably effectively make the case that such transgressive permission to envy, vengeance, pettiness, and revenge have already been approved of and even championed for quite some time now. Her lyrics are catchy, and they speak to those longing, (mostly) lustful desires women are often “discouraged” from engaging in.
I would offer a counter argument that frankly, all these “forbidden” and “taboo” elements of love, lust, revenge, and desire, have already been broken to such an extent in the culture, that it is the accepted and encouraged norm. The idea of puritan views on chastity, humility, charity, forgiveness, and reconciliation are not the norm. They may be called for by celebrities and politicians, but the words ring hollow when the implicit, connotative meaning has been subverted to the point that subversion is the standard.
But the love Swift speaks about is not real love.
It’s often limerence (crushes) on people she cannot have but longs for, tawdry drunken nights with drunken confessions, friendships that messily delve into the relationship status of romantic entanglement that she is now glad for. They often sound like the pining of an adolescent girl, unsure of what she wants, driven deeply by her feelings, despite a level of self-awareness that she struggles not to repeatedly make bad decisions again and again.
The Reality of Swift’s Relatability
It’s difficult to speak for an entire fanbase, one I am not part of, but if I had to stake a guess, it is because she gives voice to these types of feelings and experiences that we may have had, shamefully (or not), as permissible, normal, acceptable, and average. They make her achingly human and relatable to the fans that identify with the experiences she sings of.
But as relatable as Swift or Swifties want her to be, she isn’t. I heavy skimmed this review of Paul Fussell’s “Class” by
, and it is worth a read, for it is an interesting and far ranging take on the relevance of his work on American’s understanding of themselves and the social class values they were raised with. We’ll use this framework of class values and attitudes to do a little assessment of the relatability of Swift to her fans.Swift had parents who were both involved in finance/banking, and were likely relatively well-to-do, enough so that they relocated when she was an adolescent to Nashville for her to pursue a career in music. Most people do not do this, and the only folks I have ever heard do this, at least these days, are ones with financial means, or some other kind of support. Swift exists in the top-tier echelon of the 1% of wealth. She’s worth over a billion dollars. And like members of her wealth class, she has views and values that are generally supported by other members of her class, and are not views that dictate her day-to-day in the same way. This woman could buy multiple jets, numerous pieces of haute couture fashion, Balenciagas, and probably even have her entire bathroom gilded in gold and diamonds.
This is not a person who is relatable to the general struggles of men or women in the working classes, let alone the middle classes. It was fun to hear her talk on several interviews about her love of making sourdough bread, but for anyone who has ever made sourdough bread using traditional levain and rising methods, depending on the type, some bread doughs recipes require an enormous amount of time and effort. One day of an eight to twelve hour rise, followed by proofing for a few more hours, knead, proof, knead, rise, then bake. Some recipes I have read require a two day rise and subsequent proofs and kneads into the second day. In my case, I use einkorn because I can let the levain do its thing overnight and then have it kneaded and ready to bake in about two hours the next morning. The average working class, or even professional class person that has to be in an office from 9-5 would likely struggle to do that — not accounting for drive time to work eating into their day as well. For the record, most cooking and recipes of the classical variety were developed at a time when people were working in the home, such as farms, craftsmen, and cottage industries. Modern working life makes that kind of access and time at home difficult, unless you do it on the weekends, and are not busy with children, school, and extracurriculars.
My point is, if we think about her professional presentation with a sober reality, Swift, like many celebrities, has a level of leisure and wealth that allows her to set her own schedule in a way most of us can only dream, and will likely never achieve, perhaps only in retirement, even then. She has a team to support her on her shows, and I would not be surprised if she had a staff to clean, cook, and maintain her multiple residences. Even if she were to stop performing tomorrow, she would have enough wealth between her and her fiancé to stay at home and raise kids. That seems unlikely, given her work ethic and at a spiritual level, she has a vocation to be a creative, though judgement on how she uses those creatives talents is a different discussion and conversational tone entirely.
A muddled, mediocre thing
So with all of this in mind, let us back track to “The Life of a Showgirl”. Had I listened to “Reputation” and “Lover” first, I’m not sure if I would have reached the conclusion I’m going to offer, and it isn’t earth shattering. Personally, I find Swift’s pop music morally empty with the turpitude values of our time, and fairly vapid at its surface level; it’s catchy and I’d listen to some of the songs as a guilty pleasure, like a few rap songs I have in a private play list I share with no one and admit to no one that I like.
The album was genuinely mediocre, if we’re comparing her lyrical stylings and orchestration to previous works. Even listening to it for a first time sampling, I found it lacking, and frankly, vulgar. Other songs she’d written, such as “…Ready for it?” aren’t even a heavy implication toward sex; on “Showgirl” it’s absolutely direct. But to what effect?
Being crass without being poetic is just vulgarity dressed up in synths and breathy vocals. “Wood” is exactly as clear a reference as I’m going to give; you can look up the lyrics yourself.
What’s different this time around is the unabashed use of direct reference. At least in prior works, there was a cleverness in the innuendo. In “False God”, catchy, subversive, a little more than sacrilegious, she says “I’m New York” and later, “You’re the West Village”. If you’ve never been to New York, like myself, these references go over one’s head. The West Village is inside of New York; crass as it may be in the reference, it is hidden and clever, whether one likes it or not.
The argument currently being made is that Swift’s art has declined in quality because she’s happy, and it is, certainly, easier to access painful emotions and write evocatively of them. There’s a madness and a genius in grief, but the emotions of joy and happiness are no less potent and wonderful. It is the way we go about the expression of them that elevates art from pulp or pornography. It is the intent, the values and beliefs that drive it.
What is the art attempting to accomplish? To feel, to think, to challenge?
What is it saying?
What are the means, the methods, and the ends of the art?
Is it simply to shock?
Is it to elevate? If so, elevate to what, where, and, to whom, if a specific individual is borne in mind?
Swift is a master at using words to convey theme and vibe, tapping into the ennui, dissatisfaction, desire, frustration, and longing of the female heart — and more than a few men too, who probably also like her music and the emotional tales they paint. She is a pop singer for this era, no pun intended on her tour name. As adolescent the longings of her romantic stylings often come across (to me, can’t speak for anyone else), it seems apropos that she is a member of a generation that was one of if not the first to have a delayed adulthood and extended adolescence well into one’s mature years. It would be remiss to not acknowledge that element of her popularity and staying power. Then again, sex, love, partying, power (it’s pursuit, celebration, or loss) — these often make the most splash and lasting effect because they speak to the evolutionary elements that has driven our species for millennia. But simply because a message or piece of art taps into so primal a feeling doesn’t make it good, or the ends it is trying to achieve good or good for us.
Christian or not though, we have to consider the spiritual dimension of what we consume and how it shapes our internal state — psychologically and emotionally, too.
A former roommate of mine was very careful about what she read because many romance novels feature a lot of either, directly sexual or heavily implied sexual content, and it had such a state on her spiritual life that she didn’t consume it since it upset her equilibrium of peace. This was a woman who had spent several years discerning to be a nun, so I trusted her judgement of herself in understanding how elements of the world bled in and rattled her hard-won peace.
For me, as a RC, it is the slavering, blathering obsessive cult-like fanaticism that she is some kind of secret genius of the ‘“who is just like me” mentality that irks me. Personally, I disagree, and think her genius lies in catchy pop hooks and tapping into overwrought emotionality. I say this as a woman who has had book club discussions over Jane Austen (all her works) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (“The Gulag Archipelago”) derailed by a random aside attempting to relate Taylor Swift’s work to said literary work being discussed.
I, genuinely, kid you not.
“The Fate of Ophelia”, I think the main single from the album, is not the most egregious song example she’s ever written, but it too, is an intellectually dishonest portrayal of its reference material, as we have discussed, like so many of her other literary references. Swift referred to Ophelia in one interview as “a woman who dies for love”.
She’s a woman who commits suicide because Hamlet, in his thirst for vengeance against his uncle for murdering his father the king, encourages her madness and drives her away. His lust for “justice” has the effect of destroying everyone around him, including this woman that he loves. Ophelia is not some woman in a white tower wasting away, to paraphrase the lyrics. She’s not waiting for Travis Kelce to use his magic wand to save her because she’s heartbroken. The song so badly mischaracterizes Ophelia and her downfall as to be nearly laughable. Despite it’s catchiness, the song can be nothing other than intellectual charlatanism.
But truth and intellectual integrity is not what sells. What sells is a vibe and a shiny package covered in cellophane.
Swift’s music is seductive, but, while it is grounded in answering those kernels of truth to the human spirit and it’s struggle for love, validation, justice in the face of wrongdoing — it goes about reaching its ends via means that I don’t think are healthy in the long-run. At least for myself, if I keep listening to her work. To me, it’s emotional porn for women, satisfying the craving of validating a want of “an eye for an eye”. “The Life of a Showgirl” in contrast to her other work is not the same, and perhaps it shouldn’t be, but from an artistic standpoint, it is a step down.
🫧 🧼 Housekeeping 🧼 🫧
Man, wasps are not a joke. For the past three weeks, we’ve had continuing issues with our house that have been a trial.
Both toilets in our house failed at the same time — which, if you know anything about owning houses and appliances, things installed around the same time will usually fail within a few months or a year or so of one another. Just for any prospective future home owners out there who buy a house with old appliances.
Anyway, back to the wasps.
Every few days, I would find some kind of stinging insect in the baby’s room. It became such a recurrent pattern, that after I found them three out of four days in the room, I had a mom-panic moment and called the pest people. We found nothing in the attic crawlspace. However, on surveying outside the opposite side of the house, Pest Man spotted about 10 different spots where there was heavy activity.
So they came out a few days later and dusted those suckers. Hopefully, we will not have any more wasp issues.
The wasps and the toilet issues rather heavily delayed me for … a while. And I have badly lost my buffer, so I am working to build that back up, but things breaking down throw a wrench in plans often, particularly if baby nap time (writing time) is interrupted by service people coming into the house who need to investigate and work on various parts of the house. The cost of plumbing repair and purchasing new toilets set us back from purchasing a new refrigerator, so that …. will take a little time to build up again as well.
The house is more than a hundred years old, and we’re not really sure when the toilets were installed. But the upstairs bathroom has this really interesting plastic tile. I’ve never seen plastic bathroom tile on the walls before, so … as pretty a color as it is, it is an interesting choice to say the least, one that is cracking and falling off in ways that ceramic does not.
Large wolf spiders chilling in my kitchen sink, on the other hand, are a different problem entirely.
Ah, the joys of country living.
Never a dull moment here.
So, until the end of the world,
🕊️ Pax Christi 🕊️