Something that maybe I've kept under wraps for the past two years I've written this blog is that I am a massive Taylor Swift fan. Somedays I wonder if that's because of an internalized misogynistic belief that my being a fan of hers discredits my image as an *intellectual*, but then I remember that I did unironically write a post about Glee, so I'm sure that was never really it.
I'm usually hyperaware of how pretentious I can come across over writing -- when this entire blog is literally dedicated to my shower thoughts, I'm sure there are things unbiased, third parties will read and think, "whoever told her she can write is so deeply wrong." But the one thing I will say, without fear of appearing cocky or condescending, is that my consumption of Taylor Swift as an entity has always been thoughtful. I don't just casually listen to her music, or jump on whatever wave of media attention she's currently riding out. I'm a fan because I feel comfortable criticizing her, and so I guess consider that my sweeping disclaimer as I launch into a new series I'm really excited about:
The Taylor Swift Archives
The idea is that this will be a 13-part series on this blog about various aspects of her life, career, and music. And, in honor of 1989 (Taylor's Version) being reclaimed today, I decided to start with one of the most happy, free, confusing, lonely and just generally exhilarating eras of her entire career: the golden ones.
The Music
1989, as an album, was designed in direct response to Red losing Album of the Year at the 2014 Grammys. The story goes: after creating what she thought was the magnum opus of her career and not winning a single Grammy for it, Taylor woke up in the middle of the night with three facts cemented in her brain about her next record: it will be pop, it will be sonically cohesive, and it will be called 1989. While in retrospect, this isn't a big deal -- she will, after all, shift genres three more times -- at the time, it was an uphill battle for her. When she sent the completed record to her label, they allegedly told her to add "three country songs" to ensure she wouldn't alienate any of her older fans. She refused, a decision that reinforced two key features of this era: 1. she's in control, and 2. she's on a mission.
What she gained in focus, she lost in specificity. The writing her fans grew up loving her for -- details about the colors of the kitchen counter at her boyfriend's mother's house, the precise time she wakes up in the middle of the night, occasionally even a name drop -- all disappear from this new record. In an effort to become a popstar, I believe she deliberately abandoned her roots as a songwriter. This is perhaps a controversial thing for me to say, so let me clarify: I don't think 1989 features any bad writing. The imagery is reminiscent of a younger, less disillusioned Folklore, and I have long subscribed to the idea that the album is pop perfection. However, it's more mass-market, generically applicable, with lyrics about "lights being bright" and "every night being like a dream", rather than the diaristic songwriting she had become known for in her first four records. She uses "we" more than "I", which makes it all the more easy to transpose our lives onto hers -- she once said it herself: "when [the fans] hear the song, I want them to picture their exes, not mine."
There are two central thesis-like lyrics that 1989 is grounded in, and funnily enough, one wasn't even known to us until today, when Slut! was released from the vault. The first is: "you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars / and why I've spent my whole life trying to put it into words," from You Are In Love. Taylor is driven by love and lust -- despite her distinct attempts to distance herself from her reputation as a serial dater during this era, the truth is the concept of love has driven her music forward for the past seventeen years. She wouldn't be a songwriter if she wasn't, to her core, a romantic, even as she knows that she will be crucified for it, over and over and over again.
The second is: "being this young is art." This lyric glitters. It, like the album it belongs to, feels vaguely inspired by the glamorized version of New York that exists only in rom-com characters' minds. It's vivacious and glamorous, embracing the sparkle of it all, the way Taylor herself did during this era, ditching her 1950s A-line skirts for crop tops and high heels. 1989 was her most thematically cohesive album to date, but strangely enough, it wasn't a concept album like she would do later in her career. Why? Because she was young, hot, and finally embracing it. That was a concept enough.
On the original album, Taylor worked with Max Martin and Johan Shellback, two producers that are largely considered to have the Midas Touch when it comes to creating pop masterpieces. She also worked with Jack Antonoff, someone who will later become both a professional partner and personal friend. Even for the music videos, Taylor sought out the experts: she got Joseph Khan to direct Blank Space, a video whose elaborate plot and themes were widely praised by critics and fans alike. Annie Lennox and Peter Gabriel were cited as 1980s-era influences for this work, and their impressions are vaguely felt, but especially given the climate of 2014 mass-produced, radio hit pop music, Taylor was certainly venturing into something completely new.
The Promotion
1989 is one of Taylor's most successful album rollouts ever. She began by cutting her hair short and moving to New York, being photographed daily leaving her house with her groups of gorgeous model friends. She, for the first time, refused to disappear between album cycles -- she posted cryptic pictures of her on the beaches, threw extravagant Fourth of July parties, and appeared on SNL to make fun of her own dating life, thus getting ahead of the joke that had tormented her for so long. She announced the album on a Yahoo! livestream, and afterwards, invited all the fans in attendance to the first Secret Session.
Within the fandom, these Secret Sessions became a marker of how much Taylor Swift loved her fans. What other artist would invite 89 fans to each of her houses, bake them cookies and play them the music months in advance, just to see their reactions live and chat with them about cats and chai? These sessions became self-promotion; after each one, snippets of what the album was like would leak to the media, and the mystique and aura surrounding what Taylor had planned only grew. It's actually largely this highly coordinated PR machine that Taylor ran for years back then that allows her to do what she does now -- drop albums with nothing more than an Instagram post and still break every record, skip out on interviews and communicate solely via easter eggs, etc.
The darker side of this story is that these Secret Sessions began a parasocial relationship between her and her fans that has grown into the cultlike fanaticism that it is today. Conspiracy theories ran rampant, from those speculating that she was bisexual to those joking that she had insured her legs for $10 million. It was this overexposure that eventually led to her downfall -- she became a commodity to be consumed and put on a pedestal for the public's consumption. Everyone loved her, and underneath how gosh darn relatable everyone felt she was, they could sense the disingenuousness, pettiness, and quietly brewing resentment that Taylor possesses in equal measure.
But moreover, fans began competing for personal attention from Taylor in a way that was almost unheard of before. She got a Tumblr and joked around with fans daily, delivered hand-wrapped Christmas gifts to specially chosen listeners, sent out $1,989 in scholarships to fans via Twitter, and generally spent a large amount of energy trying to be as accessible and relatable as possible. And so, as expected, people spent a exhaustive amount of resources trying to be funny, quirky, and chronically online enough to be noticed by Taylor or her team. Never before had she been so close to her fans, something that made her that much more of a phenomenon, but also that much more breakable.
This approach to professional relationships extended beyond fans -- she joked around with journalists about her dating history, calling them out while ensuring they could do nothing but praise her for it. She slammed the media for slut shaming her, and publicly shaded the celebrities that had wronged her. She spoke, for the first time, on how un-normal her life is, commenting on how uncomfortable the paparazzi waiting outside her home made her. This marked departure from her earlier efforts to be the "girl next door" extended to her music, too: by breaking the fourth wall in songs like Blank Space and Shake It Off, Taylor spoke directly to her detractors for the first time. This, while part of the formula for how she became the pop sensation she is today, drew its own judgements: didn't the pap-walks help promote her new album? Isn't she a serial dater? For a girl who was treated like America's Sweetheart, her insistence that she was always the victim caused tensions under the surface of what was otherwise an unimagined career high. Despite being on top of the world, she couldn't seem to shrug off any criticism.
I think a lot of what she experienced back in 2014 is mirrored in her experience today: Taylor is incredibly self-aware and deeply sensitive about what others think of her, especially when they judge things she's insecure about. As she'll later write, she's a "pathological people pleaser," and this does sometimes cause her to over-dramatize minute details in her life, play the victim, seek revenge like a petty grade schooler, and more, all in an effort to stay a shiny mirror-ball forever. But it is possible to be both privileged and a victim, both successful and traumatized, and I believe Taylor is exactly that. It's clear, in retrospect, that her scars from her 2016 fallout with the public run deeper than any of us will ever know. We also know now that she was struggling with an eating disorder at this time, and was likely also anxious and depressed. Looking back, I can see so clearly that she was attempting to make power plays and then throwing literal tantrums they didn't work out, but I can't say I blame her -- after all, she paid the price.
The Persona
Quite possibly the defining feature of her 1989 era was the girl-boss feminism she espoused. From the girl who had always remained staunchly apolitical, Taylor arrived in New York anew: she befriended Lena Dunham and talked about women supporting women in every interview; she brought her model friends out weekly to strut down the runway of her 1989 tour stage, and created a Girl Squad that frequented award shows and celebrity events together; she wrote "girls and girls and boys and boys" in Welcome to New York, a seed that would eventually grow into her fight for queer rights during the Lover era. She said she regretted writing Better Than Revenge, and realized how You Belong With Me was pick-me. For a minute there, supporting Taylor Swift was the most feminist thing one could do.
There is a darker side to this: this feminism was largely plastic. Behind the scenes, she used this expansive network of friends to shut down female journalists who criticized her, and conducted a smear campaign against Katy Perry for some undisclosed conflict they had years prior (ahem John Mayer ahem). She was an exclusionary feminist, and more than once was criticized for using political fights as PR (only when convenient) for her albums and projects.
A lot of these critiques are valid today: for someone who claims to support smaller artists so much, she enacts a Jacksonian-like spoils system when picking protegees and opening acts, feuding with seventeen-year-old Olivia Rodrigo out of fear of competition and surrounding herself almost entirely with yes-men. She damages the environment with extravagant jet usage, aligns herself with unpopular figures like Matty Healy and Todrick Hall, and fails to defend women of color or other marginalized groups. Her choice to "come out" as a Democrat--in 2020, mind you-- was so monumental in her mind it warranted a whole documentary.
I, frankly, treat my celebrities like personal entertainment puppets. Dance for me, you monkeys! I don't really care if they have "the right" opinions on politics or not, and don't expect Taylor Swift to be the mouthpiece for every mission that is good and right in this world. As long as she doesn't say anything bad, I can live with her not doing anything particularly good. That being said, I see the validity in each one of these critiques, and do agree that she ought to stop pretending to be some high-level activist. Her career as a musician and songwriter is plenty, and there is no reason she should act (in 2014 or now) as though she has other grand worldly ambitions. Despite what she said at the Eras tour during pride month, her writing "step on his gown" didn't end transphobia -- and yes, her brands of feminism and advocacy have always been this shallow and inoffensive.
My last point is about Taylor Swift using her 1989 power to fight for dominance within the industry. It began with her battle to make the record entirely pop, despite her label's push to include some country to satisfy fans. Beyond that, she removed all her music from Spotify and wrote a scathing opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal about the value of art and the brutal business practices of the Spotify royalty deals. She encouraged physical sales during a time that actual albums were dying out. She passive aggressively Tweeted at Nicki Minaj when Nicki spoke out against the VMA nominations for not celebrating women of color, and again with Calvin Harris as the era drew to a close. This constant belligerence led her to Kim and Kanye, a battle that would catalyze her downfall.
Strangely enough, she emerged from the Kim and Kanye battle having learned the wrong lesson -- rather than realizing that not everyone can or will like her, and that like Beyonce, she ought to keep her mouth shut and her head out of others' affairs, she seemingly learned that the best way to combat these "bullies" is to simply get ahead of them. She arose from the ashes with reputation a more cunning businesswoman, a more proactive fighter, and more desperate than ever to hold onto the power she could claim. And perhaps that wasn't dangerous in 2018, when she was still deeply unpopular and antisocial. But now, in 2023, as she is reaching her second earth-shattering career high, I wonder how this history will manifest itself...
But that's a story for another day.
Comments
Post a Comment