Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

"My girlhood just isn’t my most meaningful Era. What I suspect about Taylor — who is only 11 months younger than me — is that her girlhood isn’t hers, either." I think this is spot-on. What I see (as someone who knows very little, couldn't name more than one song, but DOES watch football and therefore has had Taylor thrust into my consciousness) is that she's re-inventing the girlhood she wishes she had and using the longing for the one she didn't as fodder for the rewriting of that experience. Case in point: dating America's most popular football player. Every time I see her in the box I imagine her girlhood fantasy of being a cheerleader dating the BMOC. America's prom king and queen. Also, "squirle." Can't explain it, but that has my heart exploding with joy and affection. #crazy

Expand full comment
Kendall Brown's avatar

I am not even a Swiftie but your thoughts got under my skin and I felt compelled to defend her!! Saying that Taylor Swift's music is a celebration of girlhood completely misses the mark.

I was very much NOT a fan, like you, until 2020 when a friend sent me "Invisible String" and I found it very sweet and inoffensive. I binged the rest of folklore and was delighted. I felt a similar fondness for evermore. I enjoyed midnights (but am offended/baffled that it won album of the year). I have not gone back and listened to any of her work prior to folklore. I don't feel like I'm missing out. I find "Love Story" jarring and pandering. You can say that song is a celebration of girlhood - that's fine. But the magic of Taylor is her ability to reflect on her life and make meaning out of her past.

I'll quote Taffy from her appearance on The Daily (have you listened to this episode? would love to hear your take): "She has these songs that sound like amazing pop songs. She is a songwriting savant. But at some point, if you surround yourself with the music enough, you start to understand what she is doing, which is she is telling the story of girlhood into womanhood. Hmm. And in her songs, I see it. I see her in real time cataloging the experiences of what it means to grow up...

yes, they seem like only love songs. What a great trick that you could write about business betrayal and friendship betrayal in a love song. But then when you land on what is unique about a woman, a girl, a female experience, it's that we tend to And I know I am speaking in a highly subjective way. We tend to take all of that to heart in the same way. You know, times that I've been betrayed in business hurt as much as the times I've been cheated on by boyfriends.

It all lives in the same place. And finally, I don't know why it took so long for somebody to understand that we needed songs about these things. These are the full range of a woman's experience of, of any person's experience. And she channeled it."

As Michael says, "So from early on, from the very beginning, what Taylor Swift is up to is processing the very personal pain of girlhood through her music. It's very biographical. And what you're saying is really distinct about it is that it makes no attempt to glamorize or pretend that these were wonderful times. It's a real admission of just kind of the awfulness of being alive...

What you have clearly just demonstrated is that the Taylor Swift project of internalizing pain and turning it into music has the effect that you're describing on tens of millions of people. It makes them see a anew, a lot of the pain in their lives to look at squarely in the face and to try to better understand it and to have a catharsis around it."

Taffy ends by saying, "Everyone is singing that same lyric and it was something different for everybody. But in that moment, I knew what Taylor Swift has known all along, which is that this emotion is universal. We, the more detail you give, the more I will find myself in it. The more you trust me as a listener and let me into your life, the more I will find myself the way you have rendered a life. And I will be so grateful for the rest of my life to have been able to sing that and to be able to have some sort of catharsis around it. Clearly it wasn't enough. 'cause here I am crying on The Daily, all great art is the art that sees you."

FWIW I was overweight and uncool growing up but I think that's a nonsequitur when discussing the appeal of TS. You don't have to date celebrities and be rail-thin to appreciate her storytelling.

Expand full comment
38 more comments...

No posts