The Taylor Swift essay that didn't make the cut
My book's words that were missing about my favorite sets of words as a Swiftie
One in a Millennial Deleted Scene: "WordSwift"
Part of the reason I wanted to start this newsletter was to share excerpts that never made it into my book, One in a Millennial. Today, I wanted to share a mini-essay I started years ago that was the basis for a podcast episode called "WordSwift" that I never released but kept in my back pocket, feeling like the concept may be stronger as a written piece. It didn't really work for either; referring to lyrics can be choppy in writing and weird via audio when you can't use the soundbites, so here we are. While finalizing my first draft at the end of 2022, I dug it out of my notes and updated it with her more recent discography (since I loved Midnights so much), but still decided not to include it. As the book was coming together, the mini-chapters (called "pop-up biblios") needed to make sense contextually, and I only had two ideas before the deadline. First, it was going to be an ode to her wordplay and lyrics based on "WordSwift," then I rewrote it into a version called "Taylor Made" because I needed an interstitial after the chapter "Kate Expectations.” I thought it might make more sense to focus on the emotional validation that comes from her music and talk about the times "Taylor Made" me feel okay, rather than just detail her word usage that excites me. I'm not going to lie; co-opting a well-known golf brand for something girly (that dudes who played golf made fun of me for) excited me too.
In case you're interested in my logic for what did/didn't make the cut, part of my concern was the tediousness of reading lyrics in this format, and part of it was how upset superfans can be when you do lyrical analyses, and your interpretation doesn't match theirs. I feared relating them back to my own life would come across as a projection more than a celebration. Instead of fangirling over one artist in a more dedicated fashion, I decided that I'd just let myself have plenty of references to her lyrics throughout the book, many I never acknowledge, to make for a fun reading experience for Swifties and to illustrate the best part about being a fangirl: it adds value to your life and scores your experiences. My brain can't help but process things in the form of Taylor Swift song lyrics, and I wanted to be an example of a person who is proud of that side of myself and, therefore, comfortably interspersed with prose.
Even though I still fear this reads a little corny and it's quite unpolished, I figured who better to share it with than the Beths, who share my love for lyrics and support me despite my wordiness. I've combined what I had written from the two concepts below, in case you're interested in getting reacquainted with Taylor's wordsmithing, especially as we get closer to The Tortured Poets Department in just a few short weeks! Enjoy and share your favs in the comments :)
Deleted Scene: WordSwift
Now that we're two-thirds of the way through the book, it feels like the right time to acknowledge that, yes, I probably have referenced Taylor Swift lyrics in passing no less than twenty times. I love to embed them into sentences and stories because that's how embedded they are in my brain; her lyrics have narrated my emotional experiences so perfectly that I'm not always sure where my thoughts end, and her lyrics Begin Again. Over the years, being a super fan of Taylor Swift's music has been a meaningful point of connection between many of my podcast listeners and me, and I feel like we're due for some unapologetic fangirling before we move onto heavier topics. Regardless of the public's (and, at times, my own) ups and downs with her media coverage, marketing machine, and masterminding, I'd rather focus on the one unchanging thing I've cherished since the first time I heard Tim McGraw in my days of going out or out-out: her songwriting.
No wordsmith has ever lived rent-free in my mind quite like Taylor Swift. As a 1987 to her 1989, her career has scored the soundtrack to my adult existence, whether longing for someone from afar, falling in love, having my heart broken, needing a revenge anthem, or eventually moving on and (like the evolved queens we are) sending their babies presents. Call it predictable, call it basic, Call It What You Want, I don't really care. People like me don't like her music because everyone else does or because it's top 40 and easily digestible; we like it because her songwriting is like playing that board game, Operation. She verbally cuts open every facet of our being, takes us apart, and puts us back together again, somehow demonstrating a surgical level of dexterity in describing every part of our emotional existence. Yet, we come out of it realizing we participated for leisure.
Like Operation's signature buzz, she'll occasionally go in a different direction and shock you, like the first time you heard the deep voice in the intro to Midnight Rain or the words “fuck the patriarchy” in All Too Well (TMVTVFTV). As much as I love a surprise, like a mention of a "dickhead guy" I didn't see coming, nothing beats the high of getting to celebrate a true woman in STEM when she builds a bridge that serves as an offramp for my soul, eager to leave my body when it hits the brakes too soon.
Her media persona and personal life are so fascinating that sometimes I fall into the trap of waiting for new details with clickbaited breath and forget what it's all about; the music. Honestly, the thing I like most about her (that often gets featured the least) is her creative use of language; I find the way she uses literary devices, wordplay, metaphors, and pop cultural references worthy of AP lit class levels of dissection. She makes things make sense in ways I wouldn't think to describe them, yet I am delighted by their delivery. For example, I love the combining of idioms, like, "the ties were black, the lies were white," or when she pairs idioms to make a portmanteau, like "I get dressed to kill my time," "my kingdom come undone," or "double-cross my mind." I also am into the creative use of a homonym, like "we never painted by the numbers, babe, but we were making it count" in The 1 or "the lips I used to call home" in Maroon. Fortunately, when it comes to wordplay, there's no rust that grew between homophones in her discography; a particular favorite of mine is the use of currant/current. Like sensing notes of currant in a bold (yet unassuming) glass of red, her use of "lost in your current like a priceless wine" in Willow hits it on the nose.
I appreciate how her songs describe simple or common feelings so artfully through understandable metaphors; she may be one of the biggest pop stars in the world, but she writes about the common denominators of our experiences. For example, a theme I've noticed is that she's not a person who particularly "forgives and forgets," nor am I. I mean, I'm the brand of 'chill' that remembers things like being ridiculed for putting up the wrong lyrics to Thong Song on my away message and then writes about it in a book 25 years later (see chapter three), so the line "I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put 'em" makes me feel understood to my core. I often think about it when I hold a small grudge that I convince myself is healthy. Another example of finding the magic in life's minutiae is how a particular scene is described in Champagne Problems. Sure, she could've sung, "Everything you touch turns to gold; I like when you open my car door and give me your shirt when I'm cold." But she wrote, "Your Midas touch on the Chevy door, November flush, and your flannel cure," which strikes the coziest of chords, almost like a form of auditory hygge.
In college, Fearless debuted, and I was already obsessed, but my lyrical loyalty was cemented two albums later in Speak Now with a song called Last Kiss. Even though she was a celebrity explaining the experience of watching her ex's life through tabloids, it still translated to an everygirl like me, sitting in a college dorm, watching someone's life in Facebook pictures like you used to watch them sleep, even if it is a little Edward Cullen of you. The specificity of these lyrics compels me the most; it’s palpable, the feeling of wishing somebody would love you who left you and the hopelessness of still having feelings after they've called it quits. Sometimes, all that you know is you don't know how to be something they miss.
In the interest of a "pop-up biblio" mini-chapter, I mostly picked a handful of lyrics that (for me) have cut deep, but to be clear, I like them light too; e.g., the relatability of "went home and tried to stalk you on the internet," "darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream," or my favorite made up word for the sake of a solid end rhyme, "pubwe." However, as I typed that, I'd say it's tied with "we'll move to an island-and-and he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor," which combines the end rhyme with the first word of the next stanza, finishing off with a chef's kiss reference to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
I love these passing references to pop culture and other works, like how misty I feel listening to "I knew you, tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy" in Cardigan, or how surprised and satisfied I was by the allusion to Carrie in the bridge of You're on Your Own Kid (again, just my interpretation), when she's back in her hometown, then looks around in a blood-soaked gown and instead of seeking bloody revenge, realizes the best revenge is living well; everything you lose is a step you take. But she's got bloody range, too; one of my favorites is an allusion to English romanticism, where she writes, "tell me what are my words worth" in the song The Lakes, referencing one of the greats (William Wordsworth) in a song about poets.
In Cowboy Like Me, a number that took me a while to appreciate (but now I'm enamored by), she refers to the Gardens of Babylon. Once one of the Seventh Wonders of the Ancient World, these hanging gardens are now perceived by many historians as mythical; the lack of archeological evidence lends itself to the concept being more of a "historical mirage." My interpretation is that it's somewhat of a parallel to how a person may look back on a previous relationship, where the love lost has created a desert-like landscape between two people (not unlike the suspected climate of the gardens), and it hardly seems like believable terrain for the vitality that once existed in their relationship. Was it all an illusion? I interpret her saying someone hangs "from my lips like the Gardens of Babylon" and "forever is the sweetest con" to mean she both believes in and doubts what once was. Or perhaps what's real to her is a thing of myths to others, on the grounds of lacking evidence besides artistic depictions, much like how we've gathered information about the hanging gardens throughout history. As a 90s kid, I secretly hope this lyric is also referencing the Edwin McCain classic many of us millennials scream-cried when it came on the radio, acting like we knew what the hell it meant to "hang from your lips, instead of the gallows of heartache that hang from above."
I mentioned previously that Elle Woods' beauty-schooling us with ammonium thioglycolate was a "Millennial Moon Landing" (see also: when LC didn't go to Paris, Jacob Black imprinted on a literal infant, and everything about Beyonce's Homecoming, to name a few). Another one of these "where were you when" moments for me was hearing All Too Well (TMVTVFTV) for the first time and hearing the line, "You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath." The use of secrets and oaths to convey the subjective sanctity of a relationship is so interesting to me. The feelings she expressed to her ex were so sincere she'd solemnly swear by them, attesting to their truth through a metaphorical pledge of allegiance to the relationship, bearing all consequences. The keeping of a secret is a social contract or promise one can easily break, whereas an oath is more like a vow you take, and while one person kept the relationship hidden as a sign of their devotion, the other kept it as a secret to maintain a level of disassociation.
While I usually understand what she's saying right away, that's not always the case; it took me roughly six months to understand the layers upon layers of metaphors used in the song Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince, but I was satisfied enough by the turns of phrase "If boys will be boys then where are the wise men?" and "the damsels are depressed" to carry me through my confusion. I'm pretty sure I'm still not smart enough to understand the song fully, but I like it that way. They say to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, and I like to think this applies to surround sound, too.
Outside of romantic love, some lyrics beautifully articulate the experience of grief as well. Even though I've only managed to listen to Marjorie max three times because it fills me with despair, the beauty of the lyric "should've kept every grocery store receipt, 'cause every scrap of you would be taken from me" in the context of grief is devastatingly good. Sometimes, reflecting upon the everyday, insignificant things you took for granted can sting the most, and the artifacts or memories you'd easily dispose of in their presence become the things you'd most treasure in their absence. However, the true pièce de résistance for me in this emotional category is the concept of Right Where You Left Me. It's an incredibly poignant metaphor for feeling stuck in a moment of trial or tragedy like no time has passed at all, and mentally, you're the same age, still at the restaurant, and have yet to thaw from a moment of shock. Later in the book, I'll share what this moment was for me, and I'm so grateful to have such a pointed parallel for trauma when you're not ready to process it at the moment, leaving you frozen in time, sitting in the corner you haunt.
In Peace, she wrote, "The devil's in the details, but you've got a friend in me. Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?" — this may be the single-most healing line of music I've ever listened to. Not only do I love the use of "devil's in the details" in combination with "you've got a friend in me," but I also appreciate the self-actualized nature of this song. While marked by inner turmoil, the narrator almost seems at peace with never being able to give their partner peace, and is asking in a very Elizabeth Schuyler fashion if "that would be enough." For those of us who live in the weeds and desperately wish to see the forest through the trees, while wrestling with our flaws that are also features making us deft in our creativity, Peace hits different. Per the chapter "Serotonin, Plain and Tall," a melancholic disposition can be burdensome for a partner to bear, and while peace is the thing we crave the most, it's the one thing we don't have to offer. At a point in life, you realize you may not change and wonder if you're enough as you are. Things were much simpler when our tears didn't ricochet, and we just had to worry about them falling on guitars.
I think "I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere" in Mirrorball is such an interesting way to think about the cycle of perfectionism, and how overvaluing external validation for excellence when you're young can become a thankless trap. "I knew you'd haunt all of my what ifs" from Cardigan is perhaps the most beautiful way I can think to describe looking back on a situation that could have been, and "to live for the hope of it all, cancel plans just in case you'd call" from August is literally my entire adolescence in one stanza. I had so much anxiety about making plans with people when I was dating, and sometimes I'd sit at home on weekends because I was so afraid if I declined a suitor's hypothetical invite, I'd lose my only chance. Back then, we didn't have "if he wanted to, he would," so my lonely heart accepted my fate, cast away as someone's last resort, hoping to get at least a base tan while I waited for them to warm up to me.
Of course, I'm not saying my interpretations are correct, nor are my experiences similar at all to hers, but my broader point is how the clever use of words endears me to her music on the surface, but I also think part of her skill is to articulate common experiences and layer them with poetic deeper meanings that are open to interpretation, therefore able to be applied to anyone's life. I believe this is the entire point; to quote her in the 1989 foreword, "These songs were once about my life. Now they are about yours."
While I could wax poetic about T. Swift as a world-renowned wordsmith all day, there's something more profound about being a 'fangirl' of her music that often gets overlooked. Her lyrics gave people like me permission to be earnest in a time when the social currency was coolness and when coolness was directly correlated to how little you cared. These albums became a safe space to feel my feelings, a place where I didn't feel ashamed of my intensity, and I could honor my emotional responses without dismissing them as being dramatic or overreacting. Oftentimes, the more upset you are, the more pathetic you're made to feel through interrogations designed to quantify if your reaction is proportionate to what happened. How long were you together? Were you even official? What did he do? How long ago did you break up?
Society is quick to call girls' crazy' or 'obsessed' before considering when someone rocks then wrecks your world, they leave, but you clean up the mess. Or, to quote myself in an alarming mid-aughts journal entry after being ignored by someone I can't even remember, "Maybe we didn't date for long, but you flew off the tarmac while I cleaned up a bomb." (You okay, girl?) In my defense (I have none), but I'm convinced this surveillance of our emotional responses is why so many of us were avid journalers; when you often feel written off, you have no choice but to write it down if you want to process your thoughts.
The topics her songs cover represent common experiences like romance, friendship, heartbreak, etc., but the intensity and specificity of her lyrics validate perhaps the most universal experience of all: having a complex inner world we so rarely reveal that we think her lyrics were written just for us. When I was younger, it often felt like my self-esteem and spirit would be slowly crushed in silence, and I feared that expressing my feelings would make me labeled as crazy, desperate, or the mid-2000s sexist zinger, a "stage-5 clinger," simply because I told someone how I felt, asked to define the relationship, or called/texted one too many times. I had to spend all my time dating pretending I didn't care, like I was totally chill with hooking up, lying through my wine-stained teeth that I also didn't want to settle down.
The media treatment of Taylor Swift in the early part of her career reinforced why we needed her music in the first place; her earnestness and openness weren't applauded; many people referred to her behavior as 'cringey' (an adjective all over many millennials, like a wine-stained bandage dress we can't wear anymore). For years, focusing on her songwriting skills was sidelined to make room for speculating about her intentions, how writing songs about her exes and life must be petty and manipulative; how dare she seek so much attention. Looking back, I'm kind of amazed she persevered and made each album more honest than the next despite all the criticism, and I'm even more grateful for how she doubled down on her earnestness, exposing her inner world while providing us fellow cringey gals an emotional safe haven. But even as an older, more confident version of myself, her work still resonates. I think I speak on behalf of many HSPs when I say it was a tough look in the Mirrorball when she sang the words, "I can change everything about me to fit in" and "I've never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try." I feel like those of us who do the most have the least amount of anthems, and I'm genuinely haunted by how depressing a disco ball can look in the light of day.
It's remarkable to me that for almost two decades, she's regularly released relatable narratives in three minutes that would take me three hundred pages to explain. It shows her level of skill and her posture of empathy for understanding so many different elements of the human experience well enough to express them with the ultimate sign of mastery: simplicity. Something that sentence was not.
Even though I easily fall into the trap of being consumed with her media coverage, when I zoom out, it’s all about how her music zooms in on the invisible experiences of girlhood. I can't wait until we find ourselves back in a stadium, shoulder to shoulder with girls of all ages, screaming from the top of our lungs, "You call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest," and realize how it is beautiful, and sad, that we likely once processed these feelings alone, but now together can reclaim them aloud. Back then, and still today, it's nice to have a friend in the moments when you'd like to be your old self again, but you're still trying to find it, reminding you that it's never too late to be brand new.
In 2021, I started having dance parties after my podcast live shows that only played Taylor Swift music, calling them Track 5 (since I have a 5 in my brand name and those are some of my favorite deep-cut TS tracks). I’ll never forget looking out into the crowd and being nearly moved to tears, watching people make friends, fangirl, scream-sing, and just allow themselves to exist in their truest form: belting the bridge of Dear John at a bar in a fun top with sensible shoes. It was honestly moving, as if I was watching people reassign their heartbreaks that they associated with these songs to this current moment; the making of a new memory grounded in friendship, fandom, and community, collectively striking a match on all our wasted time, shining like fireworks over their sad, empty towns.
When I first heard of the concept of Midnights, I couldn't wait as a person who has trouble sleeping, especially to see if my musings from "Back in the Daybed" (which I had already written) applied. Sure enough, in Anti-Hero, she says, "Midnights become my afternoons," which is the Up All Night Club™'s battle cry. But I don't think I've loved a new song so much in years as much as I love You're On Your Own, Kid, which I've been listening to constantly while finishing up this book. If the idea of being on your own doesn't put the One in One in a Millennial, I don't know what does. "Make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it, you've got no reason to be afraid" will probably remain one of my favorite melodic builds and bridges of her career because of what it meant to me writing this millennial manifesto, and for the way it healed former versions of me, that hosted parties, starved my body, and chased male validation like I'd be saved by a perfect kiss. Thanks to Taylor, I'm not on my own, kid. And I never have been.
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Hope this was charming (if a little gauche),
P.S. Don’t forget to listen to this week’s Be There in Five podcast episode, Bubble Bubble Bubble Bubble Pop Culture. It’s a classic solo snorkel episode about Ms. Rachel, book bans, cafeteria lunches, questionable pop songs, millennial hand-slapping games, and more!
P.P.S. Did you know all the sponsor codes for my podcast are on my website? So is my Amazon storefront with baby products and merch, including the One in a Millennial tour sweatshirt we now have back in stock (below). Money please!!! Jk.
Bye!
“…it often felt like my self-esteem and spirit would be slowly crushed in silence…”Oof.
Such a good read. This makes me understand my love of TS and her wordsmithing better. Just like TS lyrics, after I read this I’ll go back to the start and begin again. 🫶🏼
"the ultimate sign of mastery: simplicity"
* chef kiss *