I can’t help writing this! I’m sorry. This whole newsletter is actually about why I’m sorry! But also why I’m hopeful. And also Taylor Swift.
First, the news everyone knows: Taylor Swift just released her eighth album, folklore, and it’s a smash.
I like it! I’m a TSwift fan, though not a stan. I loved Red, and I have it on vinyl even though I don’t own a record player (???). When 1989 came out, I had just gotten dumped but perceived myself to be “fine” until I listened to it twice in a row at midnight; the first time I kept laughing, and the second time I cried inconsolably. It was crazy and borderline transcendent?
I have often listened to Taylor Swift and learned something new about my feelings. This tweet was good…
… and I feel like I have a neutrally-holy cord — an invisible string ;) — linking me to Taylor Swift, too. I think it helps that we’re the same age, so we kind of grew up together. I didn’t go through quite the fairytale / princess / white horse iconography phase that she did, but I also had a very active imagination that obstructed my IRL dating life, and got very self-righteous at inappropriate times, and yearned, and blamed other women when men didn’t like me, and masked feelings of disappointment in chillness until they curdled into weird disproportionate rage.
Those are all Taylor Swift’s favorite feelings and activities! So I feel very connected to Taylor Swift, and I see my flaws in her flaws. I didn’t love Reputation (too bitter and like… defensively sexy) or Lover (I felt like she wanted someone to make it into a musical but no one did??? Love “The Archer” though!), but now folklore feels like a nutritious meal after several years of tortilla chips and I am here for it.
So why do I feel sorry for writing about her music? Well. When I say I like Taylor Swift’s music, I feel like people often hear “I like her brand.” Which is a huge thing that’s only like 1 percent music, at this point — and her brand has problems.
For a long time, her brand was all about a clueless, not-intersectional feminism that hinges on heavily-choreographed and -Instagrammed parties. She has done some awkward cultural appropriation and objectification of Black women — remember when she crawled through twerking Black dancers’ legs in the “Shake It Off” video? — and never really reckoned with it.
She’s also a very strategic businesswoman in a way that makes her music feel very… commercial. Unusually commercial. Like, the video for her first folklore single, “cardigan,” ends with her putting on… a literal cardigan. Which feels a bit on the nose. Then if you go to her merch store, you realize you can buy that exact cardigan for $49? So it’s like, which came first, the merch or the song?
It’s especially unsettling because the word in that song that feels most shoehorned-in to me, in terms of rhyme scheme and themes, might be… “cardigan.” :-/
This is mostly extra-musical context, but it flavors The Discourse about her music, and especially my personal discourse about her music with cishet men (I’m going to just call them “men” for the rest of this, for concision). I often date or find myself just like ~around~ men who are really into music. Sometimes a certain genre — sometimes all of it! I think of them as The Music Men.
Often, if I tell them I like Taylor Swift, it’s weird.
It’s sort of a chicken-or-egg phenomenon, because I bring her up in this defensive, ironic crouch, where I’m like, “Haha, I have terrible taste in music! But what can I say, I like Taylor Swift.” Why do I do this? It’s a trap. But it’s still disappointing when the Music Men take the bait and say, “Haha, yes, you’re an adorable idiot! She’s not a real musician. We’re laughing together!”
It’s wild — even if the man in question is a “self-identified” “feminist” (god forbid) he will find some roundabout way to say she’s not a real musician. Her work is derivative; her lyrics are corny; she’s “too pop”; her music is for kids; whatever.
It bugs me because they rarely know her work. They know her brand, and that’s what they’re really connoisseurs of: music brands. More than they want music to move them, they want it to have the right cultural significance. (This type of pseudo-taste is not specific to men or music, but roll with me here.) They’re like: Do other guys like it? Ideally guys slightly cooler than me? Is it getting good Pitchfork reviews?
In Taylor Swift’s case: no and no. Her audience is overwhelmingly young and female and (at her shows) crying — the exact opposite of cool guys. And Taylor Swift has historically had trouble getting any Pitchfork reviews; Red came out in 2012, and scored a Pitchfork 9.0, but not until 2019, the year Pitchfork heard about sexism.
But if The Music Men were really into music as an ~art form~, none of that would matter!
So it feels funny and righteous right now that with the folklore release, the gap between “being into music as a personal branding device” and “actually being into music” is… extra visible. Taylor worked with Aaron Dessner of The National on folklore, and he apparently has no problem loving The National’s music and Taylor Swift’s music. Even though Taylor Swift’s brand is “music for angry and hopeful young women, the Top 40, and Diet Coke ads,” which does not really reinforce the National’s brand, “music for freshly-divorced guys to drink to.”
Dessner said to Pitchfork, of Taylor’s music:
I’ve always admired her craftsmanship and talent. But 1989 was the first one I was really listening to as a fan. My brother [Bryce Dessner, guitarist in the National] and I were in Iceland with [performance artist] Ragnar Kjartansson, and he’s a total Swiftie. It was the summer of 1989, and we’d be hanging out listening to it loud. Ragnar is an art historian, so he was just contextualizing every moment. It was a lot of fun. That’s when we became bigger fans.
I love that he calls the summer of 2016 “the summer of 1989.” It really was!
I think of Dessner’s fans, on the other hand, as the very men who refuse to understand Taylor Swift is a talented songwriter and bridge architect and guitarist and performer (and and and) because they’re that obsessed with distancing their personal brands from her brand, and, especially, her fan base.
I mean, her fans are an indelible part of her brand. This will never not be part of what I think of when I think of Taylor Swift:
“I’m really grateful that [Taylor] asked me on that tour,” Charli [XCX] says. “But as an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up on stage and waving to 5-year-olds.”
(She’s not wrong. Kids show up for Taylor Swift.)
This will never not be part of Taylor’s brand, either:
But there’s a difference between truly loving music and loving aligning your personal brand with music brands. And I’m sure Dessner has his problems, but he seems to do the former, and the way he talks about Taylor as a peer and collaborator has really been warming my heart!
Here’s two other nice chunks from Dessner’s Pitchfork interview:
We were pretty much in touch daily for three or four months by text and phone calls. Some of it was about production and restructuring things but a lot of it was just excitement. We both felt that this was some of the best work we have done. That was a strange and surreal thing to have happen, especially at this time.
It does feel like an ongoing collaboration. Now Taylor is starting to help with other things. We’re bouncing other ideas off each other, whether it’s Big Red Machine [his band with Bon Iver] or other things. There’s a community aspect. I think that’s how music should be.
I know he’s kind of on her payroll, but he still doesn’t have to say this. I love it! It’s not that I need men to co-sign Taylor Swift for me to fully like her. (L O L! A recipe for misery.) But I would love to one day discuss Taylor Swift with a man who says “She’s not my bag” in a way that doesn’t feel like code for “12-year-old girls are disgusting” or “She’s hysterical and juvenile and if I ever hurt your feelings, I’ll say you are too.”
It could happen!
Outro! Here’s a great folklore podcast where men talk about Taylor in a healthy respectful way. And here’s a good tweet:
And here’s my favorite track from folklore rn:
And last but not least, here’s a pic of me ~radiating madness~ after I saw Taylor Swift live on her 1989 tour :) :) :)
Bye!