Date: July 27, 2020
Time of post: 3:25 AM
Quarantine Day: 124
Last Song I Listened To: “this is me trying" by Taylor Swift
Last Person I Communicated With: Snapchatted Jacque (because
she’s the only person awake at this hour)
Last Thing I Ate: double chocolate cheesecake with
dark chocolate gelato
Last Thing I Read: a draft of a short story that Jacque
Boucher wrote and sent to me!
Current Mood: dreamy
because I’m thinking about Taylor Swift
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: I wrote this blog!
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: maybe work on
some crafts with Mom
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: moderately concerned
about COVID because it seems to be creeping closer to my family
One Reason I’m Happy Today: I got to read Jacque’s
short story!
Dear Apocalypsers,
It’s another long one,
folks, so buckle up! By now, you might have heard—Taylor Swift dropped a
surprise album on the 24th.
It was, like, kind of a big
deal.
So, funny story about my folklore
experience: I didn’t sleep the night before the announcement. It wasn’t
intentional. I slept until 3PM on the 22nd (because I was awake at
3:30AM with when my mom’s blood sugar dropped), so I couldn’t fall asleep that
night. We had to have Duck at the vet at 8AM on the 23rd, so I knew
I’d need to be up around 6:45AM, and when I still hadn’t fallen asleep by 4AM,
I decided it would be easier to power through than to sleep for 2 ½ hours. So I
did some work, and, then, at 7AM, my phone exploded.
Savannah Winkler (bless
her heart, I don’t know why she was awake, but she was) sent me Taylor’s first “folklore
aesthetic” post on Instagram with a message like, “She just posted 5 of
these in a row! A new era??” And then I got the notifications from Taylor’s
Instagram and Twitter.
I cried. I walked into my
parents’ singsong-yelling, “Fam-jam! This is not a drill! Taylor Swift is
dropping a new album at midnight!”
 |
| I highly recommend this whole album, but my personal favorites are "cardigan," "seven," "august," "invisible string," and "peace." |
My mother, who was awake,
but is about as much a morning person as I am on a regular day, was not amused.
But she listened to me jabber about T. Swift the entire day. I mean, the entire
day (with the exception of the 2-hour nap I took that afternoon). And she’s
continued to listen to me talk ceaselessly about Taylor Swift whenever I
pause listening to the new album and emerge from my room for meals.
Basically, my mother is a
saint. She deserves some kind of award, I will forever be grateful for her.
So, to give Brenda Cline
a reprieve, I’m here to tell you all about my #folklorefeelings. I’ve
had two group chats, multiple text message threads, and one Zoom call devoted
to this album, and I’m still noticing new things every time I listen to it! I’m
not sure it’ll ever be my favorite of her albums, but I think it’s her best one
so far, and there’s so much I want to say about it.
(Side note: Taylor doesn’t
have a bad album. Each one is so important to me, and there truly is a Taylor
Swift song for every occasion. My taste in music is like my personality—big and
upbeat and poppy and sweet—and this album is the opposite. But it’s beautiful
like fine art or poetry or a gothic manor on the foggy moors or a forgotten
cottage in the woods that’s been overtaken by flowers and ivy. It’s definitely
a specific mood, and that’s okay. I will love it forever just like I do all her
albums.
Side side note: I made Pinterest mood boards for each T. Swift albums, if you're curious as to how my mind interprets her music.)
Side side note: I made Pinterest mood boards for each T. Swift albums, if you're curious as to how my mind interprets her music.)
The album is called folklore
(yes, all lowercase). It’s her 8th album, and it’s an
indie/alternative/folk album—so different from anything she’s done before. She
wrote it all during quarantine. Literally, start to finish, in, like 3 months.
And, I mean, I’ve done some small things, but I haven’t written 17 songs,
directed a music video (see below), and designed a line of merch. I honestly can’t say
enough how lucky I feel to be alive at the same time as an artist like Taylor
Swift. If she doesn’t go down in history with the likes of Elvis Presley and
Frank Sinatra and Stevie Nicks and Dolly Parton, I will personally haunt some
important music mogul until they pay her the respect she’s due.
But that’s just the thing—Taylor’s
never gotten the respect she deserves, and I don’t just say that because
I’m a fan. She talks in Miss Americana about how women in music are
expected to reinvent themselves every few years so they “stay interesting.” I
mention in an earlier post that she’s always gotten a lot of flack for writing
about her relationships and even name-dropping people in songs (which she honestly
doesn’t do negatively most times) whereas her male counterparts don’t get that
same criticism.
And, in that vein, Noelle
sent me this tweet earlier of someone making fun of Taylor’s writing. It says, “Working
on ‘Taylor Swift phrases’” and it has “examples” like “rusty sun-kissed carousel
apology,” “champagne-dusted barn door whispers,” “wine-drunk porch swing bus
stop fights,” and “invisible neon coffee mug high.” Now, I’m not saying that
Taylor Swift has to be your favorite musical artist—my best friend still refers
to her as “that blonde chick you like” as a joke because she didn’t know about
her until she met me in undergrad—but I think you should respect what she’s
achieved in her career. She’s not popular for no reason. She doesn’t have 10 Grammys
(2 for Album of the Year) for no reason. folklore didn’t sell 1.3
million copies in the first 24 hours with no promo for no reason. And I hope
Noelle doesn’t mind, but I totally agree with what she said in our chat: “It’s
clearly sexist, because we never do that to men writing more ‘sparkly’
figurative language.” We don’t tease them. We canonize them. Hamilton is
a cultural phenomenon, and it has lines like, “If Washington isn't gon' listen
/ To disciplined dissidents, this is the difference / This kid is out” (Jefferson
in “Washington On Your Side”) and “And the gossip in the New York City is
insidious / And Alexander is penniless” (Angelica in “Satisfied”) and “Yo, I'm
a tailor's apprentice / And I got y'all knuckleheads in loco parentis”
(Hercules Mulligan in “My Shot”). Lin Manuel-Miranda won a Tony for writing those
lines. I’m sorry you’re throwing a fit about Taylor using words like “clandestine,”
“gauche,” and “mercurial” on this new album. Don’t be jealous; green isn’t your
color.
working on “taylor swift phrases” pic.twitter.com/hOfK2H0nxY— Julie Greiner (@JulieAbridged) July 26, 2020
In her letter to fans
talking about the inspiration for the album, Taylor talks about the choice of
title, saying:
“A
tale that becomes folklore is one that is passed down and whispered around.
Sometimes even sung about. The lines between fantasy and reality blur and the
boundaries between truth and diction become almost indiscernible. Speculation,
over time, becomes fact. Myths, ghost stories, and fables. Fairytales and
parables. Gossip and legend. Someone’s secrets written in the sky for all to
behold.”
That’s been Taylor’s
career. She’s been talked about and belittled and underestimated. Tabloids have
spread rumors. Fans have formed images of her in her head, and fans of her more
famous exes have formed other images. So, even though folklore is meant
to highlight her as a storyteller and these songs aren’t about her personal
experiences, I’d argue that this album is simultaneously all about Taylor,
because we’ll be talking about her long after she’s gone and passing down her
songs for generations.
Okay, now for the music.
 |
| My favorite thing I've ever tweeted, tbh. |
As I listened through folklore
the first time, I took notes on each song, because I knew I’d never be able
to hear them for the first time again, and I wanted to try to preserve that
moment. And, as it turns out, that “moment” is a lot of me writing “oh damn,” “wow,”
“HER VOICE OMG,” and “I need to replay this.” The word “breathless” came up a
lot, too. I was literally obsessed with it from the first minute.
And then my Nerd Brain
activated. Like I’ve said before, I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift for 14
years now. I’ve stuck by her through her country phase and her “white feminist”
stage, and I’ve seen her blossom into her new era of political activism and
killer music. I’ve watched her grow, and I’m proud of her in a way that’s
probably strange for someone I’ve never met. But, because I have been so
invested in her music for so long, I noticed some things even on that first
listen through of folklore: she revisits quite a few themes and scenarios
from her debut album.
And I want to write a
paper. Eventually, I’d like to write a book.
A little over a year ago,
I stumbled upon an article by Tara Chittenden called “In my rearview mirror:
Female teens’ prospective remembering of future romantic relationships through
the lyrics in Taylor Swift songs,” and I was fascinated by it. But it was published
in 2012, the same year that Taylor’s fourth studio album, Red, was
released. Taylor’s now had four more albums, changed record labels, and
has down a lot of personal growing (as one does between the ages of 16 and 30),
and I think it’s time to update Chittenden’s perspective.
All I have so far is a
few pages of notes, but, basically, I want to look at “Mary’s Song” from her
debut album and “seven” from folklore and see how Taylor treats young
love in both songs. The two have similar settings and both follow the stories
of childhood relationships. I won’t say too much here, because I don’t want to
jinx myself, but, in “Mary’s Song,” Taylor tells the story of a presumably
heterosexual couple throughout their lives, from when they meet at ages 7 and 9
to dating as teenagers to getting married and raising their children in the
house where they met. Conversely, “seven” is about a similarly intense relationship,
but it’s not explicitly clear if the children are childhood sweethearts or just
friends and, if there is a romance, it may be a queer one. But one of my favorite
things is that “Mary’s Song” depicts staying in your hometown and getting
married to your high school sweetheart as the ideal happy ending whereas the
narrator in “seven” fantasizes about running off to India and reassuring the
other that their love will be passed on like folk songs; marriage isn’t a perquisite
for their love to matter. And I just thought that was a really cool shift for
her music. (Especially when you think about how one of her biggest songs of her
early career was “Love Story,” which also ends with a wedding.)
I don’t have any formal
cultural studies training, but I can close-read the heck out of a passage, and,
thankfully, Taylor Swift’s lyrics are basically works of literature, and I can’t
wait to dig into the lyrics and start fleshing out my analysis. I’ve even
reached out to my old undergrad roommate (hey, Jennie!) to talk to her about collabing
on this paper. She majored in music, and I’m really interested to see if the
music reflects the same growth as the lyrics do. I think incorporating a music
theory approach is something that other people aren’t doing in “English papers.”
Plus, intersectional scholarship is so cool. I think everyone should work
intersectionally as often as they can. I wouldn’t even say that what I want to
do is a traditional English paper. But I’m not too concerned with putting a label
on it right now. I’m excited about academics for the first time in weeks, and I
just want to write now.
About 6 weeks ago, I
wrote that I wasn’t sure where my scholarship would go after I decided I needed
to take a step back from Harry Potter after J.K. Rowling’s transphobic
tweets—maybe this is it. Maybe I could be a “Taylor Swift scholar,” or at least
a “pop music scholar.” There’s not a lot out there on Taylor’s music; most of
the articles I’ve seen have been sociology papers on her “performance of
feminism,” but we study poetry, so why not song lyrics?
I’m not sure when Jennie
and I would ultimately try to publish this paper or where, but as Taylor wrote
in her post announcing folklore, “My gut is telling me that if you make
something you love, you should just put it out into the world.”
And Taylor’s never led me
astray before.
I usually say “May the
odds be ever in our favor” here, but I’d like to change it up this time, with a
line from folklore:
Katie
