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Taylor Swift

We're all thinking about April 26--it will be a big Taylor Swift day, of some sort--so here are a few anticipatory thoughts:

*Ms. Swift made a serious error when she released "Look What You Made Me Do." She had been silent for a long while, and this was her big comeback statement. It didn't work, because it seemed bitter, self-absorbed, and melodramatic. She had had a small feud with another musician, and this feud required images of zombies and petulant ghosts of Taylors Past?

An instructive contrast: The return of Ariana Grande. Ms. Grande went silent after a genuinely shocking and traumatic thing occurred in her life, the bombing in Manchester. When Ms. Grande returned, it was expected that she would sing something openly mournful. Instead, she gave us the intriguing (and chart-topping) "No Tears Left to Cry." This song is fascinating because it leaves Ms. Grande's pain in a *mostly subtextual* place. You're left to infer what she must have gone through--to piece together the magnitude of her pain from the startling things that she is *choosing not* to say. Ms. Grande trounced Ms. Swift at the Grammys this year, a first, and now all eyes are on the non-blonde.

*My favorite Swift effort in recent years isn't anything from "Reputation"; it's the re-purposed, once-discarded single, "Babe." Swift wrote this for her masterwork, "Red," then chose not to use it. (I suspect she let it go because a refrain--"This is the last time, this is the last time"--was too similar to something else on the album, a song actually entitled, "The Last Time.")

Swift's writing for "Babe" is juicy and playful: "We break down every time you call. We're a wreck, you're the wrecking ball." "Big mistake: Broke the sweetest promise that you never should have made..." "I hate that, because of you, I can't love you....Babe..." The video is fabulous, because it features a glassy-eyed, Valium-drunk housewife (Betty Draper-esque) coolly, inexplicably spraying a garden hose at her own (full) back-yard pool. And then we cut to Taylor herself, who is Joan, from "Mad Men," and who flashes many calculating faces as she goes about stealing a man. Delightful. One of the best things that happened this summer.

*Some people speculate that the mysterious images of chickens on Tay Tay's Instagram account are an allusion to an upcoming return-to-country-music. May it be so.

*It's possible, also, that Tay Tay has simply lost her mind. The chickens in sunglasses. The fact that she will soon be appearing on screen with Judi Dench--and both will be dancing--and both will be dressed as cats. This is an exciting time for all of us. Tay Tay herself has written--recently, in "Elle"--about her interest in countdowns. When you're struggling with life, choose a pleasant future event and start the countdown. Note: This Tay Tay countdown is starting now. Enjoy your April 26th.
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