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Taylor Swift: "Anti-Hero"

 In the galaxy of Taylor Swift characters, one of the great arch-villains is John Mayer:


Dear John....
Don't you think I was too young to be messed with?
The girl in the dress cried the whole way home....
I should've known....

It's funny, then, that the most recent canonical Taylor song seems to borrow heavily from Mayer. It's a main feature of Mayer's work to be self-deprecating; Mayer's words are often charming and witty. "Walking like.a one-man army....Fighting with the shadows in your head...." "Take all of your so-called problems...Better put 'em in quotations...."

Mayer's major achievement is a dissection of an awkward date: "My stupid mouth got me in trouble...I said too much again....Mama said, THINK BEFORE SPEAKING...No filter in my head....What's a boy to do?"

I hear Mayer when I hear Taylor Swift's breezy statement about self-loathing:

I have this thing where I get older, but just never wiser.
Midnights become my afternoons.
When my depression works the graveyard shift--
All of the people I've ghosted....stand there in the room...

Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism...
Like some kind of congressman?
(Tale as old as time....)

Some of Taylor's problems may no longer count as "relatable": securing the private jet, finding extra bodyguards for the lobby of the third (or fourth) home on Cornelia Street. But we all feel ambivalent about ourselves. This ambivalence is gold; it's worth "mining."

Also, I *do* think that Swift is alluding to Howard Ashman when she crazily mentions the "tale as old as time." Famously, Swift once dressed as the Little Mermaid for a costume party at her Westerly mansion.

All right. Maybe I'll get to "Lavender Haze" at some point. We'll have to see.
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