Liars and Saints

 The recent Times interview put a spotlight on a Taylor Swift song I admire; this is a widely beloved song. I want you to know I'm a mirrorball-- I'll show you every version of yourself tonight. I'll get you out on the floor-- Shimmering, beautiful-- And when I break, it's in a million pieces. To me, this is notable because Taylor is speaking directly to the listener. This isn't unparalleled--but, in other settings, I tend to think of Taylor in storyteller mode, writing to "Betty," to Jake Gyllenhaal, to her mother. The idea is that a pop performer--or any public figure--is just a vessel to be used. You listen to a pop singer so that you can learn or understand something about your own life. "When I break, it's in a million pieces." The personal failures of the songwriter are a gift to the world--because the shattering yields a million pieces (a million songs). This composition is celebrated for its bridge: And they called off the circus-- Bu...

 There is a divide within my family, and the source is Taylor Swift. I think the new album is a stunning failure--utterly uninspired. I think a high-school student might feel embarrassed to submit a sophomore poetry assignment with the following lines: It's about to be the sleepless night you've been dreaming of! And: Don't care where the hell you've been cuz now you're mine! And:  Daisy's bare naked, I was distraught. He loves me not, he loves me not. The final clunker asks us to believe that "distraught/not" is a persuasive rhyme. It also uses a cliche. It also uses a cliche that Taylor herself has employed before . ("I picked the petals, he loves me not.") My husband feels more enthusiasm for this enterprise. Though he has an overall "thumbs down" response, he does enjoy quoting from "Wood." ("Sounds like Travis has a magic wand!") My niece just likes the album. She plays it quite a bit. She isn't discount...

 As a man in my forties, I perhaps should not spend time listening to Taylor Swift on Travis Kelce's podcast. But what can I say. It's irritating to me that Travis dwells on Taylor's physical performance--which is surely the least interesting thing about Taylor's career. This person does actually have a gift, a literary gift, and it seems like Travis is not the person to perform the task of investigative journalism. (But no one else can do the work, because Taylor Swift doesn't give interviews.)  My husband is more excited about Travis and Taylor. He imagines lyrics for the new album... You're my sexy tight, tight end. With you my time I'd like to spend..... The enthusiasm must be infectious, because I find myself texting my niece. "12-12-12-12-12-12!!!" My spouse adds this: "Orange is her new era, because orange represents where she is at, in terms of her energy...." I'm ready for October.

 Taylor Swift is in the news, so let's celebrate "Trouble" from the album "Red." This song is so ubiquitous, it's easy to imagine that it just grew up out of the soil like a blade of grass. But in fact it's the end result of some smart calculations. Once upon a time-- A few mistakes ago-- I was in your sights-- You got me alone. Like a memoir writer, Taylor immediately establishes that this story involves twins: "Taylor Then" and "Taylor Now." Taylor Now will empathize with but also lightly mock Taylor Then: The sense of ambivalence creates tension, and it also creates humor. By opening with fairy-tale lingo, Taylor Now is making fun of her own wide-eyed reputation. And it's a nice touch to measure time in "mistakes." I guess you didn't care-- And I guess I liked that. And when I fell hard-- You took a step back-- Without me. And he's long gone When he's next to me. And I realize The blame is on me. Taylor is...

  Taylor Swift's recent work has exciting moments of self-loathing; the obvious example is "Anti-Hero." The song's "sequel" begins with a memory of childhood: Summer went away. Still, the yearning stays. I play it cool with the best of them. I wait patiently. He's gonna notice me. It's OK, we're the best of friends.... Anyway..... There are two voices here; one is a delusional kid who thinks the ne'er-do-well boy will eventually make time for her. Then, there is an adult Taylor, looking over the kid's shoulder, cringing in response to the memory. With her standard, celebrated sense of efficiency, Taylor recalls a decision: I see the great escape. So long, Daisy May. I picked the petals; he loves me not. Something different bloomed-- Writing in my room. I play my songs in the parking lot. I'll run away..... What is so interesting to me is that the ending seems unhappy. In Los Angeles, Taylor isn't self-actualized. She is surrounded...

  Taylor Swift is not a dancer, not an actor, and not much of a singer. She is a writer, and she makes this point at the start of her recent touring show, by calling attention to her own words. "We've reached the first bridge of the evening. Do you know this one? Do you think you want to sing with me?" I'm drunk in the back of the car-- And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar. Said, I'M FINE... but it wasn't true. I don't want to keep secrets just to keep you! And I snuck in through the garden gate-- Every night that summer--just to seal my fate. And I screamed, for whatever it's worth, I love you--ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard? He looks up, grinning like a devil.... Here is what TS achieves in this bridge. She finds a new way to use zeugma--the striking deployment and redeployment of one verb within one sentence ("I just have room to lay my things and a few friends," "I keep secrets just to keep you"...

  My niece, my husband, and I are following Taylor. I felt that Taylor's private life had hit rocky terrain back when she released "Lavender Haze": Staring at the ceiling with you... Oh, you don't ever say too much.... This was ostensibly a love song--but it also seemed to be a complaint that Joe Alwyn had become boring? It's not difficult to imagine Joe neglecting to "say much." My niece wants Taylor back with Harry Styles; by contrast, I like the Dylan O'Brien rumor. After all, Dylan did sci-fi, in "The Maze Runner." And Taylor had her sci-fi moment, in "The Giver." "Could it ever be Jake?" asks my husband. "Or was he too mean? With his indie records?" These questions don't really require an answer. The weeks pass; rumors of an impending memoir begin to circulate. My fellow Tay stans and I trade bubbly statements of approval...Would that the rumors were true!!!! "On another note," says my husban...

  Through tutoring, I get a little taste of the narcissism of the teen years; I can see what my 2035 and 2036 might feel like. My student sends me screenshots of math problems, and I solve them, and there is no "acknowledgment of receipt," no note of thanks, no "got it." I don't mean to whine; I really like my student, and I even like the mild craziness of these email discussions. And, on the flipside, my student is incredibly patient with me. I consistently screw up my formulas; I label a secant as a tangent; I conflate opposite angles with adjacent angles. Sometimes, my clamminess seems (to me) like adequate grounds for termination, but my student is really gracious as she quietly corrects my mistakes. I think we both breathe a sigh of relief when we can put math away and turn to "A Raisin in the Sun." Walter is denigrating his own neighborhood; this is just a sign of insecurity, and his rival knows it, and his rival indirectly taunts him about his w...

 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 be...

 My husband is in love with Taylor Swift. "Some tickets," he says, "are around $20,000. The Maplewood Moms, in my Facebook group...They're all fuming." I cluck--in sympathy, I guess? Taylor seems to be a source of diminishing returns for me. I listen to "Anti-Hero," but I don't know what she is talking about when she claims to dream about her own funeral, and about the in-laws who don't exist. I'm lost in that part. News arrives from Western New York: My brother has spent twelve hours on a dysfunctional TayTay site, attempting to buy seats for his teen daughter. This makes me think of "Little House on the Prairie," when tales of winter hardship are traded around the campfire. "Uncle Jethro saw a bobcat when he was out hauling logs...." My District-of-Columbia niece shudders as she recalls her own Taylor ticket odyssey. "I hired a deputy to monitor the vendors' website, because I needed to attend meetings all day...

 As we get ready for the big Taylor Swift month, I've been listening to "Reputation," which seems better, as the years pass. "Reputation" is weakened by Ms. Swift's silly Kanye West obsession, which just isn't as interesting as she thinks it is. But sometimes Swift puts Kanye aside, and she writes incisively about her love life, which is still sort of fascinating in the "Reputation" days. (Now, today, I can't find Joe Alwyn fascinating.) I think the highlight of "Reputation" is "Getaway Car," which is just astonishing. Swift was in a bad relationship with Calvin Harris, and she left him to be with international film star Tom Hiddleston, but she understood that she was using Hiddleston just as a distraction (though Hiddleston seemed unaware). The insights this moment yields are fun: "Nothing good starts in a getaway car." I'm especially fond of Swift as a noir antiheroine, sending a brisk note to Hiddleston:...

  Clearly, it was a big weekend for Taylor Swift, and thus a big weekend for my family; we watched the Fallon appearance and the SNL clips, and we listened to several of the "new" songs. Swift's Jake Gyllenhaal era is notable because Jake seems like such a villain. When you walk through the door with him, "the air is cold." He complains that your album isn't on par with his "indie records." He calls you up again just to "break you like a promise." Jake treats a family visit as if it's a "talk-show appearance." He gives you a month of the silent treatment, then says he "needs more space." All this makes Jake a classic fairy-tale rogue--a menacing wolf under a puppy-dog exterior. He is the beast in Grandma's gown, or the beautiful sorceress who is in fact a grotesque witch. Jake has a "sweet disposition." I guess I thought--in the midst of the new ten-minute "All Too Well"--sometimes  less is ...

  "No Body, No Crime" is a buzzy new Taylor Swift song, and it's a "Country Western murder mystery." It's about a man who murders his wife so he can be with his mistress. But the speaker--a family friend--seeks revenge. She murders the man, and she subtly frames the mistress for the killing. The first part of this setup does actually happen in the world: Think of Chris Watts or Scott Peterson. But we're probably not meant to dwell on this fact. I'm obsessed with a few things, such as Taylor's sense of parallelism and writerly economy: "Este's a friend of mine; we meet up every Tuesday for some dinner and a glass of wine. Este's been losing sleep....Her husband's acting different, and it smells like infidelity..." I'm also hooked on the strange, relentless DETAILS: the Olive Garden, the changed tires, the housecleaning history, the boating license (!) .....the life insurance policy....the change in living arrangements.......

 The NYT sort of panned Taylor Swift's most recent album--which was striking, because (a) people generally loved (or claimed to love) this album and (b) the NYT is generally in Taylor's corner. One song the "Times" *did* like, and one that delights me, is called "Illicit Affairs." It's a standard country-song setup. The speaker is "the other woman" within a triangle. As in "Style," or "All Too Well," the speaker is painfully ambivalent. God is in the details, and Taylor really lets loose here. Her speaker conceals herself with a hood, for her walk of shame. She takes shadowy back roads. She tells her friends she has gone out for a run--to account for the post-coital flushed face! Also, the speaker buys fancy perfume, but then abandons it, because she can't leave olfactory evidence in the guy's car! The speaker feels irritated by the guy, who is presumably older: "Don't call me kid, don't call me baby; lo...

If you're not a TS obsessive, stop here. Otherwise, read on. To me--and to many others--the new highlight is "Betty." This is a song from the perspective of an adolescent boy, James, who has cheated on his girlfriend. But he wants the girl--Betty--back. So he tries to explain himself. All the drama went down at a dance. James saw Betty dancing with some other guy. Walking home, on cobblestones, distraught, James found himself ensnared by a nameless seductress. Conversation happened. More conversation. "Those days turned into nights." But it was "just a summer thing." James misses Betty. There are many things I love in this song. The rhyming of "Inez" with "she says." The intrigue surrounding a class change: "I'm pretty sure you switched your homeroom because of me." The strange focus on the verb "to know": "I don't know anything but I know I miss you." I also like the nostalgic feel-...

I don't have many clear opinions on Taylor Swift's "folklore," yet, but thank you to the friends who have asked! Instead, some snapshots from a major Swift Weekend: *Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld listens to the melodramatic story song "Exile" and retweets: "I'm glad I'm not the only one who googled Did Taylor and Joe break up...." *Smash Mouth causes a stir by rechristening the album "borelore" (an opinion shared by the NYTimes) ....and the star of "Teen Wolf" valiantly responds: "Fuck Smash Mouth." Meanwhile, in her Covid bubble, the songstress Halsey writes, "I would die for Taylor Swift...." *My own newest piece of Taylor merch arrives. (Good timing!) It's a black ball cap with the word "Swiftie" stitched across the front. My husband--who purchased this--insists that I won't be confused with a Swift Boat Veteran. He seems to find my worry comical. Before the album came ou...

Like so many others, I was delighted by Taylor Swift's "Tweet to Donald Trump" last week: "After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? 'When the looting starts the shooting starts'??? We will vote you out in November." I just want to point out how closely Trump matches Ms. Swift's famous Lex Luthor, Jake Gyllenhaal. (Yes, of course Trump's offenses are on their own plane; there is an orders-of-magnitude distinction here. Still, I see rhetorical patterns in Swift's work.) Swift--notably savvy about language and subtext--likes to "make the implicit explicit." In Swift's various attacks on Gyllenhaal, the writer highlighted semi-covertly-nasty remarks that Gyllenhaal would make: "Find your peace of mind with some indie record that's much cooler than mine ." "He didn't like it when I wore hi...

My desert-island cast album is "Red," by Taylor Swift. This isn't actually a cast album--it isn't paired with a musical--but, then, wait. "Red" is sneaky; it does work as a musical. When she met Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor met the nemesis of a lifetime; I'd argue no one else, in Ms. Swift's vast galaxy of characters, seems quite as interesting. Gyllenhaal is the Joker, or Lex Luthor. Yes--the Penguin is out there, as well--but no one can really compete with the Joker. Who wants to hear about love? We're all here to get the details on the breakup. Young Taylor Swift knew this instinctively; she wastes very little time on the happy period. We move very quickly toward the pain. Take "All Too Well," Taylor's most celebrated number, and a kind of thesis statement for the album. The very first line: "I walked through the door with you; the air was cold; but something about it felt like home somehow...." THE AIR IS A...

My husband and I watched "Miss Americana" the night it came out--of course we did--and my concerns were maybe different from typical national concerns: *On a private jet, Taylor Swift sits with her mother and comments on her mother's new dog. "That dog is the size of a horse," Taylor says. "The kids left the house, and Mom said, It's time to buy a horse-dog!" Anyone who lives with a writer will recognize what is happening here. Taylor--because she must, because it's genetically-encoded, for her--feels an urge to turn her mom into a madcap character, someone from a "Peanuts" strip. And Mom replies in the way that only Mom is capable of: "This was my cancer dog," she says, quietly. "I decided to do what I want, when I found out about this cancer. I wanted the dog." (A bizarre, brief, haunting peak into the world of Alison Swift. And one wonders about Alison's marriage. Her time with that old white dude w...

"The Man" has my favorite line in Taylor Swift's "Lover," the justly-celebrated Leo DiCaprio reference: (If I was a man) We would toast to me--Oh! Let the players play.... I'd be just like Leo....in Saint-Tropez.... This is like a calling card. This is Ms. Swift saying, "I'm still sharper than most other pop writers at work." The internal rhyme--"me Oh....Leo"--delightful! Followed by the "play/Tropez." Really surprising and witty and "not trying too hard." But I have a hard time with other aspects of "The Man." Let's look at the first verse: I would be COM-plex... I would be cool... They'd say I played the field before I found someone to commit to... And that would be OH-kay... For me to do.... EV-er-y conquest I had made would make me More of a boss to you.... What drives me nuts is how screwed-up the syllable work is. People say, "Com-PLEX." Not ...