Argo Online

Taylor Swift: Beyond the Blonde

By Lacey Nemergut

“She’s whiney,” say some as they nonchalantly fail to back their assertions. “She deserves what she gets,” say others, with similarly minimal knowledge of the young artist. One of America’s most popular country singers, Taylor Swift, dazzles listeners with her own lyrics and chords, gracefully taking the stage armed with a guitar and pricelessly sassy attitude. Her audience, largely teenage girls, supports this superstar for reasons beyond her image. On the cusp of their maturity with minimal life experience and pressured by the timeless emotion of love, most girls lose themselves in the inevitable conflicts of a relationship. Such conditions define the demographics of “miss teen sensation” Taylor Swift’s music and its wonderfully accurate portrayal and expression of emotion.

During her “Fearless” tour back in August, Taylor was portrayed by John Pareles of the New York Times as an overly aggressive and sassy teen, with built up hostility and a self-absorbed inability to get over breakups. He supported his hopelessly inaccurate analysis by highlighting her performance of “Should’ve Said No,” a song focused on a relationship in which she was cheated on. Pareles writes on August 28, 2009, “She denounced a cheating partner in ‘Should’ve Said No,’ bashed on metal barrels to the band’s beat and guitar noise, then stood under a stage waterfall getting drenched — soaked but unbowed. ‘Was it worth it?’ she taunted her ex. ‘No, no, no!’ Fans’ delighted screams were added vindication.” Pareles, while he managed to report the obvious, failed to sense the underlying yet dominating feeling of overwhelming sadness. Taylor took the stage not to make a declaration or self-confidence-boosting statement asserting conceit and feminine dominance, but to say that this relationship and her dedication to it had more value than a onetime hook up.

Pareles, who also inferred that her songs referenced idealistic and impossibly romantic circumstances, failed yet again to see the bigger picture. While her break out song “Love Story” first released in her album Fearless on November 11, 2008, reflects a typical romance with an anticipated happy ending, such ecstatic romantic triumph proves absent from the other songs of her album. Frequently stereotyped by one-time listeners concentrating on seemingly tacky lines such as “I’ll be the prince and you’ll be the princess,” Swift provides above and beyond this surface level analysis. Looking at her album as a whole, “Love Story” proves to be a romantic escape from a troubled reality as opposed to the typical, idealistic, and passionate fantasy. Her imagined scenario of star-crossed lovers separated by their parents, who, despite all odds, find each other “on the outskirts of town” and in the midst of a marriage proposal isn’t meant to describe an actual event or a scene intended to be replicated universally. Rather, it illustrates her day-dreaming escape, imagining for three minutes and 53 seconds that dreams can translate smoothly into reality.

More consistent with the themes and musically therapeutic lyrics of her album, is the song “Forever and Always”. Opening with a flashback to the beginning of a relationship, calling upon the uncontainable excitement of meeting someone new and noticing the undeniable chemistry, she evokes an immediate reaction. However, as she recites the exciting opening to the song, there’s an underlying current of an unmistakable bitter tone. She sings, “Once upon a time, I believe it was a Tuesday when I caught your eye….you looked me in the eye and told me you loved me”. Seconds later she asks, “Were you just kidding?” and continues to describe the tell-tale signs of a doomed relationship: silence, frustration, and ignored calls.

Her song speaks to teen girls caught up in confusion and desperate for answers. Once flattered and wooed by a young man, a girl frantically storms around her room constantly checking her phone for some kind of message or frequently interrogating his closest friends for any clue as to what went wrong. Though she may appear needy and dramatic, she’s merely a victim of overwhelming feelings of loss. As she aggressively scolds him for ignoring her and flirting with some other girl, she’s struggling to hide the pain of her memories of the happy and originally flawless relationship she was once in. “Forever and Always,” while it can’t reach into her life and sort out her mess of a relationship, can vocalize this messy frustration and show her she’s not alone. Surrounded by the media romance and other couples, it’s easy to feel as if you’re the only one to have lost such a perfect love.

Taylor Swift, appearing on Ellen Degeneres, modestly told viewers that it typically takes her five minutes to write a song. While some might argue her mix of country and pop is stylistically a ploy for record sales, such people can’t deny her talent for composing lyrics which her demographic can relate to. Her lyrics are based on personal experience and she freely admits to including names of ex-boyfriends. She frequently states, “This album is my diary”.

What makes Swift a sensational artist is not her ability to boost egos, but her natural talent to express herself truthfully. While friends might tell us to be strong or drop lines like, “It’s his loss…there’s more fish in the sea,” Swift isn’t afraid to look despair and heartbreak in the eye and work through it. Through her lyrics, the rhyming verses of her personal diary, Swift has managed to captivate the attention and hearts of female America, giving most girls not only a voice but the confidence that they are not alone and that after heartbreak can certainly come love.