I always liked Taylor Swift based on what little I knew about her music, but I was determined to love her by the time 1989 came around. 1989 was going to be the moment when I finally got to know and love Taylor Swift. I had heard women I admired, such as Tavi Gevinson, speak affectionately about Taylor in the early days, and I think I just wanted to be a part of the club, so I buckled down and got to know the album inside and out. It was good! It was a good album. I liked it a lot. I even brought "I Know Places" into a sixth grade English lesson and guided my students through a close reading of the lyrics. But looking back, there are no particular songs to which I feel a connection. Aside from the fact that it was catchy pop music that made me feel good, I think I listened to and loved the album out of spite. Back in 2014, Taylor was widely ridiculed. Like all things that adolescent girls enjoyed, her music and her fan base were mocked mostly by men but sometimes by "cool girls" and women.
Now that I've mentioned sixth graders, I'm thinking about my time in the classroom, and I remember one year when I was given a particularly large amount of curricular leeway. (Incidentally, I held this position in 2014, when 1989 came out.) I decided to take advantage of the freedom I was given and dive into gender with the kids. We spent some time reading and discussing nonfiction articles on the subject, but before we even got into any of that, I introduced the topic by holding up two novels. One of them was this particular edition of Does My Head Look Big In This by Randa Abdel-Fattah, which has brightly colored polka dots and a girl's face on the cover. I don't remember the other book I held up, but it had darker colors, maybe a dragon, and some fire on it. It looked dangerous, adventurous. I asked the students who they thought would read each book. They said that girls would read Does My Head Look Big In This, and anyone could read the fire/dragon one. Then I asked them a different question: Who could be seen with each book? Their answer was similar but more rigid. The stakes were higher here, and there could be consequences. There was a level of danger for a boy to be seen with Does My Head Look Big In This. Maybe he would be made fun of, bullied, or harassed. All because of a book cover with polka dots on it.
The same paradigm exists within pop music. If a boy or man was observed listening to Taylor Swift in 2014, he could have been made fun of, bullied, or harassed. Girls and women who loved Taylor Swift were maligned as well. There seemed to have been a widespread fear of Taylor Swift and what she represented. Not only was she a highly successful woman, but she was also traditionally feminine: she wore sparkles and glitter, felt a lot of feelings, and expressed them openly. Now that I have put it this way, Taylor Swift sounds absolutely terrifying. A massive threat to the status quo. I guess this was where my powerful spite came from. I wanted to support this woman who seemed to simultaneously encapsulate and subvert traditional femininity. I wanted to be on her team and to take down the haters.
Pop music has power, and my time as a middle school teacher made me even more acutely aware of this. One time in 2013, I simply brought up One Direction, and my sixth grade students started screaming and plugging their ears. Kids are afraid of what these musical acts represent. They are afraid of being associated with these artists. But then you get the brave few who have a One Direction folder or a Taylor Swift t-shirt. In reflecting more on my 2014 decision to get serious about Taylor Swift, these kids influenced me. I admired their bravery, and I was angry that so many people derided the music they loved. I wanted to walk the walk in terms of respecting and elevating femininity.
After becoming intimately familiar with 1989, I maintained a passive interest in Taylor through the Reputation and Lover eras. Reputation was not appealing to me, and I never got into Lover either, though I did participate in the hype surrounding it. The day the "ME!" video came out in 2019, I played it on my classroom projector during lunch and watched it with some of my students. Toward the end, a straggler rushed into the classroom, out of breath. Word had spread throughout the building! And now folklore has arrived. As evidenced by my super cute moment with my students, I am always happy to get swept up in the anticipation of a major pop cultural moment, so I was ready to partake this time too. I woke up the morning folklore came out, put on my headphones, and fired up Spotify instead of my usual podcast app.
As I brushed my teeth and went about my routine, I listened to Taylor's lyrics and visualized an adolescent girl walking down a cobblestone path in the light of a street lamp. On the next track, I imagined a blowout on par with Baz Lurhmann's Capulet party scene taking place at a seaside Rhode Island mansion. This album activated my imagination in a way that music typically does not. The storytelling is complete and satisfying. Another song I've been enjoying lately is Graceland Too by Phoebe Bridgers, which I also visualize when I listen to, but it's more a series of images than a story. I visualize a woman lacing up her shoes and exiting a hospital, and I visualize her traveling down a rural, one-lane highway. This is satisfying too. I enjoy it, and I think it is a beautiful song; however, Taylor's style involves more than presenting images and describing or evoking feelings. She tells complete stories with a beginning, middle, and end, which feels different and exciting. In "the last great american dynasty," a woman moves to the east coast with her new, wealthy husband, gets unofficially blamed for his death, and then lives it up out of spite (a running theme here). In "betty," a girl named James cheats on her girlfriend and then makes a grand gesture (along with a key change) to try and win her back. In terms of its ability to hold your attention, folklore is more than an adequate substitute for a morning podcast.
Taylor Swift would not be Taylor Swift without all of the cultural fanfare and commentary, so my experience with folklore has involved more than streaming the album. Since it came out a week and two days ago, I have listened to two podcast episodes, watched a thorough video review on Youtube, seen numerous tweets, and read numerous articles. The overwhelming consensus is that this is an excellent album. It is a sophisticated album, especially compared to her previous work. There has also been much discussion about Taylor's choice of collaborators: Bon Iver, who co-wrote one song and sang it with her, and Aaron Dessner from The National, who produced most of the tracks on the album. I have heard of The National. I know that they exist and that people have respect for them. The National is a highly prestigious rock band, but I have never listened to them on purpose, and I do not care about this band. You cannot make me care. I will listen to a Taylor Swift album with self-discipline and persistence (I'm referring to 1989 here), and I will carefully study the works of Dua Lipa and Carly Rae Jepsen (because I'm a FEMINIST and also because I like them), but I will not care about The National.
I am in the minority, but I am not alone. On the Youtube channel Two Gay Matts, in which the titular Matts provide commentary on musical theater and pop music, their discussion of folklore involves skepticism of the Aaron Dessner factor. Matt Palmer and Matt Steele establish that the album has some nice moments but is not their favorite from Taylor. They don't think we're getting as much "Taylor Swift, Melody Queen" as we have on previous albums. And when they talk about Aaron Dessner and his impact on the album, they are not thrilled about it. Matt Palmer asserts: "...to have a new straight man give their straight man opinions on a very established pop music lady's work generally is going to make something that I am less in love with." After he said that, I had to pause the video and gather my thoughts. This was the most incisive bit of commentary I had heard about folklore. Matt Palmer gave voice to something I had already been feeling and sparked my critical thinking around the widespread acclaim that this album has earned.
I've noticed that some of the discussion around this album exaggerates the degree to which Taylor's style has changed from her previous work. Some of the discussion also exaggerates the artistic merit that her new collaborators have brought to her work. When I first googled reviews, one of the first headlines that I saw was from NME, which calls folklore an "extraordinary indie-folk makeover." I think there's a lot to dig into here, so let's do a close reading of these four words. The word "makeover" connotes a dramatic and necessary improvement. Of course, botched makeovers do exist, but generally, the makeover movie montage ends with the character strutting down the street in slow motion, hair shining in the sun, emitting glamorousness. The made-over character turns heads, whereas she did not before. So, calling this Taylor album a makeover implicitly puts down her previous work. Also, I understand how this album is a bit of a departure from her previous style, but this does not seem like a total genre shift to me. She has experimented with genre numerous times, but at the end of the day, a Taylor song is Taylor song. She has a trademark voice and style. So why is all of the talk about this album so dramatic? Is it really an "extraordinary" change?
Again, I am in the minority with this line of thinking, but I am not alone. In the episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour (PCHH) where they discuss folklore, music critics Stephen Thompson and Lyndsey McKenna passionately and reverently enumerate the virtues of this album, and they discuss it as though it is completely revolutionary. Ann Powers is the only one in the conversation who does not think this album is a massive shift in Taylor's career. Powers just thinks that it is the next step in her artistic development and that it represents "a continuum, not an abrupt about-face." According to Powers, the style and content of folklore have certainly not come out of left field, and Taylor was even exploring some of this territory in Lover. With folklore, she is innovating and "[exploring] different aspects of herself... beautifully and more seamlessly than a lot of people are giving her credit for." In your face, NME! This is not a makeover; it's a seamless transition into a new phase of Taylor's musical career.
Much of the discussion on this PCHH episode is about Taylor herself, but a portion is dedicated to Aaron Dessner. McKenna calls him the "sonic mastermind" behind the album. In the world of pop culture commentary, I have literally never heard a music producer get this much praise before. Usually, I do not know the name of the producer, and I have never witnessed a producer get credited with the success of an album or blamed for its failure. Those responsibilities rest on the person whose name is on the album cover, especially when it comes to massive pop cultural figures like Taylor Swift. From a gender standpoint, something seems suspicious about the degree to which people are discussing Dessner's work on this Taylor Swift album. To his credit, Stephen Thompson says that "it is possible to overstate Aaron Dessner's contributions to this record because this record sounds so different," so at least he acknowledges this problem. Ann Powers, of course, immediately disagrees with Thompson's claim that the album sounds dramatically different from Taylor's previous work. Powers says that her work is "more sophisticated" on this album but is not "a huge break." You go, Ann Powers! Thank you!
In addition to the PCHH episode, I also listened to Switched on Pop's analysis and review of the album. While I've been a die-hard PCHH fan for years, I will admit that I had never listened to Switched on Pop before their folklore episode, so I was intrigued by the premise of their show. Nate Sloan, a musicologist, and Charlie Harding, a music journalist, dive deep into pop songs and discuss pop music through a super detail-oriented and nerdy lens. They truly analyze the shit out of pop music. While they probably spend half of their folklore review discussing Aaron Dessner's work and the production on the album, they deliberately pivot over to Taylor at a certain point, and their gleeful response to her masterful work is a true joy to behold. (They especially lose their minds over "betty." It's amazing.)
Their folklore episode brought me so much joy that I started digging through their back catalog. I listened to their January episode about Dua Lipa's Don't Stop Now, an entire forty-something minute episode dedicated to analyzing one masterful pop song. (It is relevant to mention: Throughout this whole intensive analysis, they did not mention the song's producer by name, and they kept the discussion focused on Dua, the massive pop star performing the song.) I even dug up the 2017 episode where they dissect You Outta Know by Alanis Morissette, a song that I would dare to call a feminist classic. Both Sloan and Harding have academic and professional expertise to bring to the table, but it is also clear that they simply love pop music. While listening to their back catalog, I felt joy because I also love pop music and want to spend forty-something minutes dissecting a single masterful song, but I also felt validated. More than validated, actually. I felt redeemed. And why? Why is it that these men's perspectives had such an impact on me? Why do I have such a strong urge to drive to New Jersey, somehow make the entire Switched on Pop catalog into a physical item rather than a digital record, and shove it in my father's face? (Look! The stuff I like has merit!) I wish we didn't need their help, but it is powerful to have men out here publicly proclaiming their love for this music that is often ridiculed and dismissed for its femininity and for the femininity of its fan base.
These men, with their credentials and their maleness, have the power to redeem pop music. Aaron Dessner, with his credentials and his maleness, has the power to redeem Taylor Swift. There are so many complicated gender dynamics permeating the discussion of folklore that it is nearly impossible to take any of it at face value. It's a damn shame that we will never know what the discussion around the album would be like without the conspicuous presence of sexism, which has caused people to overstate Dessner's contribution to the album and to diminish Taylor's previous work. folklore is a "makeover," remember? I'm thankful to Ann Powers for giving us a glimpse into what a more level-headed analysis of the album looks like, but I wish more people were on the same page as her. I feel like everyone is so busy ejaculating over the presence of Dessner that they just cannot keep their shit together and think clearly. With or without his input, Taylor has grown as an artist, and she laid the foundation for this album through her previous work in her long, successful career.
Of course, Taylor Swift is more than a musician; she is a public figure. A symbol. Perhaps even an icon. So I wonder how folklore and her collaboration with Dessner will impact what she represents in pop culture. Back in 2014, the reason that I started listening to her was that I wanted to defy patriarchy. You tell me that it is shameful to like a female musician who has a lot of feelings and sells out stadiums singing about them? You bet your ass I'm going to go and like that musician. I was drawn to Taylor Swift's power to elicit adoration from her female fans and repulsion from the average dude. And as crazy as this sounds, I am actually afraid that the average dude will no longer be repulsed by her now.
I don’t know what the average dude thinks about Taylor at this point, because I have not gone out and asked them, but I can tell you with certainty that I’ve never heard Stephen Thompson so excited about Taylor Swift. Something feels different about the critics’ response this time around: They have always liked Taylor, but this time it feels more pronounced and is nearly unanimous. At least one person, Thompson, who had previously felt negative or neutral toward her has now seen the light. While there is a wide disconnect between what critics think and what the average person thinks, this critical response feels like permission. It feels like critics and the media are opening up the Taylor Swift fandom to those who previously thought they were too cool or too dignified to join.
In the midst of writing this piece, I took a break to make dinner. I put on my headphones and turned on the playlist I have been listening to recently, which contains a healthy amount of Taylor Swift. As I moved around my kitchen, listening to "august," I visualized a home by the beach with its bedroom window open and its curtains blowing in the salt air. I heard Taylor's voice, and even though I am fired up about the cultural response to his presence, I did not think about Aaron Dessner. folklore is a lovely album, and everyone is welcome to enjoy it, but I need all of the Taylor newbies to be aware that they are listening to the work of a woman. They might be here because of Dessner, but they are entering into a woman's world.
I am afraid of change. I am afraid that some of the things that I love about Taylor Swift might soon be gone: her vulnerability, big feelings, evocative writing, sparkly outfits, female fan base, and non-female haters. But I am aware that she needs to grow and change over time. Her collaboration with Dessner is a part of that, and perhaps the unfortunate narrative surrounding it can be attributed to growing pains on the media's part. Change is hard, but maybe they will get used to the fact that Taylor Swift is and has long been a masterful artist. And I will get used to Taylor's changing role in the pop culture landscape. We are transitioning into a new stage of her career, and with that comes a change in the media narrative surrounding it. And you know what? I'm ok with that. I will even drink to that. I am rooting for this woman and her unprecedented reign over the music business. Long live the queen.
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