Here I am, staggering into today because yesterdays (Tuesdays) are so hideously long. They begin, as all days do, in the dark. The difference being that most other days one (me in this case) stays put until the sun has lurched over the horizon. Then one gets up and goes about the tasks of the day.
But on Tuesday, I have to get up before the sun does, and pour all my tea into a travel mug, and then trudge out into the silent streets for my long walk. That should be sufficient, of course, but instead, I continue the mortification of my aging flesh by limping into Planet Fitness at the unearthly hour of 6, which is when the treadmill toilers and the Sisyphean stair climbers are all there. From thence, exhausted from the self-care, I rush to wash off the sweat and race to church—late—to do churchy things, and then back home to cobble together luncheon and then off for the longest possible evening of dance classes (for the girls, not for me), during which I run swiftly through Aldi, collapsing into bed at 10:30. “Why am I so tired?” I moaned last night, after my bedtime. “Because you’ve been awake and moving since 4 a.m.,” said someone who was keeping me awake so I could read and edit her paper that was due at midnight.
So anyway, don’t be mad at me if I can’t belly up to the blog at a decent hour. Noon is the best I can accomplish on a Wednesday. The good thing is, if I had tried to write anything sooner, I wouldn’t have discovered this fun piece of writing (h/t Megan Basham). I don’t mind Taylor Swift, but Mark Hemingway is fed up:
Still, someone who truly, deeply cares about the state of popular music has to stand athwart Taylor Swift, yelling “what is this @#?!,” and it might as well be an intellectually dyspeptic Gen X guy with nothing to lose.
Here’s what he doesn’t like:
This finally brings me to my actual gripe, the specifics of why and how her music sucks: It’s utterly defined by self-obsession rather than introspection. Where other artists will occasionally do a Christmas album, it seems like every Taylor Swift album is a Festivus record devoted to the airing of grievances and feats of artistic strength. To that end, she has almost wholly pioneered a new genre of what an acquaintance of mine calls the “bellyaching about a boyfriend” song. It’s true that young men are frequently terrible to young women and there’s nothing inherently wrong with this being fodder for pop songs, but there are limits.
But my favorite two bits are this:
Distressingly, there’s plenty of evidence that Swift’s dysfunctional view of relationships is already influencing the minds of a new generation of pop stars. Just take a gander at the lyrics to up-and-comer Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire,” an excruciatingly bitter, plodding ballad that is inexplicably a smash hit.
And this:
I still stand by the fact it’s a mistake to read too much in the way of politics or feminism into Swift’s appeal, but given her popularity in the face of this lyrical obsession, it’s a chicken-or-egg-first proposition about whether the cultural avatar of millennial females is famous for being near constantly romantically aggrieved even as TikTok is full of videos of women insisting, “No really, it’s great being 29 and unmarried and childless, I don’t want that at all, I get to sleep in on weekends and learn to make shakshuka, this is the most fulfilling life I can conceive of, I’M HAPPY WHY WON’T ANYONE BELIEVE ME?!”
The whole post is my favorite kind of kvetch, especially if there’s a nod to Shakshuka Girl. I do wish, though, that there could be more compassion for the lonely and insane. What are young ladies supposed to do? Not go see Taylor? But then they would have to stay home or wander around Target again. There isn’t anything else to do. All the freedom in the world and what we get is more and more insipid lyrics.
On the other hand, my friend who knows about music thinks that Taylor is brilliant. And she sent me this, which I loved—Mary Harrington mashes up Taylor Swift and the Albigensians:
So what is it about her work that so captivates the young women who form the backbone of her fanbase? Crucially, I think, her love songs don’t tend to be about relationships that end well. A few — “Mine” and “Love Story” for instance — describe happy endings. But by and large even her requited ones are upbeat only when describing the first flush of infatuation, as in “Enchanted“, “Fearless“, and “Ready For It?“. Instead of inclining towards the happy ever after, Swiftian passion comes with its own doom baked in: an assumption that, for any number of reasons, the high won’t last. “Delicate” is a stuttering, anxious hymn to the fear that declaring your feelings will destroy a budding romance. “Endgame” captures both the longing to be someone’s “happy ever after” and, implicitly, the expectation that this the dream will turn sour. And perhaps it’s no wonder. For in Swift-world, the next step from the buzz of first love seems to be thrill-seeking: passion made more intense by the fact that it will be over any moment.
Obviously, you should read the whole thing while you either entrench yourself as a Swifty, or stick up your nose and bellow that everyone should get off your lawn. I’m fascinated by the phenomenon of Taylor Swift. I do find the music excessively boring, except for Anti Hero which I only listened to because Douglas Wilson (you know, literaleigh Hitler) took the trouble to post a reaction video. It’s so catchy that I’ve been singing it to my children to get them to leave me alone. I’m a little disappointed that my offspring won’t like Taylor Swift, no matter how much I scold them. I liked everything that was musically dull but fashionable in the bad old days of my youth. I took great pains to look exactly like everyone else and listen to everything I personally hated in order to be loved by all. Isn’t that the very definition of pop music?
Not to change the subject, but my own child complained last night that all the stories she’s having to read for her creative writing class—stories written by girls her age—are boring and depressing. Every narrative is the same: teenage love thwarted. There are, in her words, “no gardens, no plots, nothing to imagine.” The buildings let you know you are driving down yet another strip to go to yet another box store. The clothes remind you that you should lose weight but don’t have the energy to try. The stare into the middle distance keeps the world at bay.
Anyway, this seems extremely important:
Have a nice day! I’ve gotta go back out for milk because I forgot to buy it last night.
What on earth is a shakshuka girl? I have no idea - I have seen so many "it's the latest thing" come and go that I long ago stopped trying to keep up.
I don't listen to Taylor Swift, or any other contemporary singer. They are all so sing-songy, and often sing in falsetto or something else unnatural. No guts, no hope, imagination, and (as you say) lots of self-absorbtion.
I know nothing about Taylor Swift nor US youth romance genre; however, the very popular 2023 Chinese tv series 'Hidden Love' (available on Netflix) paints a different picture.