And then, of course, there’s Swift’s fascinating pushback against her most critical fans. She’s defiant in the much talked about “But Dad I love him” – “I’ll tell you something for my own sake, it’s just mine to shame,” she tells all the “wine moms” and “Sarah and Hannah” who stick around. their pearls when Swift shows up with someone they don’t approve of — but I was also thinking about her sister song on the second LP, the miserable “How Did It End?” In it, Swift wistfully prepares for all the chatter that will accompany a public announcement of a breakup, with everyone she knows and millions she’ll never meet demanding, “We need to know, how did it end?”
This sounds corny, yes, but I’d also like to hear Swift wrestle more with her own role in this dynamic. Because even as it laments this kind of intrusiveness, I don’t know if there’s ever been an album that lends itself so explicitly to its genre. lyrical analysis about whom he sings. How do you all reconcile the desire for privacy that many of these songs seem to yearn for with everyone’s simultaneous Easter dawn?
PARELES Lindsay, I wouldn’t call it a craving for privacy – not when she’s spending three hours a night on stage, walking red carpets and enjoying a public display of affection at the Super Bowl. Rather than privacy, the issue is more about the quest for autonomy in the spotlight: the right to make good choices and bad ones, to learn—or not—from mistakes, to seek revenge or come to terms with regrets (as she does in “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”). I’ve never been a big fan of the pains-of-fame album, which can easily veer into self-pity. It takes a songwriter as great as Joni Mitchell to come up with a song as narrative as “For the roses.” To me, a line like “I love you, you’re ruining my life” is much more resonant than “I was hitting my marks.” Somehow Swift has managed to make her fans identify not only with her heartache, but also with the pressures of a career that, at this point, is self-imposed.
SISARIO I don’t see the duality of Swift’s on/off-stage personalities as much a conflict as fodder for the business. Yes, the dissonance between the outward triumph and joy of the Eras tour, on the one hand, and the internal anguish he was apparently going through at the same time, is oddly jarring. But the theme that runs through so much of her work is performance misery, which she turns into gold by celebrating it with her fans.
PARELES One thing that’s essentially absent from this album is the playful yet questionable touch Swift brought to “Anti-Hero.” The songs on this album are pretty much just sad or angry. The upbeat moments, like “Who’s Afraid of My Old Man?” or “But Daddy I Love Him,” still lash out at targets, and even “Imgonnagetyouback,” which is at least partly an exercise in words, has thrust at its core. After the self-review of the last albums, we go back teenage misery?
SISARIO Something that drove me about “Tortured Poets” is that perhaps Swift’s greatest strength is the way she’s combined songwriting and journaling. Even she admits she’s no Patti Smith. But her gift conveys a sense of honest intimacy, letting her emotions pour out in ways that seem straight from the heart. Her strongest lyrics often involve recounting details—a scarf, a cardigan—that are like burning memories.