Taylor Swift WAS a Great Songwriter

Accidentally, the first CD I ever bought was the karaoke version of Taylor Swift’s Fearless.

It’s kind of hard not to hate, or at the least be irritated, with 2018 Taylor Swift. She engages in petty drama with her peers, wears $900 tourist sweatshirts, and makes purely boring, conventional pop music. She was someone that remained great even when she was in the spotlight in a major way, but the bright lights seemed to have worn her down with time. Somehow at 28 she seems to be acting too old for her age which is one of the universal signals of a soon-to-be irrelevant popstar. So, before she dies out completely, here are some of my thoughts on Taylor Swift on when she was good and doing what she was best at.

I remember ordering a small Taylor Swift unofficial biography from a school book order when I was probably around 8 and my dad pointed out his surprise to me over the fact that she wrote her own songs. He told me most artists, especially pop musicians, have people that write their own lyrics for them opposed to someone like Bob Dylan that wrote everything completely themselves. Fucking everything comes back to Bob Dylan. Based on this comment I thought of her in a slightly new way, even if it didn’t much to my third grade self. Nonetheless, I was know able to really listen to the words as coming from a truer place and imagined her feeling all that she was describing. I read the CD pamphlets for Fearless and Speak Now cover to cover until they wore thin.

And now a little less than a decade later I return to the same albums feeling more than just nostalgia. She is just plain good, I can’t help it. Not only are the songs unavoidably catchy and original, but written incredibly well and with a singular, thorough perspective. I’ve had “The Story Of Us” off of Speak Now stuck in my head for a few days now for no good rhyme or reason, I don’t even know what tempted me to listen to it in the first place. But as soon as I did I was like damn. Taylor really knows exactly what the fuck is going on and puts it so clearly in a way my complicated brain couldn’t decipher. “This is looking like a contest/ of who can act like they care less,” is from the bridge which halts a chorus of electric guitars. It almost feels indulgent to listen to these words that so perfectly encapsulate not only my teenage experience, but Swift’s when she wrote it, and the millions of listeners that have also so strongly resonated with her work to make her one of the biggest artists of the decade. 

Now that I’m listening to the same lyrics I did when I was 9 I can actually relate to what she is saying, the same heartache I had only dreamed about when I was younger, and the effect is hard to pull away from. She uses words as her tool and driving force, something that differentiates a writer from just a pop star. Though certain songs are clearly much stronger than others, Swift still takes advantage of each space on the album to create a detailed portrait of a specific universal experience, and for this I understand her success. I cannot believe this is the same person whose entire life has become one big promotion because at one point she really had a connection with a core audience to which she has appeared to become removed from. I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t a part of the puzzle that has kept me wanting to be a musician for so long, even though sometimes I pretend the first CD I ever bought was by The Clash. She is no Keith Richards in my life, but undoubtedly still a formative part of my early teenage years, and for this I will always hold a space in my complicated musical love affair for 20 year old Taylor Swift.