By *Note: This is a more personal lifestyle post rather than focusing on sustainability.
Hi! How is everyone doing? Let’s take a pulse check here.
- What are you most excited for this week?
- Were your thoughts positive or negative waking up?
- What’s one thing you’re doing for yourself today?
I’ve been starting to meditate using the Headspace app in the morning and these are things that I reflect on to feel more grateful, more present.
All I can think about is my own personal answer to the first question. What am I most excited for this week?
Well. I’ll give you a hint. Initials are T and S.
TAYLOR SWIFT.
More specifically, as many of you know, her new album, Lover, releases on Friday, August 23rd. To generate a little more hype, I thought I’d write about a theory that I’ve had on her music over the past couple of years.
It’s no surprise that these last couple of years she’s taken some twists and turns with regard to the sound of her music and dare I say – lyrics? I think all of us fans listened to “Look What You Made Me Do” two summers ago bedside ourselves after the morning of it’s release and thought,
Ummmm is this a joke?
Are you kidding me?
This SUCKS. What even is this?
This doesn’t even sound like her.
And then the recent release of “ME!” with that guy from Panic at the Disco. First off, I just still don’t get that collaboration. Bring back Ed Sheeran.
The question I think all of us have been wanting to ask is – well, what happened? How did we go from the beautifully written, oh-so-relatable All Too Well track from Red to ME! and “Spelling is fun.”
Before Lyrics Circa 2012:
Photo album on the counter, your cheeks were turning red.
You used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin-size bed
And your mother’s telling stories about you on a tee ball team
You tell me ’bout your past, thinking your future was me.
Maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much,
And maybe this thing was a masterpiece ’til you tore it all up.
Running scared, I was there, I remember it all too well.
ME! Lyrics Circa 2019:
Hey, kids!
Spelling is fun!
Girl, there ain’t no I in “team”
But you know there is a “me”
Strike the band up, one, two, three
I’ll tell you my theory on this and you let me know if you agree.
Let’s go back to 2008 where Taylor Swift released Tim McGraw and Teardrops on My Guitar…
She was at the time amongst many teenagers in high school writing these tracks before moving to Nashville to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. Even when she released Fifteen on the Fearless album it was evident that she could relate to all of us teenage girls going through the high school scaries. Wanting popular boys to pay attention to us, breaking up with our first real boyfriends, revenge, and so many more aspects of our routine reasons for being emotional and crying in our rooms alone on the floor. Dramatic? Always.
This is why we fell in love with her. She just…got us and gave us validity to our feelings that we experienced. She allowed us to listen to her songs with a specific boy in mind or to associate with an indescribable emotion that we ourselves, weren’t even sure whether or not it was real.
Now. Fast forward to 2019.
Taylor Swift is touring probably 300 days of any given year after an album release. She’s off to Rhode Island with some celebrity friends one weekend, performing on GMA, Jimmy Fallon the next night, you name it.
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So where does that leave time to date in the fashion that we, regular civilian 20-somethings do?
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Where does that allow for T-Swift to even have her heart broken after a year long relationship when she doesn’t even have the time presumably to develop one in an authentic fashion?
What I’m trying to say is that Taylor Swift is no longer a regular teenager or 20-somethings so how can we even expect her to have relatable experiences to write about?
We can’t.
She’s not going through likely, anything, that we are on an emotional level. Her life is completely different than ours. The way that she is experiencing love is non-comparable. Think about what happened to Lady Gaga “Ali” in the movie A Star is Born.
And I truly believe that that is the reasoning behind these somewhat more, superficial lyrics where there seems to be no more true depth that we once saw as we all fell in love with her. Sure, there are hints of it. I think her latest release of “Lover” is an example of that. But nothing compares to the beginning days when she really was, one of us.
All I’m saying is that maybe her lyrics reflect her new life. Where she is more artistic, out-there and “poppy” as sad as that may be.
@Taylor – although we cannot relate to your celebrity life and potentially, what I would guess, the shallowness of paparazzi and breaking up in the celebrity world, your present era is still amazing and we will love you no matter what.
2 more days until the release of the album – let’s see if this theory holds true! Let me know your thoughts!
PS* Want to talk about 2009? Here’s a picture of me balling my eyes out at her Fearless concert next to her feet after I jumped a 10ft wall to get front row…!
Did anyone else draw stars on their hands during class!?
The Sustennial
