The Swiftening – Pt 2: “Lover”

(The Swiftening Series: 1. folklore | 2. Lover | 3. reputation | 4. 1989 | 5. Red | 6. Speak Now | 7. Fearless | 8. Taylor Swift)

At the beginning of Netflix documentary Miss Americana, Taylor Swift flips through an old journal she kept as a pre-teen. “It was all I wrote about. It was all I wanted,” she says, slowly turning the pages. “Do the right thing. Do the good thing. And obviously I am not a perfect person by any stretch but overall the main thing I always tried to be was… a good girl.”

I started this project with the idea that, by going backwards through Swift’s discography, I could trace the culture and media landscape that influenced her at the same time that I could trace my reaction to her. My high-minded idea of what this series could ultimately explore is the role Swift played in my life even when I wasn’t her fan. She is this sort of feminine ideal, after all, this beautiful image of what a woman could be, so even if I was listening to music I ultimately don’t enjoy, I could still figure something out about myself and the culture I exist in by examining it. I could even figure out what made this music occupy such an odd place in my life – never loved, never hated, but always a little uncomfortable in my mind.

Reacting to Taylor Swift, up until recently, has always felt a bit performative to me. I suppose that’s not unique to her – after all, many celebrities that gain an incredible amount of fame and notoriety become difficult to just ignore. Some people are so breathtakingly known by everyone that it’s almost impossible to feel neutral about them, because to feel neutral would be missing out. So, when I didn’t really know much about her except for what people said, it was easy to react with disdain. I was a good girl, and good girls don’t like Taylor Swift.

Lover came out in in August 2019, less than two years ago, but arguably in a different world entirely. I was 20 then, a sophomore in college. Still living in a dorm. I remember this album coming out quite clearly – I remember seeing the music video for “You Need to Calm Down” and “ME!” and thinking… yeesh. (More on that in a moment.) The issue with going backward through Swift’s discography, though, is how awkward it makes context. Lover is so absolutely connected to the album that came before it, reputation, that it feels like attempting to acknowledge the world it came into is stepping too much on what I’ll talk about in my next installment of this series.

Just know that reputation did not, perhaps, do as well as Swift seemed to have hoped. Certainly, her devoted fans were still behind her, but in many ways it seems like reputation was a bold experiment that… didn’t really work out. So it puts Lover in a strange position. Boldly continue with the divergence of the album before it? Completely reverse course to resemble the more critically enjoyed 1989? How about… a little bit of both?

Lover is a strange, strange album. As the album immediately preceding folklore, I thought I had maybe just not given it a chance when it first came out. But… no. It’s an odd album. In many ways, it’s classic Taylor. Bubblegum and sweet, wholesome and happy. But it’s also new bad girl reputation Taylor. It’s cynical and bitter and interested in commenting on the cruelty of the world. The sound evokes that too, sometimes vintagey pop and sometimes electronic dance and… it’s just hard to place.

I mean, just look at the opening track, “I Forgot That You Existed.” I think it’s no accident that this song seems to directly comment on the album before it. Whereas reputation is preoccupied with Swift’s infamy, the beginning of Lover says… “Never mind! I don’t care!” Even though I don’t love the way this song sounds, with Swift’s gratingly sarcastic vocal delivery and the bland, bass-heavy instrumentals, it is kind of a badass move, meaning-wise. It’s ultimately quite good that Swift let go of writing about her own infamy and instead turned back to writing about love and loss, the two themes she is extremely adept at writing about.

But… you still gotta recognize that the irony is there. At the same time Swift is casually brushing aside the idea of her caring about people’s perception of her, she’s opening an album with lines like “Got out some popcorn / As soon as my rep started going down, down down” and you can’t help but be like… okay, it’s clearly still an album about Swift’s fame. And hey, that’s okay. In folklore and evermore, she does a fantastic job of integrating her thoughts on fame without it all getting overblown, but at least in this album that maturity hasn’t quite developed yet.

That’s the word for Lover. It’s an immature album. Not bad. In fact, it’s got a lot of promising stuff. But it’s all a little underdeveloped.

Take for example “Cruel Summer.” I want to love this song so bad. The bridge of this song is just so blisteringly tense and there’s so many wonderful moments of emotion and great lyric writing here. But it’s all brought down by a really formulaic and bland verse-chorus structure. The first minute and a half or so of this song could be any other vaguely popular pop song on any Top 40 hits station before the bridge comes in to add that emotional tension Swift does so well.

Or “ME!” I mentioned not liking this song when I first heard it, and my many relistens have not changed that fact at all. I love Panic! at the Disco, I love Brendon Urie, I think the combination of the two could have worked, I really do. It’s just a boring song. Pop music really needs some kind of build to work, and this song is flat as a door. No build, not even a slightly elevated chorus… oh god it’s just awful. I don’t how this even happened. Though, I can acknowledge that the music video pretty much slaps, with a ridiculously fun over-the-top aesthetic, and is actually genuinely hilarious. (I am a fan of the opening dialogue in particular, my favorite line being Swift gesturing to her cats and shouting “AND IN FRONT OF OUR YOUNG DAUGHTERS?” I don’t know, it gets me.)

Unintentional or not, though, the combination of sounds and themes on this album leads to a lot of actually really fun moments of humor. How about “London Boy.” This song was at first kind of embarrassing – I grew up during a time where a lot of my peers talked about being obsessed with England, or whatever, and so romanticizing the English feels very juvenile to me. However, upon a few listens and upon realizing that Swift’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn is actually British, I’ve come around to seeing this song’s sillier elements as intentional. It’s the cute teasing that I imagine goes on between international couples. Also, come on, it’s catchy.

It wouldn’t be Lover without the light political elements, either. Miss Americana actually details this particular moment in Swift’s career. Formerly discouraged from ever sharing her political beliefs for fear of alienating her fanbase (which, remember, was originally a white country fanbase), Swift broke her silence on politics in 2018 when she came out against former Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who was running for Senate as a Republican. Though Blackburn did win the Senate seat, it marked a pretty big change for Swift, who apparently had been assumed Republican for most of her career. It seems her political empowerment has carried into this album, with some… mixed results, we’ll say.

“The Man” is a pretty standard feminist anthem, all things considered. It’s difficult because I really feel for Swift here – her career has been marred by some pretty blatant misogyny. Her very name is, essentially, a misogynist punchline for a lot of people. At the same time though… it feels weird to hear an extremely rich, famous, and successful artist claiming that she could be even more rich, famous, and successful if she were a man. The moments where this song works are the emotional parts of it, where she discusses how the misogyny she has faced has affected her perception of herself and her relationships. She is uniquely poised to comment on the nasty, misogynist parts of her industry, so it’s good to see, even if I wish it didn’t also seem to imply that she deserves to amass even more wealth and power than she has already (which is, to be clear, a lot of wealth and power).

I feel similarly iffy about “You Need To Calm Down.” The beginning of the song is a classic Swift anti-hater song, and a pretty enjoyable one at that. The bouncy, electronic instrumentation in the back matches the cynical and sassy lyrics quite well, and it’s clever in a way I kind of enjoy. But then… it becomes… a song about homophobia and transphobia?

Let me reiterate. A song that begins as a tirade against Swift’s internet haters then equates those haters to… homophobes and transphobes.

Now Swift is straight. She is cis and straight, despite how many of her fans like to quietly speculate that she may still be in the closet. Personally, I am uninterested in speculating on someone’s gender or sexuality – Swift has stated she is cis and straight, and so she is cis and straight until she states anything else. And so, it is kind of nasty to see Swift, a cis and straight woman, who has never and will never experience homophobia or transphobia, kind of insinuating that hatred against her and the institutional violence against LGBTQA+ people are kinda the same thing?

And the music video is even more emblematic of this issue. It’s all the most well-known, rich, and famous LGBTQA+ (and LGBTQA+ adjacent) celebrities against a collection of anonymous, “rural-looking”, bigots. It paints the struggle for LGBTQA+ rights as no more difficult or important than a “you go girl!” “love yourself” “don’t let the haters bring you down!” kind of thing. And this… isn’t Swift’s fight. I mean yes, it’s good she’s an ally and she organized her fans to vote for equality and all that. But she still makes money from this song. She’s making money from the aesthetic of and decades-long struggle of a group she is not a part of.

It’s this thing that makes Swift’s political statements ring a little hollow. This was a huge hit, and I’m sure she made a good amount of money on it. I don’t want to say that that invalidates the value of a huge, famous celebrity putting her fame behind the LGBTQA+ rights movement. But… it just kills any enjoyment I would have gotten out of this generally catchy and kind of fun song.

But, I’ve been harsh on Lover. So let’s talk about a few tracks I really do like.

An odder favorite of mine is “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince.” Apparently, according to the genius entry for this song, this is also a political song, which… okay. I don’t know about that. Sure. Personally, I subscribe far more to this song as a continuation of the sweet vs bad girl image of this album. It’s fun because Swift is so well known for writing love songs about teenagers in high school (though, to be honest, she doesn’t really do that quite as much now that she is an adult in adult relationships). This song is kind of a twist on that, it’s very blatant about what makes high school romances interesting to us far past high school, painting the entire environment of the school as an obstacle for the couple in the song to overcome. But the singer in the song seems self aware about this, seeming cynical that the high school itself is even all that important. I love the little cheerleader interjections of “Go! Fight! Win!” and “Okay!” throughout, too.

“I Think He Knows” is also a favorite. I think it’s kind of a shame this song didn’t get more popular – it’s so fun, flirtatious, and terribly, terribly catchy. (Like, the amount of times I’ve had to turn this song on in an attempt to get it out of my head, only to get it even more stuck in my head… countless).

I also love the title track. “Lover” is a stripped down, echoey song obviously attempting to evoke the image of sweaty, tired lovers slow-dancing at the end of a busy night at a club. If there ever was a thesis statement for this album, it’s this one. I mentioned that Lover is an album of two minds, simultaneously soft and romantic but also invested in the image of Swift the Bad Girl, and I think this song is probably one of the best meldings of these two ideas. The song is unabashedly romantic and sweet, but there’s also moments of vulnerability, where the singer states that she is jealous of others who get to be with her “Lover.” It’s nice and well suited by the sound of the song.

So… those are my thoughts on Lover. The interesting thing about this album is how writing out some of my frustrations about it kind of made me appreciate it more. There’s a reason I began this review with the idea of Swift as a “good girl.” This won’t be the last time we return to this image of the good girl, but I think in Lover we see the last gasp of this image as it relates to Swift herself. I believe Swift when she says that she’s always wanted nothing more than to be good. I feel very similar about myself – the struggle between the desire to be seen as a good girl by others and by yourself is extremely difficult, because what is good can be very different in the eyes of those two parties.

Being a woman is to be caught forever between the images of women who have come before you, no matter how real those images are. For Swift, those images may have been the good girl and the bad girl, the quiet, pleasantly neutral celebrity and the outspoken activist, the lover and the hater… but for me, one of those images is Swift herself, I think.

Next time, we meet the bad girl.

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