Taylor Swift’s Semantic Overloading

Okay, as I’ve established, I think Taylor Swift is a supergenius writer, the only one I consider my clear superior. But, I mean, have you heard those lyrics? Come on, right?

Okay, yes the vocabulary and grammatical structure is pitched at an eighth-grade reading level; her work is pitched at an eighth-grade audience. But that’s hardly to say there’s no depth to her lyrics, it’s just that a lot of it relies on semantic overloading, and particularly semantic overloading that specifically plays on her bridging of popular music genres. To simplify, pop-rock lyrics tend to set a mood while country lyrics tell a story, but Taylor Swift lyrics tend to craft an atmosphere in which individual lines suggest a story or multiple stories (which listeners can fill in, according to the specifics of their own lives or daydreams), which can in turn be taken as literal or as metaphors.

(A lot of her themes have traditionally been about the stock female coming-of-age, but they shouldn’t be taken as coming from personal experience - which makes them even more impressive. Remember that she spent her teenage years not going to school and dating but home-studying and establishing her career because, contra Fifteen, she knew exactly what she was going to be. And she does venture afield of this - Never Grow Up and The Best Day are about the experience of watching your child grow, and Innocent is about a 32 year old woman looking to distance herself from the things she’s done - “Taylor Swift lyrics as explications of manosphere/redpill themes” would be a pretty impressive series in its own right.)

Like, Mean, from Speak Now. It’s about bullies, right? That you’ll escape from when you leave this one-horse town and live in a big old city?

Or is it about abusive parents? I mean,

some day I’ll be
big enough so you can’t hit me

Girl bullying isn’t really a “hitting” thing, plus

I bet you got pushed around,
Somebody made you cold,
But the cycle ends right now,
cause you can’t lead me down that road

Or is it about critics, such as critics of pop-country star Taylor Swift?

Or yourself and your insecurity, as your own biggest critic? (cf. Tied Together With a Smile and A Place In This World from the debut)

The answer, of course, is “yes”.

And that’s not even adding in the reading where it’s about her and Kanye West at the VMAs - because Swift can wield her public celebrity tabloid persona to add more reading and layers of valence to her songs, in part through encoded messages in her liner notes. Like, the liner notes code isn’t hard to figure out - just take the letters incongruously capitalized. Because she’s pitching at an eighth-grade audience. And she’s pitching that audience encrypted intertextuality.

Okay, let’s look at another song, Long Live, from Speak Now.

For one, it works a sequel to “Change”, from previous album Fearless, with its blended imagery of supporting a relationship partner, general teenage pressure, and literal revolution (released two months after the first Hunger Games novel came out and shifted the dominant tone of YA from Twilight-era “supportive relationship” to “youth insurrection”).

It’s about triumph, in a supportive relationship, over general teenage pressure (with an aside about high school relationships not being long-term things, in a much more optimistic tone than the similarly themed White Horse and Fifteen), is it metaphorizing that through the recurrent imagery of a coronation, or is it telling a literal story about being named Prom King & Queen, and the answer of course is “yes”. And then the recurring line “bring on all the pretenders”.

“Pretenders”, like, “phonies”, Holden Caulfield style.

“Pretenders”, like, unsuccessful claimants to a royal title.