Being a soon-to-be college graduate is a strange era in life. Everything that has felt familiar to you for the last several years is coming to an end, and in the midst of it all you’re juggling three thousand different responsibilities all while reminding yourself that you’re actually supposed to be celebrating at the same time.
This tumultuous time has been ramping up just in time for the drop of the new Taylor Swift album. For the “Swiftie” college seniors out there in the world, this was probably an incredibly exciting development in the midst of all the chaos. I am not a Swiftie (though I think people should listen to whatever makes them happy), and frankly had little knowledge about this album release until exactly 24 hours beforehand when my Instagram feed exploded in mass Swiftie excitement. As previously mentioned, being a soon-to-be college graduate is weird. You’re excited and afraid and stressed, trying to finish assignments and apply to jobs and decide what you’d actually like to do for the rest of your life and hang out with your friends before you all go back to living on opposite sides of the country. The experience makes you frazzled and perhaps a bit delusional. Which is probably the mindset that led to me spontaneously listening to the new Taylor Swift album on the day of its release.
This isn’t an album review, don’t worry. I definitely had some personal feelings about the album though: like with a lot of pop music, I found most of the songs to be repetitive, with the same melodic structure and low-range, breathy vocals. Unlike those who religiously praise her lyricism, I also found many of the underlying themes and lyrics to be cliche, simplistic, and overall pretty indistinguishable from her last several albums (sorry). That being said, there were definitely a few tracks I found myself bopping my head to — ”The Tortured Poets Department”, “My Boy only Breaks his Favorite Toys” and “Florida!!!” being at the top of that list.
As someone who tends to listen to the instrumentals and melody more than the lyrics of music, I also appreciated some of the more retro-esque synth-pop beats that lurked underneath some of the songs. It was very 80s-school-dance in a way that added just a little variety to the otherwise analogous track list.
Listening to the album definitely led me down a rabbit hole of wondering why Taylor Swift makes the type of music she does, and how her very privileged background plays into the themes that shine through in her work (which is a whole other article in and of itself) (I was entirely unaware until looking her up that Swift not only came from a fairly wealthy family but was also basically an overnight success as a child and has continued that trend with every single album since, anyways). Heartbreak pop has never been my style, and I’ve always wondered why everyone else is so obsessively moved by it, as opposed to artists with a more unique discography or that explore more nuanced topics.
As these thoughts circled my mind I found myself listening to the album again. And again. And again. Before I knew it, I was stuck in a perpetual loop of dreamy atmospheric heartbreak music with absolutely no escape.
It took me a while to figure out why the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. I still don’t entirely know, but I expect my 10-year-old self to be the culprit.
I listened to Taylor Swift quite a lot as a kid, mostly during the Fearless and Speak Now eras. I have an incredibly vivid memory of borrowing my moms laptop just to play the “You Belong With Me” music video on repeat for several hours at a time. That much smaller version of myself loved that music. She didn’t care yet what kind of person Taylor was or what her carbon emission level was. Nor did she care about the music being cliche or shallow or this or that. She liked that it had a good beat and a dreamy atmosphere that she could dance around her bedroom to.
After the insanity-inducing bombardment of Taylor Swift on the radio following the release of her Red album, and then more recently the deluge of eras tour content everpresently on my Instagram feed, I had all but shut off that love for Taylor Swift’s earlier music (I did give Folklore a listen last year, but couldn’t get into it). Something about this particular album, though—at this specific moment in my life—made me feel like that little girl again. Maybe not enough to become a Swiftie, but enough to escape into nostalgia for just a little while.
During a brief break between one end-of-semester obligation and the next, I had a second to get lost in the music. It occurred to me that regular Taylor Swift listeners probably feel this way all the time, hence their super fan quality. I do like complex music. Music that is experimental and intricate and that explores topics beyond just the classic love story and heartbreak. That being said, sometimes it’s nice not to have to do that once in a while.
While The Tortured Poets Department is probably one of the most moody of Taylor Swift’s albums thus far, I found that it had a surprisingly optimistic effect on me. Yeah, it’s the usual heartbreak story but—as painful as it is—right now the classic breakup song feels a whole lot simpler than having your whole life waiting ahead of you. As much as the stories in these songs themselves are intended as less than optimistic, they still feel simplistically hopeful. The girl gets the guy. And even when she loses him she still hopes wistfully to love again. Her only problem is losing a guy who wasn’t right for her anyway. The music is isolated and unbothered, existing in its own lovelorn space far away from the weight of the current society.
Who knows if I’ll ever enjoy a Taylor Swift album this much again. But at a time when everything is entirely undetermined, it’s been nice to melt into someplace else for a while. I know my childhood self thinks so too.
Image credit to Travis Blessing on Unsplash.
