Some people really have a problem with Taylor Swift. I am not one of those people, but I haven’t been much of a fan since her country era when I was in Middle School and “Teardrops On My Guitar” perfectly encapsulated my feelings about my crush. I didn’t care for the pop turn she took, and time matured my tastes.
Upon hearing Kacey Musgraves’ recent single “Deeper Well,” I realized what was missing: while my tastes had matured, Taylor herself had not. At least, the character she plays in song had not.
It may be that her music simply isn’t for me, but there is something strange about a 34-year-old still inhabiting the perspective of a teenage girl. The charm of a self-pitying young woman who seems eternally naive about the challenges of romance and perpetually upset to have to endure them eventually wears off. Does she expect to keep embarking on new quests of self-discovery like an unemployed post-grad even as she remains optimistic about finding The One well into middle age?
There is nothing especially wrong with this, and I actually enjoy much of Swift’s music. What concerns me is the role she plays in promoting a culture of perpetual adolescence when she is in a position to set a better example. Commercially, the formula seems to work for now – but will it ever change?
Evidently, Taylor Swift can’t change the formula even if she wanted to. Much like Paul Atreides in Dune, she’s imprisoned by her own followers, too bought into the character she plays to change course now. It has become regrettably trendy in certain younger circles to construct one’s personality around partially-understood psychological concepts. Casual self-diagnoses and trivializing misuses of the word “trauma” are omnipresent. Swift could have a positive influence on this unhealthy subculture by counter-programming with themes of self-possession and maturity, but instead she panders to it. “Anti-Hero” plays at mild introspection but ultimately delivers a string of buzzwords you might recognize from therapy or a TikTok #traumadump. If she sang instead about having genuine grace for her exes or making peace with an imperfect world, she would risk a significant portion of her fanbase. Again, there’s nothing wrong with this as a commercial product, but it leaves one wondering if the free-spirited Musgraves sets a better example for my generation.
Because unlike Swift, Kacey Musgraves is willing to risk changing the formula. Her latest single “Deeper Well” is the anti- “Anti-Hero” – the “I guess some of my problems are my own fault, but I’ll co-opt them as my whole identity and refuse to change, teehee” ethos is nowhere to be found. The 35-year-old country singer is but a year older than Ms. Swift yet decades ahead in emotional development. Where “Anti-Hero” begins with the cavalier admission that “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser,” “Deeper Well” strikes the opposite note:
My Saturn has returned
When I turned twenty-seven
Everything started to change
Took a long time, but I learned
The stinging humility “Anti-Hero” plays at but never achieves is immediately evident. The latter’s breezy melody bordered on self-parody for Swift and gave some of her fans permission to admit unflattering things about themselves within the safe bounds of a popular culture that allows such shortcomings to repurposed as tools of identity construction. Right off the bat, Musgraves disrupts this permission structure: rather than offer affirmation, she challenges her audience by offering herself as an example of what becomes possible when you find a deeper well of purpose for your life.
The real poignancy kicks in at the second verse:
I used to wake and bake
Roll out of bed, hit the gravity bong that I made
And start the day
For a while, it got me by
Everything I did seemed better when I was high
I don’t know why
This is a far cry from the young woman whose breakthrough album encouraged listeners to “roll up a joint (or don’t)” as long as we followed our arrows, wherever they happened to point. She continues:
So I’m getting rid of
The habits that I feel
Are real good at wasting my time
No regrets, baby, I just think that maybe
It’s natural when things lose their shine
So other things can glow
I’ve gotten older now I know
How to take care of my soul
I found a deeper well
In the gentlest way possible and with all due humility, this celebrity stoner tells us, “Get off your ass and stop dulling your senses. Trust me, it’s better once you do.” It rings true for a woman of her age while Swift’s schtick grows less and less believable with each passing year.
Taylor Swift broke through before her sweet sixteen, achieved superstardom fast, and has carefully hewn to something resembling the image of that curly-haired teeny-bopper. Along the way, she came to embody the arrested development of our shared millennial generation. Kacey Musgraves self-produced three whole albums and came in seventh on a second-rate singing competition show before she secured a record deal. As a result, she resembles the grand tradition of country stars Dolly Parton and Reba McIntire: she has crossover appeal, but there is an earthiness, an undeniable reality to her prose that Taylor Swift cannot achieve.
The ultimate mark of maturation can be found in verse three of “Deeper Well,” wherein she recognizes that a boring upbringing in an in-tact family is a blessing after all:
When I was growing up
We had what we needed
Shoes on our feet but the world was as flat as a plate
And that’s OK
The things I was taught
Only got me so far, had to figure the rest out myself
And then I found
I found a deeper well
For her fans’ sake, I hope Taylor finds a deeper well soon.
“If she sang instead about having genuine grace for her exes”
Have you heard Afterglow?
“Why’d I have to break what I love so much?
It’s on your face, and I’m to blame, I need to say
Hey
It’s all me in my head
I’m the one who burned us down”
or Happiness?
“No one teaches you what to do
When a good man hurts you
And you know you hurt him too”
or The Great War?
“You drew up some good faith treaties
I drew curtains closed, drank my poison all alone
You said I have to trust more freely
But diesel is desire, you were playin’ with fire
And maybe it’s the past that’s talkin’
Screamin’ from the crypt
Tellin’ me to punish you for things you never did
So I justified it”
You really need to listen to Swift’s last 4 albums to appreciate how much her music has changed.Report
That excerpt from “The Great War” is pretty moving to read just as poetry. I enjoyed reading the Musgrave excerpts in the OP too. It turns out to be possible that both Swift and Musgrave are good songwriters who can explore complex, ambiguous emotional territory.Report
Mmmhmm knew this was written by a man.Report
The cult of authenticity is one of the weirdest aspects of Anglophone music criticism. From what I can tell only English speakers seem to really care about whether a musician is authentic or grown up or whatever you want to call it. Outside the Anglophone world, there doesn”t seem to be these concerns at all.Report
It’s an American thing in general; cosplayers will include “who made this” in their assessment of a costume’s artistic merit, and the player making something themselves is more highly regarded than one who bought pieces. (Versus Japan, where nobody really cares either way so long as the result looks good.)
This is a thing for art, also; I recall a Twitter thread about AI artwork, and someone lamenting that the only thing of theirs that their parents have ever had framed was a pencil-sketch of a flower they did in high school, even though their whole job now is creating artwork, for which they use Photoshop. “They keep telling me it doesn’t look real,” the person said.Report
British music critics seem to be just as into the authenticity cult as American music critics. One reason why the United States has only had a few commercially successful hip-hop acts is that very few could pull off street cred and appear like they were from the hood. This is also why manufactured pop acts get denigrated in Anglophone music criticism. East Asians don’t seem to care.Report
What’s the old saying about it? Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t do or teach get jobs as critics.Report
LOL.Report
I don’t think it’s so weird. There are lots and lots of talented performers out there, far more than there are great creators. Just because someone can perform doesn’t mean they can also create. I think it’s therefore fair to hold those that can do both in a higher artistic esteem than those that can only do one or the other. The cult of authenticity grows out of the idea that people are creating something from themselves, and that there’s something more intensely artistic or unique than doing a kind of pastiche, even a really good one.
But I also just think that the internet has shined a spotlight and we now know way more than we used to. You mentioned hip hop. As an example, I believe Dr. Dre, while having a tough youth, still had a few false starts in the 80s doing less serious more commercial projects, and the prominent form of him that came out in the 90s was a very intentional reinvention and image overhaul. It’s just that back then there was no wikipedia and YouTube and other social media and whatever else documenting it so it was easier to get away with.Report
Johny Cash never actually served hard time. Bruce Springsteen never worked a blue collar job in his life.
Some artists seem to get away with it.Report
I’ve always enjoyed this Onion article every time I see it circulating around.
https://www.theonion.com/bruce-springsteen-relishes-finally-telling-off-foreman-1848228552Report
I’d love for someone to take a deep dive on Bruce’s son and his decision to become a Jersey City fireman. A child of such absurd privilege living a life his father only pretends to represent.
A lot going on there.Report
However, Gene Simmons actually did rock and roll all night, and then partied every day.Report
Yes, but only part of every day.Report
I admit I don’t really pay attention to any of this, besides sometimes listening to Taylor Swift, but even I know her current concert tour is _literally_ about having different musical ‘eras’. I just checked the Wikipedia synopsis, and, yup, she’s got ten of them, apparently. (And as a theatre person, reading the descriptions cause me to go ‘What the hell? This is a full theatrical show, not a concert!’)
To quote Wikipedia: The versatility of the show’s music, visuals, and performance art was often a point of praise in its reviews. Journalists Rebecca Lewis and Carson Mlnarik of Hello! and MTV, respectively, commended Swift’s stage presence and commitment to her artistry; Lewis described Swift’s alter egos during the tour as shifting from “country ingénue to pop princess and folklore witch”,[145] whereas Mlnarik affirmed that the on-screen visuals stayed true to every album’s aesthetic.
So I seriously doubt anyone is supposed to see her as some ‘perpetual adolescent’.
I actually suspect the difference is that Taylor Swift does mostly does _pop_ music, with the slightest amount of country once, and Kacey Musgraves does country music.
And those have notably different themes. And the article-writer doesn’t like pop themes, so thinks this is…something to do with Swift, for some reason?
But, anyway, of all the people out there, I suspect the person who _doesn’t_ need any advice is Taylor Swift, billionaire. (And one of the few billionaires who actually did get there just by selling a product people wanted.)Report
“If she sang instead about having genuine grace for her exes or making peace with an imperfect world, she would risk a significant portion of her fanbase.”
Taylor on Invisible String: Cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart. Now I send their babies presents.
I know using Taylor’s name gets clicks but can journalist honor their profession and do some research?Report