I’m proud to say that during my undergraduate years, I am corrupted by two things: continental philosophy and Taylor Swift. Neither of them is a thing per se. The former is a school of European philosophy pioneered by Edmund Husserl, following the Kantian tradition. The later, however, is a contemporary American mega-pop star selling millions of albums.
In retrospect, they probably share something in common. As a start, they are celebrities. Alright, maybe not all of them, but they can be the talk of the town, academically or culturally. More importantly, no single figure can effectively summarise the two phenomena, be it philosophical or cultural. Continental philosophical is an incredibly broad philosophical movement involving figures such as Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. They come from different countries, write in different languages and demonstrate distinct political affiliations. Kierkegaard is a Christian, Sartre a Marxist and Heidegger a Nazi.
As for Swift, she has demonstrated her versatility in various personae implied by her oeuvre. She has been an innocent country girl longing for love, revengeful young woman feeling disillusioned about men, stylistic young model coming from a Vogue cover, a confrontational cynic scorning media attention, as well as a mature woman comfortably in love. In her early career, Swift appears apolitical. Sometimes she sounds like a closet Republican, given her country roots, but recently she has evolved to be an outspoken supporter of the Democrats. The household name Taylor Swift has never just been about one person, but a collusion of public imagination and spot-on marketing campaigns.
There are two things I always admire about Swift: her songwriting talent and her work ethic. She grows up in public attention, and her schedule has always been planned two years ahead. From her first album when she was sixteen, she has been consistently producing (at least) above-average pop records, touring and performing at award shows. By the time she turned thirty, she had already made seven albums, toured the world five times and been awarded ten Grammys, including two Album of the Year. Being constantly exposed to public scrutinisation can be suffocating, but for Swift, it is necessary evil. As she confesses in the documentary Miss Americana, she has become the person everyone wanted her to be, in addition to constantly reinventing herself, distancing herself from her past. Audiences always want to see a new Swift, not to an unrecognisable extent, but it still requires enormous efforts on her behalf.
Swift does not have a particularly gifted vocal box. Although she has improved her vocal performance tremendously throughout her career, she is not known for lung power or high whistle. Perhaps she has won her audience with the dynamism and effortless agility of her voice. But more importantly, her diaristic albums enchant her personal life, and her autobiographical songwriting features rich details of life filled with poignancy. Swift is an imaginative but economical writer, and her lyrics say much more than they literally mean. It is the rehearsed explosion of familiar details that Swift fans, or Swifties, find most irresistible about her songs. I can still recite “We danced around the kitchen in refrigerator light” in All Too Well, probably the central piece of her entire catalogue. In one simple anecdote, Swift conveys unmatched intimacy, sweetness of love and pity for losing it.
And here is her eighth album, Folklore, the most recent proof of her songwriting talent and work ethic. While most of the world are quarantined at home, watching Netflix and getting fat, Swift has made better use of her time. Early reviews of Folklore mark it as a career turning point, a new Swift. Rob Sheffield, a long time reviewer of Swift’s albums from Rolling Stone, claims that some might be dreaming for years that Swift would produce an album like this, but nobody anticipates that it comes out so great.1 Sheffield denotes it as a purely goth-indie album, with no deliberate hooks or stadium-friendly production.
I guess one can say that Folklore feels the least planned, or calculated, among all of Swift’s albums. It marks a considerable break from her previous album cycles, with less than a year from her previous album, Lover. No obvious radio single material this time, and the album sounds moody, occasionally atmospheric. Perhaps the quietness of the pandemic lockdown puts Swift in a nostalgic mood. Her voice sounds thinner and more feathery than ever, best demonstrated in seven, an instant classic. exile is another album highlight, with collaborations with Bon Iver. Swift’s voice comes in second, intertwined with (un)acceptance and (un)forgiveness. It is about a relationship that drifts apart. They have both watched a film before, and neither of them likes the ending. Their relationship has similarly come to the same, familiar critical point, and both can foresee how it is going to end.
Throughout Folklore, once again, Swift showcases her metaphors, insecurity in love and acute self-consciousness. However, instead of putting herself at the central stage of the album, Swift learns to dissolve her personality, her selfhood into a broad range of fictional characters, married or divorced, teenage or middle-aged, men or women. The newest persona of Swift is no persona. Instead of focusing what she has been going through, whether she breaks up again, Swift wants her audiences to contemplate with her phrasing and hum along her soft breath. It is about shutting down the noise, the distractions and the planned agenda of life so that one can take things slow and appreciate what’s important. All of a sudden, Swift becomes an indie singer in the same team with Lana Del Ray and Lorde. After all, they all collaborate with Jack Antonoff in their most recent albums.
Still, it is in disparity that I see continuity. As Jon Caramanica writes in his New York Times Review,2 Folklore in some sense is Swift’s retreat instead of progress. It is a retreat back to whiteness, her familiar teenage love-hate drama. It is a retreat from all responsibilities and implications of her previous personae whom she has carefully built up in the past decade or so. There is nothing wrong to retreat back to the familiar. It is part of the human nature, especially during the pandemic. Familiarity means safety, and for Swift, clearly it also means inspiration. Her imagination has run wild, and for the first time, she does not want to talk about herself or how she dealt with the lockdown. No persona is her newest persona, a quiet observer, a nostalgic recorder.
At the same time, due to her retreat, I do not see Folklore as her newest venture into folk music. The album is unlikely the turning point of Swift’s career. It is more of a practical compromise and a better use of the time to water barren lands once neglected by her record companies. It is a reinforcement of what she already has instead of breaking bonds with her past. She cements her past work instead of abandoning her heritage and starting anew. The content of lyrics are still familiar, and all sixteen songs still sound easy to listen. By easy, I mean that the album is not difficult to the ear or the mind. Streaming-friendly on the large, it does not challenge musical or socio-political conventions but reinforce her talent in scanning personal lives. This is a summer when many people cannot actualise their plans, but not for Swift, Folklore is actualised within her planned agenda. She has once again become the one everyone wanted her to be.
The real turning point of Swift’s career, as I see it so far, is hidden beneath Miss Americana and Heartbreak Prince, a much underrated song from Lover. Swift sings about a sixteen-year-old high school cheerleader feeling disillusioned about school games (They play stupid games and win stupid prices) and vowing the leave the town altogether with her boyfriend (voted most likely to run away with you). The political undertone can hardly be overlooked, as Swift diverts a stupid game in town school to the hypocrisy of American glory. The imaginary girl paints the imaginary town blue, probably a reference to the Democratic Party. But when she was asked to vote, she voted abandonment and disappointment.
It is in songs like Miss Americana and Heartbreak Prince where Swift showcases how powerful, at least potentially, her songwriting can be. The song starts from Swift’s most familiar place, high school cheerleading team, but quickly evolves to be a poignant autobiography of affirming her love in turbulent time. It is a specific song referring to a timely political context. With the right metaphors, Swift can accomplish much more than a country girl’s love-hate drama. I expected more such songs from Folklore which turns out to on the more contextless side of the spectrum. That said, Folklore is still a great album, especially in 2020.
CARPE NOCTEM 