Taylor Swift isn’t exactly known for thought-provoking lyrics. She is bubbly, cheerful, humble and still classy, but her music is, well . . . predictable.
The sweetheart of pop music has released close to 100 songs, and almost every single one sounds the same — lyrically, that is.
She writes love songs — happy ones, sad ones, nostalgic ones, hopeful ones. Young love is her trademark topic. Her songs are catchy, but not deep. They are fun, but not profound. Girls everywhere know her songs by heart, but never stop and think about her words.
They’ve never had to. Until now.
Swift’s newest single, “Blank Space,” and has lingered in the No. 1 slot since its release. But the song, and its underlying message, is surprisingly dark — dare I say, disturbing.
Perhaps for the first time, her lyrics deserve attention, as does her commentary on our culture’s love problem.
“Blank Space” isn’t a love song. It’s a dark depiction of a dysfunctional relationship that descends into a bloodthirsty desire for revenge.
It’s not exactly like the pop princess to use words and imagery like “torture,” “flipping tables,” “screaming,” “pain,” “scars” and “nightmares.”
The song is deeply sad, and an eerily accurate reflection of the increasingly detached attitude among millennials toward relationships, and the accompanying notion that “love is a game,” as Swift sings.
This suggests that love either “lasts forever or goes down in flames,” and that in the “blank spaces” between relationships, one just “writes the name” of the next attractive person that comes along.
It is this “young and reckless” attitude toward love, as Swift suggests, that leads to “taking it way too far.”
And it is this careless, nonchalant attitude toward relationships — a sad spinoff of hookup culture — that ends up becoming the “long list of ex-lovers” that Swift bemoans.
Swift, like so many, seems to now see love as inevitable failure, going into relationships “dying to see how this one ends.” And, predictably, such an attitude ends with “screaming, crying, the perfect storm.”
So, the former queen of young and hopeful love has now given us the anti-love song, a perfect encapsulation of the dystopian nightmare that is our modern view of love.
Swift comes dangerously close to glamorizing this dysfunction, appearing borderline masochistic and almost gleeful at the thought of allocating pain and suffering in the name of retribution.
You can almost hear her smile and wink, as she does in her accompanying music video.
But there’s yet another problem with this song, one that hints at a gender-based double standard that Swift seems to be perpetuating. Considering some of these lyrics from “Blank Space,” imagine if they came from a male musician.
“Look at that face, you look like my next mistake,” “[Girls] only want love if it’s torture,” “It’ll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar,” “You can tell me when it’s over if the high was worth the pain,” “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Let’s be honest — these aren’t words we’d be singing along to if they came from the mouth of a man. There would be cries of misogyny and sexism, and probably a collective freak-out at the undertones of violence and abuse.
It’s not OK for men to sing about teasing and torture, or lashing out at exes with emotional or physical abuse, but when these words come from Taylor Swift, no one bats an eye.
Is it because she’s young? Famous? Female? Whatever it is, we shouldn’t glorify the femme-fatale version of feminism that Swift seems to be flirting with.
We shouldn’t glorify those who dangle their power and sexuality over others, who tease and tempt the opposite sex for the thrill of it or who look at their romantic partners as emotional playthings.
And we certainly shouldn’t glorify the fire of violent revenge that Swift is playing with.
But most of all, we shouldn’t glorify this gloomy, dysfunctional version of modern love that she seems swept up in.
Taylor Swift may have given up on the possibility of hopeful love, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should.
From acculturated.com