Taylor Swift puts lyrics to controversial issues

Ten-time Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift wins over the hearts of her followers with timeless breakup songs and catchy tunes. In 2017, Swift revealed a darker, more adult version of music.

Based on the fall of her reputation amidst celebrity feuds, Swift named the album Reputation. As said in an interview at Town Hall for SiriusXM, Swift used her character reinvention to sort and process her persona transformation, transitioning into a place to write Lover, her fresh new album.

Lover released Aug. 23 and contains 18 songs, more than she’s ever placed in one album. The album embodies many lighthearted and pop-themed sounds from her fourth album, Red. “I once believed life would be burning red but it’s golden,” Swift said. This line from Daylight, a song from her 2019 album, shows Swift’s outlook on life since the Red era. 

Lover is exactly like it sounds. A plethora of love songs are scattered throughout the track list along with a few based on social issues. Most songs seem to revolve around her boyfriend of nearly three years, Joe Alwyn. As shown in the title track, Lover, Swift sings, “My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue all’s well that ends well to end up with you.”

The beginning track, I Forgot You Existed, opens with staccato piano and bass behind the catchy lyrics. Swift sings to her previous falling outs, mentioned in Reputation. After spending time dwelling on the past, she shares that forgetting about it and letting go was “so nice”. 

This album broke the record for most first-week sales of 2019 in only one day. In addition, this is the first album that Swift owns. Previously belonging to Big Machine Records, she plans on re-recording her first six albums to gain ownership. Now with Republic Records and Universal Music Group, the singer writes with Jack Antonoff among other writers. The album features three songs solely written by Swift.

Swift includes exclusive copies of her diary entries through the years in the deluxe version of Lover only sold at Target.

“Taylor Swift’s diary entries are a must-read companion to Lover” was a thing The New York Times said so here’s where you can get them, I mean they literally said you must read them so… https://t.co/whgqEZMAlq pic.twitter.com/GeCicGvqyC

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 28, 2019

Paper Rings and London Boy both describe her relationship with Alwyn. There is a childlike feel to these, with her peppy vocals, modernized synth and beats. Paper Rings has a retro sound with faded vocals in the beginning. For London Boy, Swift declares her love for her beau and his hometown while claiming she still loves “Springsteen and faded blue jeans”.

Despite the negative streak she experienced in Reputation, Swift proves with Lover that the “old Taylor” was not dead and makes a comeback with her new heartfelt tunes. Along with a soft pop sound, Swift continues using detailed and confessional lyrics. Soon You’ll Get Better, featuring the Dixie Chicks, channels her country roots in a slow ballad focused on her feelings throughout her mother’s battle with cancer. She dives into these emotions with lyrics like, “What am I supposed to do? If there’s no you”.

The songs ME!, featuring Brendon Urie, You Need To Calm Down, The Archer and Lover were released ahead of the album as singles. ME! and You Need To Calm Down received mixed reviews, causing audiences to believe the rest of the album sounded similar. Luckily, The Archer and Lover showcased meaningful and metaphorical lyrics, echoing previous songs like Last Kiss from Red or Back To December from Speak Now. 

Swift, for the second time, records profanity in an album. You Need To Calm Down and The Man, the most opinionated songs, include swearing. She mentions the LGBT community and advocates for them, including a message to sign her petition about gay rights at the end of You Need To Calm Down’s music video. In The Man, Swift explains how people would treat her if she was male.

As Swift grows older, her music grows as well. She conforms to recent pop and R&B music, featuring more substance abuse and sexual references than necessary in songs such as False God, Cornelia Street, I Think He Knows and Death By A Thousand Cuts. 

Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince goes back to high school days, sharing a crush story between a bad girl and a heartbreaker. Cruel Summer hints to another song Love Story from 2008, “Out the window I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below … I snuck in through the garden gate every night that summer just to steal my fate.” The structure of the chorus and bridge creates an exciting song along with the way Swift’s vocals are highlighted.

Below is a Spotify clip of Swift’s song, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”.

One out of the two breakup songs is Death By A Thousand Cuts. With an impressive rhyme scheme and various metaphors, the song has a sweet melody and surprisingly sad lyrics. In the track, Swift is yearning for a past love, contrasting to previous song,  We Are Never Getting Back Together.

The second breakup song is Swift apologizing for burning a relationship down and asking to meet in the Afterglow. She switches from blaming others in past albums to taking the fall for hurting them. 

In It’s Nice To Have A Friend, Swift leaves songs about lust, boyfriends or struggles by singing about a young friendship. The song never changes melodies and Swift sings in the same pattern for the whole 2:30 of the song.

The personal connection and nostalgia radiating from Cornelia Street makes this song superior, showing possible heartbreak and what it’s like to walk the streets where you once walked with a lover. Everyone can connect to their own Cornelia Street, as Swift shares the location where she lived and spends time creating a universal connection and meaning to the lyrics.

The album concludes with Daylight, a tribute to her awakening from the “twenty year dark night”. She is aware of how she acted in the past and how the love she has now carried her into a new light. Swift utters these words as the song fades out, “I want to be defined by the things that I love. Not the things I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. I just think that… you are what you love.”

Swift makes it clear that Lover is about different types of love. A few songs don’t fit this theme, but besides that, Swift continues to do what she does best: writing about love. Amidst her changing music, Swift gifts the music industry with her soulful, creative writing.

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For more music reviews, see Sight and Golden Hour. For more articles, read COLUMN: Growth in Costa Rica.

Morgan Parker can be reached via email and via Twitter.