Taylor Swift's Cruel Summer
India Abbott argues that we need to re-evaluate our treatment of Taylor Swift.
“This summer,'' laments Taylor Swift in a 2016 diary entry, “is the apocalypse.” The excerpt, taken from a real journal, is provided in a booklet that accompanies her recently released album Lover. For an album that posits to be her “love letter to love”, her choice of imagery seems incongruous at first glance: “I want to be defined by the things I love, not the things I hate, or the things I’m afraid of” she states in the record’s spoken outro, before continuing, “you are the things you love”. However, the excerpt is there, nestled in amongst the original lyrics for 2012 fan-favourite love song ‘All Too Well’ and commentary about London and her relationships.
Most of the booklet’s entries mark seminal moments in Taylor’s life, but this one still stands out: it’s short and blunt, and for a fan like me, it cuts deep. Why? After the events of summer 2016, Taylor disappeared for a year - refusing interviews, deleting every post off her social media... a palpable silence for a woman known for her enthusiastic interactions with fans (‘Swifties’). With the excerpt, we not only have extra insight as to the extent of Taylor’s hurt, but also an understanding that her battle with the fallout is still ongoing.
Taylor started writing songs when she was 11 years old; at 14, she moved to Nashville, releasing her self-titled debut album two years later. It charted at #5, however it was 2008’s country-pop album Fearless (the first CD I owned!) that galvanized her career - it’s the most decorated country album ever, and engendered a slew of hit singles such as ‘Love Story’ and ‘You Belong With Me’. Taylor was accepting an award for the ‘Love Story’ video when Kanye West famously interrupted her speech.
Taylor’s rise coincided with the rise of outlets such as Mail Online, making her a regular fixture in tabloids. For many, determining which of her exes she was singing about became a dominant focus (‘All Too Well’ is about Jake Gyllenhaal, ‘Dear John’ is about John Mayer), and set a precedent for the way people discussed her. She was a “boy-crazy” girl with a vindictive streak; and her ambition, integrity, and talent were interrogated: “people would act like (my songwriting) was a weapon I was using… like a cheap dirty trick.” Even future collaborators doubted her: Imogen Heap explains, “I did to Taylor what I hate others to do of me, which is to pre-judge a person based on assumptions.” For Taylor, being a young woman in the public eye was enough to judge her qualifications, sincerity, and personality on.
“I think frankly it’s a very sexist angle to take,” Taylor said in 2014 in response to a question about “only” writing break-up songs - “no one says that about Ed Sheeran. No one says that about Bruno Mars.” Two years before, Taylor had rejected the label ‘feminist’, but had seemingly begun claiming the title. She knew where she had once been a “teenage girl who reminded men of their daughters” she was now a “woman”, and with that came a new set of vocabulary (“man-eater”; “slut”). She was accused of lying, and sued, after she reported someone for groping her during a meet-and-greet. Taylor noticed the shifting perspective on her, and took a stand - which worked both to satisfy her sense of personal righteousness, and as a precursor to #MeToo.
Despite the issues that dogged her, Taylor continued to find success through 2014-2015: she released her most commercially successful album 1989, won 6 Grammys, fought for artists’ rights by taking her entire back catalogue off Spotify to request fair pay, and publicly published a letter to Apple with similar demands. She was heralded by other artists for exerting her influence in a way that saw many musicians benefit. She was riding a wave of public admiration when suddenly the rug was pulled out from under her.
“I bet me and Taylor would still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous,” raps Kanye West in his 2016 song ‘Famous’. Taylor’s representatives released a statement deploring the word “bitch” (a word often used to describe women who defend themselves) and the use of a hyper-realistic naked wax model of her in the song’s music video. When Kim Kardashian released a video of Taylor allegedly approving the lyrics, Taylor was quick to state that she had only approved half the lyrics and that nobody had run the word “bitch” by her - but it was too late. While Kim’s video didn’t contradict Taylor’s actual claims, people were quick to side against her.
It’s unsurprising that Taylor still deals with the summer’s events: it was the worst manifestation of sexism she’d ever experienced, in that people weren’t inclined to believe or listen to her. Her carefully crafted image was dragged through the mud (her ultimate fear; “the apocalypse”), and she had been largely abandoned by the public and people whose artistic rights she had fought for: “a mass public shaming is a very isolating experience,” she recently confessed. Unfortunately for her, she’s an unsympathetic victim by virtue of being privileged, rich, white, and beautiful - plus, her clique was no longer “feminist” but “elitist”, her ‘reinvention’ from a curly-haired country darling to a flat-ironed pop star made her “fake”, and when she failed to endorse Hillary…Well.
In her silence, Taylor secretly worked on 2017’s Reputation: “Reputation was important for me because I needed to write it, put it out and not explain it. I knew if I did an interview about it, it wouldn’t be about music.” ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ spoke for itself. In the music video, Taylor plays different versions of herself over the years that cajole each other - “there she goes, playing the victim, again”, “stop acting like you’re so nice, you’re so fake” - reflections of the way she’d been talked about for years. The comeback was angry, funny, self-reflective and self-deprecating - endearing her once more to some of the public that had shunned her.
“I am very aware of what people say about me. I’m also aware of who I am,” Taylor said in a recent interview. “What struck me most about her was her brilliant sense of humour, but also how she has an incredible sense of who she is,” agreed Edward Enninful. Swifties like myself pick up on lyrics she reuses, that demonstrate her commitment to her own authenticity - for example, “Think of my head on your chest/ and my old faded blue jeans…” in 2006’s ‘Tim McGraw’, and “you know I love Springsteen, faded blue jeans, Tennessee whiskey…” in 2019’s ‘London Boy’. Taylor wasn’t being ‘fake’ when she explored different musical genres: “I simply want to make music that reflects all of my influences,'' she explained. In retrospect, I believe the label ‘fake’ grew out of our inability to allow women the space to be complex in their personality, emotions and life choices.
Which is why even I, Swiftie extraordinaire, found the excerpt in Lover out of place: I believed the album could only be one thing. I didn’t immediately allow it room for complexity, which probably hailed from my own failure to think of other women as complex and multifaceted. I felt the first track - the vindictive sounding ‘I Forgot That You Existed’ - was at odds with what I thought was the true theme of the album. I only appreciated its wide ranging emotional spectrum later. On a third, fourth, or fifth reading, I realised the summer of 2016 didn’t only spawn Reputation; it produced much of Lover too - the narrative is simply told through a wiser, retrospective lens (I believe ‘The Man’ sums up her current feelings particularly well).
Lover is Taylor’s first album released after #MeToo, a movement that has clearly given her (and the wider public) cause to rethink how her treatment at the hands of society should be viewed - was Kanye’s wax figure of her in fact “revenge porn”, as Taylor states in a recent Twitter post? I think it’s a fair enough claim to make. Vogue sums up: “it is hard to imagine that Swift’s songs about her exes would be reviewed as sensationally today. I wonder if any man would dare grab the microphone out of a young woman’s hands at an award show…” Taylor Swift was the vessel through which many expunged their problems with ambitious, successful, and hard-working women. In calling out her treatment, Taylor began a conversation around the different standards society employs in dealing with men and women.
Taylor will soon be honoured with Artist of the Decade. Despite this, she continues to bear the brunt of a bad reputation with many, including my friend Beth, who called her a slut as recent as a month ago. “She’s been with the same guy for three years now,” I said. Beth looked at me with vague surprise. “What, really?” she asked. I responded “yep”, but what I should have added was: “What would it take for you to forgive her?”