KWISP #27: swiftuationship
Oops, all Taylor. That's showbiz, baby.
I am a blonde woman who loves orange. So as you can imagine, this week (and the last few months) is pretty exciting for me.
As I discussed recently with one of my best friends, my relationship with Taylor Swift and her music is often one of a cultural anthropologist — because in our fractured pop culture landscape she’s really all we have in terms of monoculture. Observing her helps us observe what’s going on in pop music at large. And right now, what’s going on is – it orange.
Kidding. Kind of.
What’s going on is that a 12-track album produced with pure pop production superstars Max Martin and Shellback (who helped Tay do 1989 and parts of Red and Reputation aka her pre-Jack Antonoff imperial phase) is pretty emblematic of our need for quick hits of dopamine in our pop after years of slogging through the malaise of mumble-rap, contemplative cursive-singing, and earnest men. Ew.
As this newsletter drops, The Life of a Showgirl will be out. We’ll all have chosen an immediate favorite song. We’ll all be making parallels between the lyrics to what we know of Taylor’s life — ooh, she loves Travis! She hates Scooter Braun! She has a complicated relationship with touring and fame and probably Blake Lively!
But as any Swiftie — dedicated or casual — knows, the best part of listening to her music isn’t relating the content to her life, but our own lives. What makes her such a compelling figure (and emotional support billionaire) is a candid, diaristic, heart-on-her-sleeve lyricism that allows us to see our own and emotional experiences in her music. Which makes my theory about how each of Taylor’s exes parallel each of my exes perfectly normal, thank you very much.
So today, I present to you a story told through Taylor’s catalogue. A story all too familiar to me and so many other single people in the modern era. A story of high highs, low lows, and redemptive hope. The story of the “situationship,” a modern term for a short-term, often undefined relationship.
I myself am not a fan of the word. It cheapens the affair. I prefer to refer to my own as a fling or a daliance. It’s a much more romantic way to look at it. Short relationships can be meaningful too!
Wherever you’re at — deeply in love, shallowly in like, heartbroken or angry or some strangely numb place outside of it all — there’s a Taylor song for it. There might be even more on TLOAS. I think of Taylor’s catalogue the way I think of the Bible: a rich text compiled for many different purposes through which the reader can find whatever message they need.
So as a companion piece to our recently betrothed parasocial bestie’s newest body of work, take a peek inside the situationship Bible.
One more thing: this is playlist #27. I just turned 27 at the end of last month. I feel like this easter egg just happened to me upon the mere mention of Miss Tay
HERE’S THE PLAYLIST:
LISTEN TO THIS PLAYLIST WHILE YOU:
Try desperately not to make your daydreams maladaptive while you wait for a text back from someone on your phone named “Matt Hinge”
Take an everything shower before you meet your crush for drinks/dinner/attempting to run into them somewhere you’ve seen them before
If you’re married, thank the good Lord you don’t have to do this shit anymore
THE MOST “THIS PLAYLIST” SONG ON THIS PLAYLIST:
Taylor’s most famous situationship is one Mr. Harry Styles. And her most romantically noncommittal hit inspired by him also happens to be one of the best gleefully romantic descriptions of a short-term fling AND (in my opinion) one of Taylor’s best songs. And that, my friends, is “Style.”
Also, I am taking this opportunity to say that I am SO glad Taylor bought her masters back so I can listen to the non-Taylor’s Version. It just has worse production quality, I’m sorry! There’s a reason Max Martin gets paid the big bucks! (Or, in Swedish, the big krona.)
THIS DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT BELONGS HERE BUT I PROMISE IT DOES:
I’m gonna use this platform to defend “The Tortured Poets Department.” Not the album (which over time has grown on me). The song. Is it her best work lyrically? Certainly not. Does it forever bound the song to the current era, naming pretty much everyone in her mid-2024 inner circle other than Ratthew Healy himself? Absolutely. Is it fun to listen to though? Yeah.
It’s not made for Pitchfork critics or diehard rock-heads. It’s for those of us in groupchats who demand our friends to share whenever they have gossip about strangers, sparing no detail. The ridiculous specificity makes it work.
MY PERSONAL FAVORITE SONG ON THIS PLAYLIST:
And now I’m gonna use this platform to defend the song that got me sold on The Tortured Poets Department (the album) in the first place. “Guilty As Sin.”
I’m in the camp of not thinking Team Taylor is particularly good at picking singles. At least not in her more recent years. They do well at conveying the vibe of the album, sure, but there’s a sheen of commercial appeal that she chooses over her better songwriting instincts in many of them. I still haven’t forgiven her from the I come back stronger than a 90s trend line in “willow,” I’m sorry.
And on TTPD, we had “Fortnight,” which is fine. But we also have “Guilty As Sin” which is perhaps the most luxurious, aching portrayal of longing and deceit our queen of limerance has ever given us. I like Taylor when she’s morally gray. (“But Daddy I Love Him” is another of my favorites for this reason!) It makes for some of her most interesting songwriting and lets her and her collaborators make some fun production choices. She’s no easily marketable victim here. She yearns, she questions herself, she lets the intrusive thoughts have their way for a minute.
It’s that willingness to show us her fallible side that’s made the most recent phase of her career so interesting. Her best single of the 2020s? “Anti-Hero,” a self-aware bop that only makes sense spoken from the mouth of one of the most influential people in the world. Being flawed has always made us like her more. I hope The Life of a Showgirl shows us more of that.
Thank you for reading my humble article on this high Swiftie holiday weekend. I do make playlists featuring other artists, too, fyi. And if you wanna read those, give this Substack a
Have a sparkling October, my shiny bugs!