My Obsession (2)

My “thing”, my “obsession”, is Taylor Swift’s recent album 1989. She comes out swinging at fan expectations with “Welcome to New York”, a shockingly synthesized welcome party to her dynamic new sound and the essence of her inspiration. The music rises from its banal origins like some mossy Sahelanthropus taking its first upright steps. She then shakes us out of the fever dream of reality with “Blank Space”, a song refreshingly subversive of traditional monogamy and societal expectations. “So it’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames?” rings the chorus of Swift’s good girl vocals, but she is truly questioning (or mocking) domineering masculinity and the ultimatum offered by the ideology of love. Here we see that our own private galaxies of suffering are no less Taylor’s subject than are the dreamy crew-cut boys she sexually dominates and impregnates with doubts and confusions. Soaked, but not saturated, we lurch onward to receive another blessing. Even the phrase ‘blank space’ encourages us to consider impossibilities: a Jewish baptism, a hopeful life.

We are then taken into the immediate hit “Style”, which continues to forward her brand of 80's synthesized pop with such well written melodies. In this song we are given a glimpse of a relationship that will continue to go “round and round” until the foreseen end.

Swift continues to explore the insecurity of relationships with “Out of the Woods”, a song so catchy that we cannot help but view our own lives from this perspective of loss. She repeatedly asks “Are we out of the woods…are we in the clear yet?”— Swift is describing the feeling of never knowing a relationship’s expiration date with gloomy, reverberating vocals and rapid, driving drum lines that give her repeated inquiries a sense of urgency and dread. Four tracks in and we are certainly seeing a new Swift — or perhaps a Swift who refuses to be categorized or defined by anyone but herself; she is not worried about “image” or fan expectations. But with this track, as with much of her work, the heart cannot react to what the ears perceive only faintly. Thus we are damned for all eternity.

“All You Had To Do Was Stay” explores the inability to salvage broken trust, but “Shake It Off”, perhaps the most popular song on the album, offers us the salvation and release of forgetting the past and seizing the future. Lust builds with the perfectly timed claps and ritualistic chants; we are aurally stimulated. The mind orgasms and is left empty. Swift offers us the perspectives of her critics and “haters” — those who would attempt to define her music and identity. These negative views, despite their seeming weight, are dispelled with her lyrical imperative: “Shake it Off”, as she promises to continue “grooving” no matter what the haters say.

“I Wish You Would” and “Bad Blood” continues the haunted aspect of severed relationships, with the latter giving us a continually repeated chorus so slavishly rhythmic that we wonder if both parties have themselves become captive to the rhythm of hate. “Wildest Dreams” slows the album to a heart-wrenching nostalgia, as she makes her lover promise to remember her as she wants to be remembered, to tell a story that she can live with no matter what goes wrong between them. Purple clouds blossom through her distantly synthesized vocals, signifying her intelligence and restraint; a storm from within demonstrates her heat and strong passions. Swift’s confessional pattern overwhelms with the pungent immediacy of feces; nevertheless, we are drawn to devour it.

“This Love” recounts both the haunting feeling and the positive energy associated with seeing an old relationship in a new light and being able to accept it for what it was — and what it wasn’t. “I Know Places” is the most explicit condemnation of societal norms and expectations in regards to relationships, as she compares those who watch over and criticize her intimate bonds as “hunters” and “vultures circling”, waiting for signs of life and happiness to vanish. But love, oh! It is not truly the subject sung by the fair-haired siren. This is a song of spears and moat warfare, of alligators and bridges being drawn up and impregnable walls of misinformation.

“Clean” concludes the album with images of death but also of new life: “Rain came pouring down/when I was drowning/That’s when I could finally breathe/By morning/Gone was any trace of you/I think I am finally clean.” Swift is weaving through the feelings of emotional exhaustion but coming out clean, being born again with a new perspective. But of course past experience controls us all, as she concludes: “Now that I’m clean/I’m never gonna risk it.” But being “clean” becomes more than recovering from the inevitable doom of relationships; like her namesake suggests, Taylor swiftly emancipates our hearts from the cruel bonds of manhood.

1989, finally, plays beer pong on the altar of our mutual obsession. In this way 1989, also the year of Swift’s birth, becomes a personal and musical rebirth in a sense. A redefinition of herself and past experiences, and also an imperative to be cautious but not afraid of whatever comes next in life and “love”.

Permission to speak, Admiral Swift. Permission granted. Now lap up these cheerios from the floor: I reached the tumultuous beginning and lasting peak of my obsession with 1989 at a Christmas party last year. I had eaten several brownies laced with strong marijuana and acid, and I found myself in a bathroom with mirrors on all sides; I was forced to face my creaturely essence and I smashed all the threatening reflections of my supposed identity with my face, face to face if you will, and then collapsed in my own vomit and blood. I was gently awakened to the sound of 1989 drifting through the bathroom door, and like Taylor, I found myself at the dawn of a new age — and another year. Now I must indulge the mortality of my own failed longings along with Swift, and share her inspirations with others while hoping for a more meaningful tomorrow.