“In my defence I have none / For never leaving well enough alone”: What happens when you put two people with ADHD and a shared special interest in a zoom
Hello! It has been precisely one year since escaped laboratory experiment Taylor Swift dropped folklore, the first of her two (to date!!!!) lockdown albums. To celebrate this auspicious day, I am unleashing the following newsletter — back in March, my friend Ploy and I had a three-hour Zoom call about folklore and its sister evermore, their place(s) in Taylor’s oeuvre, Taylor Swift’s whiteness, architecture, and many more incredibly niche topics. Read on for the annotated transcript of that conversation, if you dare.
PLOY: So I was prompted to message you hysterically at 7am, or whenever it was that I messaged you, because in our respective analyses [of folklore] we both reached some of the same conclusions, specifically about “betty” and the part in the bridge where it switches from “but if I showed up at your party / would you have me” to “Yeah I showed up at your party / will you have me” and when I saw that in your Tinyletter I was like, “Nicky! I feel the same way!” But it’s funny because initially I think I was much meaner about folklore. Like, I didn’t like it the first time round –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] As much as I do now?
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: I, um, yeah. I think — so rereading this, what struck me [reading my first impressions about folklore] is that I’m very mean about it, but also that I put off listening to it, and then she literally came out with evermore like, three days after I listened to it [folklore]?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Um — and only upon evermore coming out did I actually listen properly — like, I listened to them as a pair.
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: And I think evermore made me like, um, –
NICKY: [Overlapping] folklore –
PLOY: [Overlapping] folklore much more.
NICKY: Good. Um, I… Obviously listened to them both as soon as they came out, like, I woke up at 5am UK time to listen to them and then made notes, and then me, Krish [Nicky’s partner], and Lucy [Nicky & Krish’s best friend] had a three-way video call where we all read each other all of our notes for every song.
NICKY LAUGHS.
NICKY: Um, which — was very nice, I would recommend as a mode of engaging with new media, but um, I think, I definitely liked folklore more. I still like folklore more. I feel like when I listened to evermore, I was like, “This will probably be even better, I am excited,” and then it never quite got to where I wanted it to go.
PLOY: I, um — for me, it was interesting because I feel like this happens a lot. I — there were growers in this album I was really surprised by?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: In the way that — normally I’m like, “Oh, well, this song will grow on me.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Whereas I listened to some songs and was actively like, “I don’t like this, I think it’s boring,” and then like, two weeks later I was crying to it in my car.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Specifically “the 1.”
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: Like… Oh, maybe we should — maybe we should go through our favourites in folklore and also in evermore.
NICKY: Okay. Yeah.
PLOY: Should we do, like, a top five? Or is that like, half the album? Or a top three?
NICKY: Um… Yeah, okay, so my — my issue is, I have the songs where I’m like, “I think objectively, this is a really good song that I enjoy.” And then I have the songs where I’m like, “I feel this very viscerally, and I don’t care whether it’s a good song.”
PLOY: Should we do like, a “Good For Reasons”, and a “Good For You”?
NICKY: Okay. Um, good for — good for proper reasons, I think… “betty,” “seven.” Um, and then, like, “cardigan” or “exile,” I think are both good, and I do like both of them, but they’re never, like, ones I gravitate towards. What are yours?
PLOY: I’m gonna just go with the ones that I like.
NICKY: Okay.
PLOY: Because of who I am as a person. Um, “the 1,” “cardigan,” um… “this is me trying” — actually, you know what — no, I take it back. Not “this is me trying,” but “illicit affairs.”
NICKY: Mm-hmm.
PLOY: Um, and “betty,” and also “the lakes.”
NICKY: Yeah, my top, like, emotional ones, are definitely “mirrorball” and “this is me trying,” and then “seven” and “illicit affairs,” I think are my, like, top four on equal footing but for slightly different reasons.
PLOY: I find that really interesting because “seven” for me is one of the most forgettable songs on this album.
NICKY: Interesting!
PLOY: It’s like — “seven” and “august” — that middle bit of the album –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] The point at which, in my initial commentary, I was like, “Why does every single song sound the same?”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Because in my head, “seven,” “august,” “epiphany,” “peace,” and “hoax” all feel like filler to me? And like, I don’t know if it’s necessarily even a bad thing? Because I feel like that was almost the vibe she was going for with the album –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And I get it, but it didn’t make for an enjoyable listening experience.
NICKY: Yeah.
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: Which is why I think I liked evermore more, because it had, like, an “E•MO•TION: Side B” vibe to it –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Where it was kind of — these are the songs that didn’t make the original cut, and therefore aren’t kind of musically… Like, cohesive –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] With what she was trying to do? And I think it’s better for it –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Because with folklore you can tell that they picked over the tracklist so much, to the point that it feels too well-edited to me.
NICKY: Yes, yeah. It feels, like, extremely self-conscious.
PLOY: It’s so, like — it was as if someone went through and was like, “These songs have to fit this criteria, in order to be on this album.”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And as a result, you come up with songs that are kind of, like, two sides of the same coin.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: I, um — let’s talk about… I would like to talk about this because I simply don’t understand why she keeps doing this. But — can we talk about the fanfiction aspect of –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah. I think — I think her fanfiction has got better. I do think “the last great american dynasty” is a good song –
PLOY: [Overlapping] I do –
NICKY: [Overlapping] And “Starlight” was a bad song.
PLOY: I do agree, and I think that was what stood out for me with folklore — as soon as “the last great american dynasty” — when I saw that title, I was like, “Bitch…”
NICKY: Yeah, literally.
PLOY: Don’t do this again.
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: As is “betty.”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: I think it’s a really good song, right? Um — but also, why?
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: In the same way with, like, “marjorie” and “dorothea.” Like, why?
NICKY: I don’t like it when she doesn’t write about herself, which I think is why I don’t like evermore as much as folklore because folklore feels — more… Even if they’re not about herself, if they’re all like, “Uhh, this is a song about a man in exile”, but — it feels like she is drawing on a lot of personal experience. Like, I don’t think Taylor has ever sat in like, a dive bar in a small town with some like, random old man and told him about her, like, academic struggles, like — I don’t — I don’t think “this is me trying” is autobiographical in that way, but I think the feeling of, like, “I am trying to be good and I am failing”, feels — very Taylor, and I think a lot of the songs on evermore feel more, like, distanced.1
PLOY: I liked what you said in your — I’m paraphrasing heavily, because I read it last week — but I liked what you were talking about, when you were like, “Yes, this isn’t me, it’s just a character who happens to have thoughts and feelings which are exactly like mine –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] But like, totally fictional, amirite?” But, like, some of the — I’m just scrolling through my notes because I remember writing about this at some point — um…
PLOY SCROLLS.
PLOY: Obviously I’m not going to be able to find it in my extremely short notes now. Um… Yeah, okay. [Laughing] The bullet point says only this: “Some of these songs have a completely incoherent narrative.”2
NICKY: Yes. [Laughing]
PLOY: But I’m thinking about — I put “coney island” in brackets here — it’s like she’s singing about an incredibly specific set of, like — something –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And we have no idea what she’s singing about?
NICKY: Yeah. And I think historically, she’s been very good at, like, “Here are some tiny details that will help you build up, like, a picture in your mind of what I am talking about — even if I don’t tell you the whole story, I am conveying it in great detail–”and I feel like, in these albums, and for me, especially in evermore, the details are actually distracting?
PLOY: Yeah, very much so. I feel like “coney island” for me in particular was one of those songs where I was like, this is really, really — because I think, before this, she was really good at making it specific enough that you knew it was about her and someone specific she was talking about, but also making it feel universal enough –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] That you could relate to it? Whereas I feel like she did neither of those things.
NICKY: Yes. [Laughing]
PLOY: Um, and I just — it’s just, yeah. I found it — strange?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And also strange that in — in evermore, that she went with, like, two songs named after people that we don’t know –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And I think don’t exist.
NICKY: [Laughing] So Marjorie is her grandmother, but that requires a level of knowledge about Taylor that a lot of people don’t have. Because when we talked about it, Lucy was like, “I don’t really get this song,” and I was like, “It’s about her grandma,” and Lucy was like, “Oh, retrospectively, this now makes sense” — but it really isn’t clear, especially if it’s on an album of songs where, like, the “I” is not always Taylor?
PLOY: Yeah.
NICKY: If it was, like, you know in Fearless there’s like, “The Best Day,” and you’re listening to it and you’re like, “Obviously this is about Taylor’s family,” but –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah –
NICKY: [Overlapping] We don’t get that from context anymore because context is absent.
PLOY: Right, exactly, because before this, it was like — all of her songs were so clearly autobiographical, and she was also really explicit about them being autobiographical?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And now it’s as if she’s trying on lots of different characters and perspectives, and it’s — I mean, it’s interesting because I feel like — in the bit that we picked out from “betty” that we both really liked, when she switches — when it goes from “you” to “I” –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah.
PLOY: Here’s something — you mention this in your analysis also — as like, something she does a lot. As in, she will — she will script other people –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Saying her own words… But I feel like in this — in “betty”, for example — because it’s not her, there’s an added layer of, like, character creation? Before this it was kind of as if she was talking to herself, whereas now it feels like she’s a — like a –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like a puppet master, or something? She’s, like, pushing other people around –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Rather than just making up scenarios for herself in her own head.
NICKY: Yeah. Like, it used to be, like, “When I am lying in bed at night, instead of thinking of all of the things I have done wrong, I am going to think about, like, this boy I fancy telling me that he fancies me too –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Or me being like, successful, or like –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Whatever scenarios.
PLOY: Actually for me, what I think of is being in the shower and having an imaginary argument in your head –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] As in, you had an argument with someone, like, six months ago, and you replay it in your head how it should have gone if you’d done it properly, and you do both voices?
NICKY: Yes. [Laughing]
PLOY: That is how I think about, like, early Taylor songs.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: So, if we stay on “betty” for a minute… This is going to sound silly, I think, but an effect of the fanfiction-y stuff that she’s doing — especially on folklore — made me feel really old and stupid.
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: She’s explicitly being like, “The people in the story are 17! They are in high school and doing these stupid things!” And I’m like, “They are literally 17 years old. They are literally ten years younger than me, and I am still that stupid.”
NICKY: Yeah. [Laughing]
PLOY: And it made me think about, like — who the album is for?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Who did she write them for? Like, who is her audience now? Like, what –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, like why is she returning to write about high school when — I feel like Lover was the first album that was like, “I’m an adult woman, I’m nearly 30, I am no longer writing about high school experiences, except as a political metaphor –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah! Right –
NICKY: [Overlapping] And then it was immediately like, “Let’s go back!” [Laughing]
PLOY: Because I was — so “Miss Americana” is probably my favourite song –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, me too –
PLOY: [Overlapping] On Lover, for obvious reasons, because we love… We love a high school flashback. But also I just love it when you get songs in her discography that are like, perfectly matched for each other on purpose, like “You Belong With Me” and “Miss Americana,” you know?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Also the “Go! Fight! Win!” part makes me –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Makes me literally want to die every time. Like, every time I hear it, I’m like [Dramatic gesturing]
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: But like, overall I feel like, it was — such a mature album? I know reputation was probably the album that –
NICKY: [Overlapping] The turning point.
PLOY: Yeah, but I feel like Lover was very… Very sarcastic and like, self-aware about childishness?
NICKY: Yeah, it was very, like, “I have put away childish things. I am now a grown woman –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] And yet –
NICKY: [Overlapping] “And I am going to write about my mum’s cancer treatment, and I’m gonna write, like, dumb songs about Londoners, but like, I’m going to write about things on my own terms, and I’m going to write fake breakup songs, because I’m in a happy relationship and I’m going to talk about that in every possible interview.”
PLOY: Yeah yeah — and “I Think He Knows” is such an adult way of looking at a childish feeling?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: The childish feeling of knowing that someone likes you. It’s very adult and very juvenile at the same time?
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] It’s a feeling that I think you actually only have when you’re old enough to be able to tell when someone likes you.
NICKY: Yeah, like there is a huge difference between, like, being 15 and fancying someone, and being like, “Oh my God, what if they like me back?” and constantly reading into every single interaction and fantasising about it, versus like, being grown-up enough to be like, “Actually, I think he does like me back, but this isn’t in my head, this is me being able to read our interactions, like, objectively.”
PLOY: Yeah, yeah. Um — but, I feel like — in folklore, she’s like, “I’m going to craft an incredibly involved and visceral high school love story for you now –”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes. And… Why?
PLOY: Yeah! And then it made me — it just made me… I feel like I don’t really know what her fanbase is like now, but my instinct is that her fanbase is pretty old?
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] As in –
NICKY: [Overlapping] My instinct is that her fanbase is, like, predominantly our age.
PLOY: Yeah! Because it’s people who have grown up with her, right?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: I don’t think that the youths are listening to Taylor Swift.
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: She is, for all intents and purposes, an older… Like a — what are we? — a millennial pop star.
NICKY: Yes. She’s not –
PLOY: [Overlapping] She’s not a TikTok-generation pop star.
NICKY: No. And when TikTok got hold of “Love Story” they were calling it, like, “The Romeo and Juliet song.” They didn’t even know what it was called –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah, yeah, they didn’t even know what the song was! Right. Exactly. And so I — I’m just like… It’s interesting because I honestly feel so wrong-footed by their age [in “betty”] –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like every time. I think it’s such a good song and every time I listen to it, it’s jarring when I hear — like, when she specifically is like, “I’m 17, and I don’t know anything!”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And it’s like… Taylor, I’m 26, and I still don’t know anything.
NICKY: [Laughing] Yeah, it is jarring, in the way that — every time — when she’s like, “James, get in,” and you’re like, “Oh, this is supposed to be about a man,” like, okay.
PLOY: [Laughing] Right?!
NICKY: [Laughing] Like, every time, I am stopped in my tracks by the, like, weirdly aggressive use of a man’s name as a musical “no homo.”
PLOY: I — I also just, as a side note, hate more than anything that she used their kids’ names –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Oh my god, I know, it’s –
PLOY: [Overlapping] I hate it –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Like, I hate it.
PLOY: I completely detest it. So much. Like — this for me, was a horrible move.
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: A truly horrible move, and one that makes no sense, because you have made them all lovers and friends, and they are actually all young children who are siblings.
NICKY: And also! James in real life is a girl!
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like, none of it makes sense –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Like, the weirdly obnoxious presence of James’s name A) did not need to be there, the song would flow better without it, but B) it doesn’t function as a “no homo” because James in real life is a girl and also, like, a two-year-old.
PLOY: Right! This is what I’m saying! I find it — again, it’s that weird thing of her puppeteering young people –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes.
PLOY: [Laughing] Like, it almost feels like — I can’t tell if it’s more or less weird that it’s — that she’s so consciously playing younger characters, and like, writing younger characters in her mind.
NICKY: Yes. And I’m just very intrigued as to why she wants this specificity. Again, like, why are these kids 17 years old in high school but they don’t seem to have phones? Like, when is this set? folklore as an album has very few references to technology.
PLOY: This is another thing that I was thinking about, and I was thinking about it in relation to — I read one of those articles when Sex Education first came out that was like, “Where is Sex Education set, and in what time period?”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And it’s that sweet spot of, like, Eighties nostalgia and also early noughties mish-mash kind of era, where everyone has an iPhone but also like, big computers?
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: Do you know what I mean? Or like — the radio?
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: And it feels very much like that, to me. As in, folklore feels very much like a conscious attempt to, like, unplug in her fantasy? It’s like, “Mm, I’m gonna pretend that we live in the Eighties in a wood cabin –
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: — like, ooh, isn’t that fun.” And it’s actually — it’s funny because what it makes me think of — and this is very specific — but when we were 15, one of my best friends was in love with our music teacher. Like, really truly deeply madly in love with him. And I was in love with her at the time. [Laughing]
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: Because of course I was. This is all besides the point entirely, but we used to make — we were really into Polyvore during this time, and she made this super intense Polyvore set of a specific fantasy she had, of like, going on holiday to a cabin in the woods with our music teacher.3
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: And that is exactly what this makes me think of. folklore feels like an album that you made thinking about what it would feel like to go and live permanently in the woods –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] With the object of your affections.
NICKY: [Laughing] Yes, which I think, is like, all of the album’s aesthetic. Like, the lakes and their presence on the album is very, like, “Me and Joe are Going to the Lakes, and we are Going to Stand in some Pools –”
PLOY: [Laughing] But the thing about “the lakes” is, right — it’s simultaneously that, but it’s also, like, they actually genuinely fucking went to the Lake District –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Because she also does — it’s funny because there’s a fictional — there’s, like, “Romantic with a big ‘R’” lakes, and “romantic with a little ‘r’” lakes.4 Like, with the ice and the rose — I hate that line so much –
NICKY: [Overlapping] I hate it so much –
PLOY: [Overlapping] It’s SO bad. But — but there’s also, like, “We went to the Lake District!”
NICKY: “And then this waitress said I looked like Taylor Swift!”
PLOY: And it’s like, we get it. He took you on a field trip to the Lake District. This is, like, peak posh white boy shit –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] We get it. But it’s so — it’s so weird that on the same album, she has, like, a real lakes and a metaphorical lakes.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Let’s talk about “the lakes” — I think that this is one of my favourite songs, and yet, there are some things in it that I hate the most. One of those things being the “no one around to tweet it” lyric.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: When I heard it, I was like — this is… Horrible? Like, all of this is horrible, the Little Prince reference is so obvious, we hate it, don’t talk about Twitter in any song, don’t do that. And secondly, she purposely fucks up the grammar so that she can make the Wordsworth pun. And it makes me want to scream.
NICKY: [Laughing] I really enjoy the Wordsworth pun. Every time.
PLOY: Me! Too! But she didn’t have to fuck it up like that –
NICKY: [Overlapping] No –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Every time! This is like when she sang — what’s the song with the grammar mistake in the title?
NICKY: Oh, the… “If This Was A Movie.”
PLOY: Like, whyyyyy. Why! Every single time I see it, I’m like, this had to go through so many people –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yep –
PLOY: [Overlapping] This must be a conscious choice, right?
NICKY: This was your third album.
PLOY: Like, someone — some hapless intern was like, “There’s a grammar mistake in this!” And that hapless intern was like, channelling both Ploy and Nicky. [Laughing] And someone had to be like, “Fuck off.”
NICKY: Yeah. Like that meme where they throw the man out the window.
PLOY: Yeah! But like, she made the conscious choice to get the grammar wrong there, which is painful for me.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: But with this one? I love the pun, but it didn’t have to — you didn’t have to do it like that.
NICKY: You could have gotten there another way. [Laughing]
PLOY: But um, I think — maybe the reason why I like it [“the lakes”] so much is because it’s the most self-conscious song on the album?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: I think that the sincerity but also the fiction of folklore made me feel uncomfortable?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Whereas I think this song is the most, like, self-aware, which is maybe why I like it the most.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: I’m going to take my jumper off.
PLOY TAKES HER JUMPER OFF.
PLOY: I’m back.
NICKY: Hello. Ooh. I have to take my Naproxen. I will do that and then come back.
NICKY GOES TO TAKE HER MEDS.
NICKY: Hello.
PLOY: Hello. I, um — I forgot what I was going to say. Um… Oh, I remembered a point that I wanted to make about ten minutes ago.
NICKY: Okay. Let’s do that.
PLOY: Which is not related to what we’re talking about. now But! When we were talking about the different perspectives in the songs, the one that I actually find really jarring is “illicit affairs.”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Because she’s talking to a “you” that is herself.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And normally in all of her — in her earlier songs, when she says “you”, she’s talking to the boy, right? But in this one she’s talking to herself. But then later on, she’s like — the bit when she’s like, “Don’t call me kid –”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] “Don’t call me baby –”
NICKY: [Overlapping] She’s like, “You’ve done this to me, and we have this language that you have taken away from me –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Right, but then — that “you” is the boy now, –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] It’s like she slips into herself? Because at the beginning it’s like she’s talking to herself and then later she becomes herself, and I — and then goes back to being –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Talking to herself again — and I find that shift in subject incredibly jarring every time.
NICKY: Yes, I also — the same, for me, in “my tears ricochet,” which — I can’t follow the pronouns, or the narrative. Like, I don’t know what it is about. [Clapping emphatically] It just feels like a collection of different lines.
PLOY: I find that one very weird. People will say — like, the surface analysis of it is about, um, [Scooter Braun] and her old record company, but like… It’s really weird!
NICKY: Yeah, but like, what is it about? Like, I want you to tell me what each line refers to. [Laughing]
PLOY: It’s so heavy-handed? In a way where –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] She’s clearly gesturing to something but you don’t know what it is?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And I — it’s funny because I feel like so many of the songs in these two albums do that, where it feels like… Before this, she was putting Easter eggs in for her fans, and now she’s putting Easter eggs in for specific other people.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: If that makes sense. Like, “if you know you know!” Except it’s like, two people in the world actually know.
NICKY: Yes. [Laughing] Like, the people she’s writing about will know that it’s about them and no one else will, which might be like a savvy self-protection “trying not to get sued” thing. But it just leaves us, like, “Okay. Cool.”
PLOY: And it’s so different from, like, “Back To December” when everyone was like — everyone knew what this is about. Or “Treacherous” or “All Too Well” or whatever, where like, we all knew exactly who this was about. It’s like she just took songs like that and just like, sucked all the specificity — or like, the specificity is still there but it just doesn’t feel specific to us because we don’t know who it –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, like it doesn’t feel tied to a narrative in the way that, like… On evermore, I feel like — I have this with “happiness” specifically but I have it with a few others as well, where it’s like — okay, but… You’ve got some nice lyrics here, but I don’t entirely know what has actually happened, or what I’m listening to.
PLOY: So I… evermore. Yeah, no, you’re right. Like, the song I like the most — one of my favourite songs on evermore was, um, “gold rush.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Which I was adamant is about a girl in the same way that I was adamant about the fact that “Dress” was about a girl?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like, I don’t think it is. But I feel very strongly about it anyway. But again I think I like it because it has just the right amount of specificity that makes it feel like a cohesive song?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Whereas I feel like you’re right, with “happiness” it feels very much like she found some lyrics that she liked that she could have put in other songs –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And then she just put them all into one song. Also “tolerate it” — “tolerate it” was one of those songs where I was like, this is very slightly clunky, and I know why you didn’t put it in the main album.
THEY LAUGH.
NICKY: Yeah, I really like “tolerate it,” it’s probably one of my favourites, but I think the strongest bit of evermore for me is like, “champagne problems” through to “no body no crime.” Like, that’s my bit that I listen to, and the rest of it I’m like, “Ehh, yeah. That.”
PLOY: Interesting! I think that I would agree — I remember on my first listen of evermore, I was like, “I like this more than folklore already.” It starts better. “willow” is a really nice start to it?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: But the other thing with evermore that I think I liked is that — well, “champagne problems,” for a start, is a fantastically good song.
NICKY: Yes. Although you get, again, the same really weirdly specific — like, why are they at university?
PLOY: It’s so — but, but are they at university? It’s like, because she’s like, looking back on when they were at university.
NICKY: Yeah, and it’s like, who — I thought this was about someone proposing to you, and now I think it’s about uni students, and I’m confused, but also why is the town gossiping about you?
PLOY: Yeah! But again — it’s weird because you think it’s about, like, the proposal, but then there’s a whole really specific bit about, like, being in the dorms and — because for me, when I listen to it, it sounds like she was visiting someone at uni.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: She’s not at uni. But then she, like, makes friends with all of them?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And she’s like, angry when they go back?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Because she like — but they’re like — none of this makes any sense!
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: Like, also like — the train bit?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: There are so many specific bits of it, and it feels to me very uni-y because I associate trains and getting on trains with –
NICKY: [Overlapping] With uni, yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] But like — it’s just, it’s really strange. Same with, erm — “‘tis the damn season” is also one of my favourite songs on this album.
NICKY: Yeah, me too.
PLOY: Um, and that was a big grower for me. Like, I completely missed it the first week of listening to it, and it kind of crept up on me. But again — so strangely specific!
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like –
NICKY: [Overlapping] It feels like — mostly, it like, works — like the part between the school and the Methodist Church –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah –
NICKY: [Overlapping] I was like, “Good. Yes. Like, I have a sense of what this town is like because there is a Methodist Church and you went to this school together, I know a lot about your relationship based on this.” But then there are other bits where I’m like… What — what is this adding?
PLOY: Yeah. The thing is, I think it’s really… I liked “‘tis the damn season” because I also think that — that the narrative, the story she’s writing — it works on its own?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: As in, it functions like… You’re like, “This is a story.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: This makes sense in the context of the… And I mean, again, this is, you know, relevant to my interests [Laughing] But I like it when song or writing situates itself. Like, spatially laying out the place in which the story occurs.
NICKY: Yeah. Yes.
PLOY: Like, I think that that is, like, interesting and helpful, especially since the song is mostly set in a car.
NICKY: Yeah. [Laughing]
PLOY: Like, I like it because it — it gives you the feeling of, like, being in a car and navigating a place that you know well? I feel like this song does that really well — like, it conveys that really specific feeling in a way that I think a lot of the other songs don’t.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like, when I listen to “tolerate it” I’m literally like, what? Where are we? What time period –
NICKY: [Overlapping] What time period are we in?! I have no idea.
PLOY: Yeah, no, what I actually — what I like about — the things that I liked about evermore, also, are the songs that are very self-consciously, um — and this surprises me, because I thought it would annoy me — the songs that are very self-consciously, like, folktale-y. Or like, mythical –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes. I really really like “ivy –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah –
NICKY: [Overlapping] It hasn’t, like, it was one of the ones that on the first listen I was like, “I love this song!” And then it hasn’t quite carried in the way that I expected it to. Like, “happiness” I really liked on first listen, and then I went back to it and I was like, “This actually isn’t as good as I thought it was.” [Laughing]
PLOY: That’s really interesting because “ivy” — I think I’ve been bitten by a mosquito on my forehead.
NICKY: Oh no.
PLOY: Um, but — I think that “ivy” was for me, on the first listen, like — I didn’t pay any attention to it at all and then it massively grew on me.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: In the same way that “‘tis the damn season” did. Um, and I think also partly because the way she sings the beginning is — incoherent.
NICKY: Yes. [Laughing]
PLOY: Like, I remember I didn’t actually listen to the lyrics for, like, a good couple of days, because the way she sings it literally sounds like she’s saying gibberish. And it’s like… [Sings gibberish]
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: When I was listening to it, like… It makes you not listen to the words that she’s singing?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And then when you actually look up the lyrics you’re like, oh, it’s also because the lyrics don’t make any sense either. [Laughing]
NICKY: Yeah! Like, what is the old woman doing and why do we never hear about her ever again?
PLOY: What stone?! Like… What stone?
NICKY: Yeah, and then she’s like, “I just sit here and wait,” and I’m like, where? Where are you sitting? What are you waiting for? [Laughing]
PLOY: And oh! You’re married! Like… Okay?!
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: But! I really really like this song. Like, I think that the — I had this whole section — most of my notes, actually, are centred around this section, which I think you will enjoy talking about. But, um, it is about houses –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Excellent –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And homes. And I have written here, just — apropos of nothing, I’ve got, “In the Dream House.” Written just here.
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: Just, like, as a side note here. But, the… I feel like what I noticed in Lover was a lot of metaphor about like, houses and homes that were also, like, literalised about a literal song about real estate, like –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] The line about the window — like, the windows are the relationship?
NICKY: Yeah yeah, “I looked through the windows of this love, even though we boarded them up” or something
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah. And I really really liked it because I, I think the album does that really well, looking at relationships as like, buildings but also, like, actual physical buildings as holding — like, you live in relationships, and you live in your home, and the connection — and you also live with your partner in the home.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: It’s like a metaphorical and literal house, and it –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, and it’s like, a thing that you build together, that is a collaboration, and when the relationship ends, there is nowhere for it to go.
PLOY: Right, yeah, exactly. I um, — when I was breaking up with my ex-girlfriend, I tried to parse out, like, a metaphor that I was trying to make in my brain, about exactly this, and I only realised… I’m only realising it right now –
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: But it was about, like… When you’re like… When your brain is — when you, and your life, and your brain — it’s as if you own a house and like, when you’re in a relationship, you fill it with both of your things.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: You, like, make the home with the things that you separately own, together. It’s like when you mix your books together, like a metaphorical mixing of your books.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: But, like, when you break up — it’s painful because you see all the places in the home where they used to keep their stuff.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: But — actually, the house doesn’t change shape. As in, like, the floor plan remains the same. You take the floor plan with you everywhere you go but, like, it’s just what you put in it together that changes? Like, you don’t –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] You don’t lose — as in, like — none of the space disappears, but the stuff you had in it together… Goes away?
NICKY: Yes. Like, is lost, is replaced, is rearranged.
PLOY: Yeah! Um, and — I’ve actually just remembered this, I did not prepare this, but I ordered this poetry collection and I don’t like it that much –
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: It’s Beauty/Beauty by Rebecca Perry.
NICKY: Okay.
PLOY: But there is a poem about this that I really liked, that I am now going to try — try –
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: I found it. Um — I’m not going to read the other bits, just this one stanza.
Of course your preferences present
themselves quietly in the layouts
of rooms. The few things you left
are shadowy objects at the
edges of a Renaissance painting,
waiting to catch the light
when I’m weak.
But it’s — yeah. Like, when it’s — when you’re caught unaware by where things used to be?
NICKY: Yes, and like, the habits that you have. Like, when you’re used to the layout of a kitchen and you’re cooking something, and you’re like, “I know where the things are that I need,” and then it gets rearranged, and you’re like, “Now I have to reprogram my muscle memory.”
PLOY: Yeah. And I think that Lover was an album that really got — like, I really liked it because it really leaned into that feeling? I think?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Of, like… Rearranging, or, like… Renovating, almost.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like how “Miss Americana” is, like, a new “You Belong With Me.” Or like, there are so many songs on Lover that feel like new versions of other songs?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: But, I liked how, in — I think why I liked “ivy” is that I feel like it’s a development of that metaphor, but like, she’s become the house.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like, before this, the relationship was the house. And now she herself — is the house? And there’s something really nice and lonely and sad about that? That before it was like, “I am a person and we live in this space together and we make this space together,” and now it’s like, “I am this space, I occupy it, and things happen to it.”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, and like, “You invade that space, and I quite enjoy it.” [Laughing] I feel like in “ivy”, she’s like, “I’m into it”, but there is also quite a sinister element to the fact that this ivy is growing and growing and growing all over the house, and like, she has no escape. And they’re like –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah
NICKY: [Overlapping] Putting down roots in her dreamland, and it just feels very like, “I have no privacy. Everything that is me, is up for grabs in this relationship.”
PLOY: It feels like… The opposite of whatever “territorial” is. It feels like she’s being encroached upon.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: But she doesn’t… Hate it? I think that bit is also very interesting and I have written it down somewhere, um — about letting things happen to her?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Interesting because previously that wasn’t very, like… Old Taylor was like, “Everything is out of my control and is the fault of literally everybody else –
NICKY: [Overlapping] “Except me.”
PLOY: I just happen to be here, as things happen around me.” But it feels really — it feels much more mature –
NICKY: [Overlapping] yeah
PLOY: in “ivy”? She knows what she’s doing. When she’s like, “I’m gonna sit here and drink my husband’s wine, and he’s gonna catch us, and I’m gonna let him catch us, and we’ll just go from there, I guess!”
NICKY LAUGHS.
NICKY: Yeah, literally. Like, I feel like early Taylor was very like, “I am a victim, I am passive, everything happens to me, men break my heart, bad things happen, it’s sad,” and then from like, the Red slash 1989 era she was starting to take a bit of agency, like — in “Clean” specifically, when she’s like, “I punched a hole in the roof,” — I remember hearing that at the time, and being like, “Oh! She’s doing some stuff for herself!” And then reputation is obviously her being like, “I am going to burn everything down because I am angry,” and then folklore and evermore feel like it — comes back and she’s like, “I know that bad things are going to happen and I am willing to let them happen to me to an extent, and sometimes I am making bad decisions and I know that they are bad decisions but I am still making them.”5
PLOY: That’s really nice. I remember that in your analysis you picked out the “In my defence I have none / For never leaving well enough alone” lyric, and when I — when I heard it, when I started to like “the 1” and I heard this lyric I was like [Shocked Pikachu face]
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: But like, again, there’s some really, like — I was gonna say “refreshing”, but maybe that’s not — it’s that very specific feeling of being like, “Sorry for doing the bad thing!”
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: Like, when you’re — when you have a conversation with your friend and you’re like, “What do I do?!” And then later you’re like, “I have done the thing that you told me not to do!”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yep
PLOY: [Overlapping] “And it’s the thing I was always gonna do anyway! Thanks for your time!” Or whatever.
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah
PLOY: [Overlapping] It feels very much like that?
NICKY: Yes, like when people are like, “Didn’t you think this would happen?” And you’re like, “Yes.” [Laughing]
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like, yes I did –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Like, yes I did see it coming, but no I did nothing to prevent it. [Laughing]
PLOY: And I feel like this song — I feel like evermore has a lot of that feeling in it? Like, I think “‘tis the damn season” has that as well?
NICKY: Yeah, I think evermore actually is more, like, passive about it? Like, folklore is like, “I am making mistakes.” And evermore is like, “I am doing nothing to stop these mistakes being made.” Like, “I am going to sit here and wait for Dorothea” or “I am going to go back to my ex in our hometown over Christmas” or “I am going to let this person drink my husband’s wine” or like, whatever.
PLOY: Yeah, like, I’m gonna watch this guy in my — living room? — read a book and look at me, and know that I hate where I am, and who he is, and who we are together, and just — sit in it –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, and just, like — “I could do something about it, I could fix this” — but there is no sense in the song that she is going to.
PLOY: And it’s really — there’s something really unsettling about it, like when she’s being like, “What if”, like… “What if I gained the weight of you –”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah, “And lose it / Believe me, I could do it.”
PLOY: The lyric is literally like, “I could do it.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And then it’s like, “It’s all in my head… Tell me what” — It feels — at no point in that song, even before she says “I could do it”, do you think she’s actually going to do it.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like, she doesn’t — it doesn’t seem like she’s seriously entertaining the notion at any point? It feels very much like a song that’s just, like, stuck. And I mean, it’s good for that reason, in that I think it really captures the feeling of when you’re in a bad relationship and you’re like, “I’m just gonna sit here in it.”
NICKY: Yeah, you’re like, “I’m just gonna wait this out. If it gets better by itself, then good, and if not, then I’m gonna stay here in my little cosy –”
PLOY: Yeah! And it’s that thing where it’s like — I know there are things I could do but I can’t actually do them?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: So I’m just going to continue and sit here and think about the things I could do –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Which I will not do? Because they’re not actually possible to do for Reasons.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And, like — this song was the one where my ex was like, “I hate this song. It doesn’t sound like a real song. It sounds like the same three notes being played over and over again in a funny fashion.” And I was like, you know what? You’re kind of right? Like, a lot of it is literally just — three notes being played over and over again in a funny fashion. Like, there’s no… There’s very little, like, feelings of — shift, in the song?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like, the bridge sounds like the chorus and the chorus sounds like the verses and there’s no, like, musical variation that we have come to expect from, like… Songs?
NICKY: Yeah. [Laughing]
PLOY: But again, I think that’s why it’s, like, a technically good song. I don’t think it’s enjoyable to listen to very much?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: I find it, like, a slow-going song.
NICKY: Yeah. And I think that there is a similar sense in “happiness” but more, like, lyrically. When I first listened to “happiness” I was like, “This is amazing.” And when she got to the bit where she’s like, “I haven’t met the new me yet,” I was like, “Oh my God I’m tearing up.” And then it just, like, never went — anywhere. Like, it begins with the premise that, like, things were both good and bad, and then it doesn’t — go anywhere. And I was like — if you’d started by being upset, and you had ended at this, then that would have made sense because there would have been a progression. But you just started with a premise and then, like, we just kept the same premise.
PLOY: Yeah yeah yeah, and she just sits in it! I think it’s really interesting — the bit I like best in “happiness” is the line where she’s like, “No I didn’t mean that, sorry I can’t –”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And she sings it like, all in the same breath and there’s no space? She just says the horrible thing and she’s like –
NICKY: [Overlapping] ohIdidn’tmeanthat [Laughing]
PLOY: [Overlapping] But it’s all like, one — that little rewriting bit that is the bit that made me pay attention in my listenings of “happiness.” But it’s honestly, like, still — I think the lyrics are all really good, but the song is not, again, not enjoyable to listen to –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Because it just doesn’t go anywhere?
NICKY: And we don’t know what happened either, so it doesn’t — like, we don’t have any context for, like, why she feels this way. And she’s like, “I’m crying acid rain on your pillow,” and I’m like, but why? Like, what did he do to you? Why are there all these Gatsby references? Like, what — [Laughing] What purpose is it serving?
PLOY: Again, like — I, like, actively chose to ignore the Great Gatsby references in this song, because I — I don’t have time. Again, we’re not doing the green light — we’re not doing this again!
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: I can’t do it anymore! Like, Lorde had a song that was literally called “Green Light” and no one had to waste their time with Gatsby references! So, like, don’t do this! Don’t do this! I have no patience for a Great Gatsby reference! And I’m biased because I think the book is massively overhyped –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] So let’s not! Again, it adds to the frustrating feeling of this song, because I’m like… I would just like to –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, I just don’t know what you want me to take away from this. I don’t know what you want my experience to be, so I’m here, like, second-guessing my own experience of listening to this song because I don’t know if it’s the correct experience. Which is also how I feel about the end of “coney island,” where I’m like, “Wait. What accident? Who did — what? Why are they in a magazine? I don’t –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah — the bit that gets me every time is the one where it’s like, the speech –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, “When I walked up to the podium” — yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And I’m like… What podium? What award are you accepting? Like, what speech are you making?
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like, why is there a podium?
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, it’s just like — Coney Island, Coney Island, Coney Island — and you’re like, “Cool, we’re sitting on a bench in Coney Island.” And then it’s like — “Accident! Podium!” And you’re like… “Wait.”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah –
NICKY: [Overlapping] So I guess this song really went in, like, an unexpected direction? [Laughing]
PLOY: Yeah! It’s weird because it also strangely makes me think of, um, is it “I Know Places”? Where there’s an accident?
NICKY: “Out of the Woods.”
PLOY: “Out of the Woods,” yeah
NICKY: [Overlapping] Where Harry crashed his little snowmobile thing. [Laughing]
PLOY: And she’s like, “Not everybody knows everything about me!”
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: In her interviews, and everyone’s like, “Okay…”
NICKY: “There are some things people don’t know!” And it’s like, okay, but then you wrote a song about it, and it was the single for your new album?
PLOY: And it was like, okay, but… Everyone knows. But okay? Now everyone knows, but okay. But again, like — it feels — it’s funny that it’s the same kind of — there was an accident of some kind –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes
PLOY: [Overlapping] And there it’s, like, really heavy-handed, and with this one it’s just like –
NICKY: [Overlapping] It is too light-handed. Like, it doesn’t land. In “Out of the Woods”, it’s like, “This Is A Metaphor For Our Breakup!”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah
NICKY: [Overlapping] And you’re like… “I understand. You aren’t out of the woods yet,” but like… [Laughing] At least I know what you want from me.
PLOY: [Overlapping] Literally 20 stitches. In a hospital room. Like — you were crying, and then I was crying.
NICKY: [Overlapping] And then we looked at each other!
PLOY: [Overlapping] And then we stayed there and the sun came up! Because we had to have a hospital stay! Because it was a really bad accident! Whereas with this one it’s like — oh, okay. It’s yet another extremely specific yet vague reference to apparently nothing. Like… What do you want from me.
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: Oh. A thing I wanted to talk about with houses, before I forget, um. We just kind of — the reason I want to keep coming back to, um, In The Dream House — well, for “you” reasons, but also reasons in general — I read it about two months ago, in like, a day. And it was… A lot.
NICKY: [Laughing] Yes.
PLOY: [Laughing] A lot. But, the — the haunted house lyric in –
NICKY: [Overlapping] “seven”, yes! Which, also — this is unrelated, but as a side note, when folklore came out everyone was like, “Oh, “betty” is the gay song!” And I was like, “No, “seven” is the gay song!” [Clapping emphatically]
PLOY: “betty” is not the gay song. “betty” is explicitly a straight song.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Who — who said that?!
NICKY: So many people!
PLOY: Did they listen to the song?
NICKY: I saw a really good tweet that was like, “Unfortunately, “betty” is Taylor giving a cishet man interiority and emotional intelligence, which is, in fact, the straightest thing you can do.” [Laughing]
PLOY: Right, it’s like — the least gay song. It’s about a stupid boy who gets distracted by a hot girl and like, accidentally upsets the love of his life who then takes him back, and you can tell she’s a nice girl because she wears a cardigan.
THEY LAUGH.
NICKY: And she has a porch!
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like, literally, you can –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Suburban heterosexuality! There’s a mall! [Clapping emphatically]
PLOY: Right. Right? Like — and he’s on a fucking skateboard. Like, fuck off.
NICKY LAUGHS.
PLOY: It is the straightest song ever! Like — again, however, I liked the parallels with the “You Belong With Me” video where she, like, picks him up in her car — like, the mean girl?6
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And when I heard it in this, I was like –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes and I feel like there is a big “Taylor driving” arc that we will get to when we have talked about In the Dream House.
PLOY: Yeah, and we will think about it in the context of Lorde not being able to drive.
NICKY: Yes!
PLOY: Um, and — we should also talk about “drivers license”, by Olivia Rodrigo.7
THEY LAUGH.
PLOY: Um, yes. Let’s stick a pin in Taylor driving, because I — we have thoughts. But haunted houses — “seven” is definitely the gayest song.
NICKY: Yes. I, like, listened to it the first time round and was like, excellent. This is already a song about, like, complicated female childhood friendships, which I’m already like, obviously incredibly invested in, and then it just — got — gay, and I was like… I mean, there’s no other way to read this “closet” lyric!
PLOY: Like… The literal closet.
NICKY: She’s literally hiding in a closet.
PLOY: Like, it’s… It’s so explicitly gay. Like it’s — it’s A Gay. Also ghosts.
NICKY: Yeah. That little bit makes me cry every time. But — tell me about the ghosts.
PLOY: See, “seven” is such a forgettable song to me. It’s strange, I just — I can’t get into it?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And I think it’s because again, like, it sounds like all of the other songs to me. Um, but the — the haunted house lyric is, is one that I feel like — I had it in my brain, and didn’t really think very much about it, and then I was — I’m subscribed to Hunter Harris’ newsletter and she wrote about this lyric. “This one line from Taylor Swift’s folklore plays on a loop in my head.” I’m just going to send it to you and you can read it in real time, because that’s not awkward.
PLOY SENDS THE LINK TO NICKY. THEY READ.
NICKY: [Laughing]
PLOY: Where are you?
NICKY: I’m at, “If you think my house is haunted because my dad has an attitude problem, no he doesn’t ❤”
BOTH LAUGH. NICKY SCROLLS AND LAUGHS SOME MORE.
PLOY: Which bit?
NICKY: Maybe you’re reaching a lull in conversation, maybe the wine is hitting, maybe you’re lashing out in anger, “By the way, everyone knows your house is haunted and your dad’s an asshole.”
PLOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So I read this, and then went back and listened to “seven” and liked it much more?
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: Because I think when I listened to it the first time I found this lyric annoying. But when I read it, and like, interpreted it out this way, I liked it so much more because you’re right — I mean she’s right, like, “And I’ve been meaning to tell you” is such a weird–
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Way of entering –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Introducing this conversation –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like — and the fact that it’s, it’s that childish clumsiness, of learning how to say things awkwardly. And I think it was maybe this interpretation is the one — I’m sorry, I’m just looking at the meme. [Laughing]
BOTH LAUGH.
PLOY: This is the interpretation that makes it — makes the weird regression childhood thing make sense to me? In that, like, the whole of “betty” is — oh, our connection is unstable, it says — is that clunky, “I’m learning how to be a human being –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: Who is responsible for their own actions” thing.
NICKY: Yeah. And I think –
PLOY: ’Cause I obviously — but –
NICKY: What were you gonna say?
PLOY: You go
NICKY: I think folklore starts with “cardigan” with Betty who is like, the ~most mature~ of all of them, and she’s like, “Everyone says you don’t know anything when you’re young,” and I was like listening to that being like, “Okay but this is Taylor, so she thinks she does know everything,” and then we get to the end of that song and she’s like “And I knew everything when I was young,” and I was like, “Good, yes, I know what we’re dealing with, this is like, classic Taylor.” But she’s also very interested in like — inhabiting other personas where she doesn’t have to prove that she always knew things? And she can be like, “Oh no, I’m seventeen, I don’t know anything”, or like, “When I was a child I used to like, hide in the weeds and scream before I learned to speak properly”, like, “There are aspects of me that haven’t always been polished and that haven’t always been good at stuff and that haven’t always, like, been this consummate performer.” And I feel like in folklore she’s being like, okay, I’m allowed to be these people, like I’m allowed to, in “mirrorball”, want the attention? I feel like that’s the first time where she’s like, spoken about wanting attention and like feeding off it in such an explicit way.
PLOY: Yeah, and the bit that you pulled out — with Krish, I think — where it’s like — what is it? — from “looking at me” to “laughing at me”?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Was also the thing that I, listening to it, picked out — as like, by any means necessary, like I don’t care if it’s good or bad attention, I just want your attention.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And that was the lyric that really stood out to me in the song because it’s like — I feel like… The feeling is very relatable –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: Of like, when you get to the point with someone where you’re like, “I don’t care how I keep you here –
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: Like, as long as you stay.”8
NICKY: Yeah, like, “I just need your eyes to stay on me because if they don’t this all falls apart, and I need it to stay alive somehow, whatever I need to do to keep you.”9
PLOY: Yeah. Like, and I don’t care if you’re here because you hate it –
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: Or like you’re here because you cannot look away, because what I am, what I’m doing is so horrible and unpleasant and embarrassing10
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: Like I’d rather keep you here anyway. Even if it’s like, to make fun of me.
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, it’s like when you like, pick a fight with someone and you’re like, but this is still us engaging, like this is still better than you ignoring me.
PLOY: Yeah yeah yeah. But I feel like it’s… I feel like the tension between the self-awareness of that and like, the clunky, genuine lack of self-awareness when she like, plays a younger person, is — is where I get the meaning out of — out of why she keeps cosplaying young people. Like, it makes it make more sense. But also I liked when Hunter Harris is like, “I know I’m overthinking this, but all I do is overthink.” Like, I think that’s such a good way of looking at Taylor Swift’s discography in general, that — she is an artist specifically making stuff to be overthought. Like from the very beginning –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes. She cares so much and she tries so hard, and like, in “mirrorball” when she’s like, “I’ve never been a natural all I do is try try try,” obviously the first time I heard that I burst into tears, but that has just always very much been her modus operandi. All of the 1989 behind the scenes videos were like, videos of her choosing every single photo in the album promo and every single — like, practicing her signature so that it would be right every time. Like, she is always trying so hard so she wants fans who will like, engage with her, and be like, “What is she trying to do, what is this for?”, not people who will just listen and be like, “That’s fun.” Like, what she wants is like, this.
PLOY: Yeah.
NICKY: We are playing right into her hands!
PLOY: And it’s like, it’s the, like when she used to hide the messages in the –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: Album sleeve. And you’ve got to like, decode the messages. Yeah, it’s music made for people who want to overthink everything — like, everything she puts in there is meant to be dissected and like, picked apart. And it’s funny because I feel like, the way that she — the way Hunter Harris writes about this, where she’s like, “Aaron Sorkin would end a scene with this.”11
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And I never thought about it like that until I read this, and I was like, the petulance and the anger and the self-destructiveness of a lot of this album is, I think, what really gets me.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like, like the reason why “illicit affairs” makes me want to die is the complete, like, complete self-awareness of the pain you are causing yourself and others.12
NICKY: Yeah. Like, I don’t care that much about “peace”, I forget about it quite a lot, but I really like the concept — and it never quite like, made it into my brain, but I feel like the idea of like, “I am always gonna bring this destruction with me, and I will never be able to give you a calm life because I am a fundamentally, like, destructive and bad person,” I was like, “Good, yes, thank you. I feel seen.”
PLOY: I — before I forget, I’m gonna run back, I have just remembered this thing, I’m gonna try and find it in my journal. I have been doing a thing where I’m trying to write for, like, 10 minutes every day. I’ve skipped like three days in the past week because of — who I am as a human being, but I’ve been doing pretty well. But I just wanted to go back to the thing about like, she tries so hard and everything she does is incredibly purposeful. I just wanna — a nice segue into comparing her with Lorde.
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: In a way I don’t really want to compare them — like, not in a bad comparison way — but I have to find it now. But she — I love her [Lorde’s] random emails that she sends –
NICKY: [Overlapping] She’s like, “I’m in the Arctic” and you’re like, “Okay, where’s the album!”13
PLOY: And this one — so I wrote this — I like, screenshotted the whole email and stuck it in here and was writing about how I felt about it but this was — this was in like, mid-January. I don’t remember when she sent this, though. But the bit that really got me is this part — okay, I will also send you this after, but: “One of my favourite things about when we meet is the hug we almost always share. You say, “Can I hug you?” in a wavering voice, and I reach out my arms and hold you close, for ten or fifteen seconds. Our hands rest on each others’ backs. In those few seconds, I can feel all the love and care you have for my work. All the time you’ve spent listening and watching and decoding. And you can feel how deeply I care about you — how hard I try to make everything perfect, so that I meet your hopes where they are. When it’s safe, I can’t wait to hug you again.” And when I read this, I cried. Because of who I am as a person. But like, I think it’s very interesting how different Lorde and Taylor are as people and as artists, and the music that they make, but I think it’s so interesting that both of them have this, like, unerring drive for detail.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: This specificity or, like, commitment to the things that they are making.14
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like how — yeah, how Taylor’s like, picking out the photos for her tour, and Lorde is like, colour-coding her own lyrics. It’s like, it matters to them and they know that it matters to their fans as well.
NICKY: Yeah. They both have like, a strong commitment to their fans and to like, delivering work that will meet their fans’ expectations — or like, exceed their fans’ expectations? And I feel like, reputation was in that way a good thing because I don’t know how Taylor was ever going to top 1989? And if all of that [Kanye etc.] hadn’t happened, I don’t know what she would have been able to produce that she would have been able to put out — and then reputation was like, “I am going to be petty,” and then with folklore it was like, “Now I can make stuff that isn’t like, hemmed in by expectations because I don’t have access to a studio and I don’t have access to collaborators and I’m going to like, do this alone,” and I feel like that has like, opened up a lot of possibility where she feels able to experiment. Whereas before, with Lover, she was like, “I’m just going to do every single pop technique out there and I’m just going to write about every single subject that there is in the hope that one of these will please you.”
PLOY: Yeah. I think — I mean, I think it’s interesting because I feel like — so reputation came out when we were physically friends.
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: The eve — not the eve, in the blossoming of our real-life friendship. But this — reputation is the album that made me fall out of love with Taylor Swift as a person.
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: Even though it’s probably one of my favourite albums, in terms of the music. But this was the album where I was like, “You know what, I’m done engaging with Taylor Swift as a person.” Because I could no longer — for me, it was like — the gulf between me and her felt too big at this point. Up until reputation, I could — like, I could continue to appreciate her music because I felt kinship between me and her, in the way that all Taylor Swift fans do — you know, how she makes you feel like she understands you, or that you share the same feelings. And reputation was the album at which I was like, “Ah. The way I view the — the way I am confined to viewing the world and the way you are confined to viewing the world are fundamentally different.”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And it was like a big — it was a very big rift for me, this point where I was like, “Ah, your inability to — no, not inability, your ability to not take responsibility –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: For your actions as a white woman” — this was the album where I was like, “You really are a white lady.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: This was the album where I felt like I was — where I realised that I could not keep playing along with her. Like, her fantasy — the world she was creating [in reputation] — was not for me.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: If that makes sense. Like, all of the songs were written for people who could identify with what she was writing about –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes — who were like allowed to wallow in that victimhood.
PLOY: Yeah. Or like, allowed to reclaim “being a bad person.”
NICKY: Yes. And allowed to like, publicly express anger.
PLOY: Yeah yeah yeah, or like, you know, being like, “Oh if you all think that I’m such a bitch, I’m just gonna be a bitch.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like — it was so unrelatable and so jarring that I was suddenly like, “Ooh. Like, this is not — this was not made for me?”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And I feel like it feels — I was gonna say “betrayal” but that’s not the right word. But because she’s an artist who cares so much about her fans, and the people who are listening to her music, I think that this album was like, thematically so alienating for me because it’s the one that made me realise that I was not part of the audience that she had in mind –
NICKY: [Overlapping] That she had in her head. Yeah.
PLOY: When she wrote this — when she concepted of this album. Because again, before this, she was universal in a way that reputation was not. But I understand… I understand why she did it. And I feel like now I respect — I wanna say I respect her more for it, but it’s more like I get how it felt necessary to make a thing that wasn’t universally relatable. Because reputation was when she was able to start making music that wasn’t, like, “This is a song that everybody can listen to and apply to their own life”?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And also to her own life. It was the point at which all of her songs didn’t have to feel one hundred percent sincere and also one hundred percent autobiographical and also one hundred percent like, relatable?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: I mean, it was also the first album where she is properly putting on a character, I think.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Before this it’s all still very, like, “I’m writing this about myself and my life,” and this is –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah. Like she says, she said that 1989 was a concept album, which — it isn’t. The concept is: Taylor Swift. But like, it is not less autobiographical but less like, intimate, I guess? Than the previous ones. And the fact that the previous albums all had, like, the little liner notes that would say “Adam” or like, whoever she was writing about or whatever she wanted you to take from it, and then in 1989 it was like a narrative, like it was like, “this is a story about people, this is consciously constructed and refined”, and I do think songs like, “How You Get The Girl” are just — very distant from the actual emotion that she’s singing about,15 and I feel like she could well have gone in that direction for her future albums and just been like, “Good, I have shown that I can do pop music well, everyone liked 1989, I will continue doing this, and it will be –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] Fine, yeah
NICKY: Just like, making mass-produced pop music which has good lyrics but the depth behind it is slowly kind of, evaporating.
PLOY: Yeah
NICKY: And reputation was — none of those things!
PLOY: It’s interesting because obviously she was a pop artist way before she admitted to being a pop artist — because 1989 was her “first real pop album.” I think she did the right thing in doing… Like, because reputation was so out of left field, so different to what anyone expected she was gonna do? It was good because — again, it was a “cultural reset.” But, like, it’s weird because for me it’s an album that I like a lot and understand for what it is, but it is also like, always gonna be the point at which I was like, “I see.” And it feels funny, in that respect.
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: To be like, not included in the thing that she cares very much about?
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: But, I also — a complete sidenote, but, the email that Lorde sent, this same one, she writes — there’s just this bit where she goes, “I found a note in my phone from November which said, ‘I eat a grief sandwich, I wear a grief coat, I see a grief film.’” And I think that is — like, the difference between Taylor Swift and Lorde, is that like, “I eat a grief sandwich, I wear a grief coat, I see a grief film” is very Lorde and very not-Taylor.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And it’s interesting that, if we… We can go into the driving now. I can’t remember when it was — do you remember when it was? — when someone was like, “I have a theory that Lorde can’t drive.”
NICKY: Yes, yes. Like around like, 2017 or 2018. Like, presumably post-Melodrama.
PLOY: Yeah yeah yeah. And they were like, “And here’s why! She’s always in the passenger seat,” or whatever, and she was like, “Yes, confirmed, I cannot drive.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: But I think that it also… Also — kind of, maybe — is a way of looking at why I feel like Lorde and Taylor are different. Like, their different approaches to the music they make and the stuff that they create, which is that like, Taylor is in the driver’s seat –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: And Lorde is not. Lorde is never — Lorde is never the main character in the things that she makes.
NICKY: Yes. And Taylor is always the main character.16
PLOY: Yeah. And I don’t think that one is better than the other, but I think that really sums up, I think, the difference in the way that they approach themselves.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And the art that they make. Because it’s — so the first album was like — so Melodrama was like, at the house party, and Pure Heroine was like, when you’re not invited to the party. But like, even then it’s like — it’s not [Lorde’s] party?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: It wasn’t her hang. Like, even when they weren’t invited to the party, she was not the one making the plans — like, she’s not the one, like, doing any of the things.
NICKY: Yes. Like, in, like, “Ribs”, they are at her house but she is not in charge — like, they are the one putting the records on her parents’ record player.
PLOY: Yes! Like, she is — it’s very clearly like, “I am looking at them.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: It’s not “They are looking at me,” it’s like, “They are the main character, and you — they just happen to be in your house.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Because they were like, “Can I come over?”, and you were like, “Of course.”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And even when it’s like — in “The Louvre,” when she’s like, living in their house, and she’s like, taking off her clothes in their house and like, running away from her friends to go and be with — this person? It still doesn’t feel like she’s the main character. Like, she’s running towards the main character. Whereas with Taylor — like, in “illicit affairs” where it’s like, “You leave […] you tell your friends you’re going out for a run, you’ll be flushed when you return”? It’s such a main character vibe. Like, you can see it — if it were a film or a TV show, where she’d be like, “I’ve just gotta go — I’m gonna go for a run,” and all her friends are like, “Yeah cool, see you later,” and then you go — the camera follows her.
NICKY: Yes. And like, even when Taylor is in the passenger seat of a car in her songs, I feel like the camera would be on her and the other person would be in the background.17
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah yeah
NICKY: Whereas with Lorde, the camera would be on the front-seat person.
PLOY: Yeah. Exactly. Like — because it would be like, she’s looking at the person who’s driving the car, whereas when Taylor is in the passenger seat, the person who is driving the car is looking at her –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Looking at her — yeah. Like, she’s like, “Why don’t we have a song”, and her boyfriend has to be like, “Um.”
PLOY: I — but I think it’s — even with “‘tis the damn season,” where it’s like, they both live — this is like, both of their childhood towns?
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: Which is why I find it so weird — the lyric that really gets me with this, in this song, is “Write this down.” Like, what is — and I’ve been thinking about, I’ve thought about it a lot, and I don’t — what — the directions?
NICKY: Yeah, like, once again I do not know what this means.
PLOY: The address to your house? Like it’s, it’s so weird to be like — like, why does — why do you need this person to write — like, what is it? What are you asking? Like, metaphorically but also in the world of the song?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Because presumably, you both know this town really well, you grew up in it, you went to school there together –
NICKY: Yeah, it sounds like a small town.
PLOY: This is your parents’ house. Why does this young man need to write down your address? But then you’re like, if he’s not writing down the address then what — what are they writing?
NICKY: Yeah, like is he writing, like, the rules of engagement? Is he writing down, like, “I won’t ask you to stay”?
PLOY: And like again, she’s clearly in the passenger seat, it’s his car, right, it’s like, the mud on his truck tyres, like he’s picking her up and they’re going wherever together from her parents’ house — but she’s still the one literally doing the navigating, she’s –
NICKY: [Overlapping] She’s like, dictating to him what is happening, which, unsafe when you are driving. He should not be writing things down.
PLOY: Again, not respecting the rules of the road. But like — it’s — it’s very — she is very much the one dictating the terms in “‘tis the damn season”, when she’s like, “You can call me ‘babe’ for the weekend.” It’s not like, “We can call each other ‘babe,’” or “I can call you ‘babe,’” it’s like –
NICKY: “You may call me ‘babe.’”
PLOY: Yeah yeah. “You may call me ‘babe,’ for this specific amount of time that I have allotted to you.” And it’s — I think it’s a really interesting counterpoint to “illicit affairs,” where she’s like, “Don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby,” whereas, like, here she’s like, “You may call me baby. For 48 hours only.” But — I think this song is very sad.
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: “‘tis the damn season” is a very sad song. It just –
NICKY: It feels like you’re like, lying down in a field in the rain, like it just feels like, miserable.
PLOY: Snow, snow, it’s a Christmas song! And that — I think that, like, is very palpable in this as well.
NICKY: Yep.
PLOY: And like, I know it’s on purpose because she purposely brought it out at Christmas, but I mean — I think it’s a really great non-Christmas Christmas song.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Because it’s clearly Christmassy — but not?
NICKY: Yeah. And it is like, when you have to go home to your parents’ house at Christmas and you are suddenly surrounded by all of these people who knew you when you were a previous iteration of yourself, and you’re like, “I actually don’t want to be perceived by these people, and I don’t want this relationship, and I don’t want this person to come with me and I don’t want to stay here, but for as long as we’re here we can have this very weird, like, entanglement that we both know will end badly, but –”
PLOY: And also, llike, it has such a — it’s interesting because it has such a specific expiry date as well.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: It’s not even like, “We’re gonna be in this relationship and we know we’re gonna end up hurting each other eventually,” it’s like, “We are going to be in this relationship for two days and at the end we are going to hurt one another by leaving and ending it and breaking — like, coming to the end of a very clearly demarcated space of time.” Obviously, obviously, this is personally upsetting to me for many reasons. But the “48 hours” aspect of this got me very hard in the feels — and I think it’s interesting because I feel like it’s the song that’s also the most specifically worldbuild-y? As in, like, the character — the main character in this song is actively creating worlds for herself that are concrete and short-term.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: I was gonna say something but I can’t remember what it was. Maybe it was literally just that the first verse is very sad.
NICKY: Yes. It is just like a — very sad, very winter song. I like, listened to it on repeat for two weeks over Christmas, just because it was just The Season, like it did just feel like, “This is what I want to be listening to, this is what the inside of my brain is going to sound like at this time of year.”
PLOY: Yeah. And it really encapsulates the, like, “going home for the holidays” feeling.
NICKY: Yes. Even though I did not do that, I was like, here I am at Krish’s house, with like — in a scenario which is fundamentally on every level different to what is being described in the song but the song also feels like the only companion to this experience that I could have.
PLOY: Yes. Yeah, it — it’s, it’s really good, I like it a lot.
BOTH LAUGH.
PLOY: Oh, I’ve written down here — next to “Write this down” — I was going to say “paratext”, but… The note-taking and writing down and the like, marginalia in this album.
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: I also have written here, “Drawing hearts in the byline –”
NICKY: [Overlapping] Which is not what a byline is.
PLOY: [She meant] margins, we know that. We’ll just — okay, we’ll skip, we’ll skip that.18 But again, like, there’s very much a sense of like, editing and writing over and rewriting and like fixing things in this — in these, this set of albums.
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: And like, “You drew stars around my scars”, there’s a lot of like, tattoo imagery as well, of like, writing down things but also writing on other people
NICKY: Yeah, and like, “I wanna write my name on your back” in “august”, whatever that lyric is, but like, she has always been very interested in writing and material texts and books and like, “The Story of Us,” and in “Long Live” there’s a history book, and all of those things. But I feel like in evermore it again is like, her space is being encroached on, like she is being pushed to the sidelines, she’s being like, moved out of the way, but she is still like, asserting some level of like — I don’t know, something. She like, has some level of authority, because she’s like, “I could do this. I’m not going to, but I could, like, I have some agency.”19
PLOY: Yeah. And it’s funny because when you said “authority”, it’s like, the “author” part of “authority” is what she has –
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: She has, like, editing privileges?
NICKY: Yeah, she has the power to be like, “I am going to change this narrative because I am going to leave you. I can’t change the story as a whole, but I can like, change the ending” — which, in “cardigan” when she’s like “tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy –”
PLOY: Like, it is a rewriting. It’s like she has — she can still rewrite or write over or revisit things in the way that she tells them?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: In the way that the story — because it very much feels, I think… Both evermore and folklore feel like things that have already happened that are being recounted.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: It doesn’t ever feel like this is happening in the present. Whereas I think a lot of her other songs feel like that. Whereas these two [albums] feel very much, like, retrospective.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And I think the allusions to like, writing and that sort of stuff is — that’s where it feels like it comes in, it’s like, “Even though I am or was powerless to stop the things that were happening, I am able to shape them now in the way that I deliver them to you.”
NICKY: Yes, and they are both like — obviously she has always been interested in like stories and how you tell things but like, the title of folklore obviously is very explicitly about the stories we tell and like, the stories we pass on and how they change in the telling. And I feel like she has always had this like, obsession with materiality, with like writing things down physically, with like, leaving a note on the door for Diana Agron, with like, Polaroids.
PLOY: And like, writing like the 13 on the hand — 20
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, and like, “I Heart Question Mark”, like, writing on the back of my hand as a teenager –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah yeah –
NICKY: And then in evermore especially it feels like an album which is like, looking back on yourself leaving? Like, so many of the songs are about leaving people or thinking about leaving people. Like, “champagne problems,” “tolerate it” is about thinking about leaving someone, “coney island” is like “Do you miss the rogue who coaxed you into Paradise and left you there”, like it’s constantly like — me looking back at the choices I have made and the people I have left behind.21
PLOY: Yeah. And also even when it’s like, looking to — like looking to a future, you’re still looking at it from a further future — I’m thinking of “‘tis the damn season”, where she’s like, “And then when I leave and go back to the so-called friends who’ll write books about me if I ever make it”, and you’re like, okay but you know that she — as in, it feels Taylor-y in this moment, even when you know that it’s meant to be someone else, but here in this bit it feels Taylor-y, right –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] It’s like, the friends who are gonna sell stories about her as a kid when she becomes famous, and we know she becomes famous, because now we’re looking at it from a previous bit — even though technically in the timeline of the story –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, like, in the moment of the telling this hasn’t happened yet but from the narrative perspective it has happened –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yes, yeah, exactly –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Which is again very — like she’s always been looking forward to the moment when she will look back, like, that is what “Fifteen” is about, that is what “Long Live” is about, that is what her entire oeuvre is about, like, “I know this will end badly, I know this will go down in flames” — like, “Wildest Dreams” is about like, “This will end and I want to ensure in this moment that you will remember me well, when it ends, and I have seen the ending.”
PLOY: Yeah yeah, it’s like, “I can’t wait until this is a fond memory.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: “And I hope that — and I know it will be a fond memory so I am going to do everything in my power to make sure it is the fondest of memories –”
NICKY: Yeah, like, “I am actively orchestrating your memory of this as we are living through it”, this like poor man is just like, going on a date, and she is like, “Everything I do on this date is informed by how I want you to remember me in five years’ time.”
PLOY: It’s so entirely relatable that it makes me feel sick. Obviously. But also — in terms of like, thinking about like folklore and fairytales and stories that you tell each other, I think it’s — let’s talk about the “willow” music video.
NICKY: Yes. Which again I was going to rewatch and didn’t.
PLOY: Me too! Because it’s… I feel like it’s so folklore-y, because it’s like, very very clearly heavily influenced by like, fairytales and fables or like, you know — what’s the word I’m looking for, the — the tropes! Of folktales. (In the Dream House.) With the — moving around through portals of like, space and time –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And like, following mysterious –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Robed beings –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And like — there were bits of it that were so Portrait of a Lady on Fire, as well –
NICKY: Yeah, literally.
PLOY: But this weird, like, light slash water slash string substance that’s like, taking you places?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like when I saw it immediately I was like, “Ariadne!” And the — sdhjsl — but like, it’s so… It’s not — it’s set up in a way where you know that nothing bad is going to happen to her –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Even though what’s actually going on is scary? Like, as a person who is scared of deep water, when she’s like, struggling on top of the piano being like, “I’m gonna drown in this — like I have to get into it,” or whatever, I’m like, “This is very scary to watch but I also know that it’s going to be okay because we already have — like, the image of the glowy string — it’s like she’s holding the visible string –
NICKY: [Overlapping] She has a lifeline –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Yeah, like it literally is taking her — she’s following it to where she needs to go, like the line has been laid out in front of her and we know she’s gonna be fine because she has a literal lifeline. And that is also how I feel about — kind of how I feel about folklore and evermore in general, is that they are, like, extremely — contained songs –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] In an extremely contained album. Like, they don’t — like, you know how everything ends because it’s already ended.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: These are all like, very carefully written songs with foregone conclusions, and like, carefully crafted narratives — in a way that feels extremely, like, tame? And maybe not in a bad way. I also have written here in my notes — I’ve lost it now — oh. “reputation and Lover were extremely horny albums lol.”
NICKY: Yes. This is true. And I feel like we don’t get that — on these guys.
PLOY: Right, like, folklore and evermore are super not sexy albums.22
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: And I feel like it’s — I feel like reputation and Lover were very much weird, sprawly — I think reputation is actually pretty sonically compact –
NICKY: [Overlapping] “Sonically cohesive –”
PLOY: [Overlapping] But Lover is, like, a weird sprawly album where she’s just like, doing a lot?
NICKY: Yes, and if she’d edited Lover, like, half as much as she edited folklore and evermore I think it would be better for it, like I think it has about five songs too many.
PLOY: I — see, I disagree because I like how silly and mishmashed Lover is, because all — like, basically every song sounds different.
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: I like that. That said, the Chicks one, no-one needed. Sadly. But like, she was trying lots of stuff in Lover, and I feel like you can tell?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: I think she’s also doing the thing where, like, you start having sex, and you’re really excited about it, and you have to like, mention the fact that you have sex –
NICKY: [Overlapping] In every conversation –
PLOY: [Overlapping] All the time, in every possible way.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And I feel like, for her, reputation and Lover were the points at which — like, the album is literally called “Lover,” which is the most embarrassing word in the history of man. Like — when she says it in the song, it makes me cringe so hard.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: In the actual song, and Whenever she does it, I feel an actual shudder run down my spine?
NICKY: Yeah, it’s like the one, in like, the bridge when she does like the really really campy — and she’s like, “loverrrrr”
BOTH LAUGH.
PLOY: But then it’s also the one where it’s like — she’s like, rolling her tongue? Like she’s like — “Lllover”. It’s like, we get it, you have a tongue. You have a mouth and you use it for things. Like, please. Give us a break. Lover is an embarrassing album.
NICKY: Yes, deeply. And I think folklore and evermore are less embarrassing.
PLOY: I think that folklore and evermore are extremely unembarrassing albums in that they have clearly been carefully edited for both style and content.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Whereas Lover is just like — half of the songs, you’re like, “Who let her write this?”
NICKY: Yes. Which is true of reputation as well.
PLOY: Yeah yeah yeah.
NICKY: Like, incredibly embarrassing, far too earnest, weird production stuff going on — I read an interview in 2019, in an interview she said reputation was inspired by Game of Thrones. And I was like, “No it wasn’t.”
PLOY: I — it’s so weird that you say this, because I — very recently I was — I had been stalking the Jonas Brothers.
NICKY: Okay.
PLOY: And that led me onto Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas which then led me on to Maisie and Sophie Turner, and so I was — I was watching Maisie Williams’ hot wings interview, and she talks about how reputation was like, inspired by Arya Stark.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: And I was like — Taylor, the whole point was — you weren’t meant to tell people things about this album. And like, judging from this, I can see why.
NICKY: Yeah, like, this is the worst possible defence you could have said.
PLOY: This was a tidbit that should never have been shared with the public. There’s some things we don’t need to know?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And like, this is it. This — this right here is it. I feel like, if you look — I’m gonna look at the tracklist for Lover — I feel like, if you look at it, half of the songs you’re like, “Someone should have stopped her.”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like — obviously “The Man.”
NICKY: Yes. Obviously “London Boy.”
PLOY: Obviously “London Boy.”
BOTH LAUGH
PLOY: Obviously “You Need To Calm Down”?
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] I was talking to –
NICKY: [Overlapping] How did that not only, like, get past the people whose job it is to make albums, but also, everyone who was in the music video? Like how was Todrick Hall like, “Yeah!”?
PLOY: I specifically have never watched it and I am adamant that I never will. Because I — I refuse. I refuse. The first time I listened –
NICKY: [Overlapping] When I listened –
PLOY: Like, every single lyric in it — pains me to my core?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like? “His gown”? And I’m like — don’t do that.
NICKY: I listened to it — again, when it literally came out. Which I didn’t wake up for, because it was a single and I don’t usually wake up for the singles –
PLOY: You’re above the singles?
NICKY: But I was on the way back from a night out — I was on the way back from a night out and it was literally 5am and I got out of my Uber and was like, “Oh it’s 5am the new Taylor song is out!”, and like, listened to it, and I was like, walking down Balham High Road, and I remember I got to the like — “Shade never made anybody less gay” lyric and I was like, “I don’t understand what that, like I must have heard that wrong,” and then I Googled it but the lyrics weren’t online yet because it had just come out, so I was just like, listening to it over and over again trying to figure out like, what were the words and in what order because there was no possible orientation that made my brain make sense.
PLOY: Orientation?
BOTH LAUGH
PLOY: But like — when I listened to it, I was like, “Is she coming out?” That was my first — when this song came out, I was like, “Is this a coming out song?” And then the music video came out and I just — I adamantly didn’t watch it, and then I remember people being like, “Her hair is the colours of the bi flag,” and I was like — is this, is she — like, this is her coming out, right? As in, I was expecting there to be a press release.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Not like, “This is a wink wink, nudge nudge [situation],” I was like, “She’s gonna come out as bi.”
NICKY: Yeah, like this is not the Harry Styles mode of like, waving a flag but never speaking about it, like this is her like, making an active decision, she’s gonna give an exclusive interview in a magazine, like –
PLOY: In the way that Taylor Swift would, right.23 Like, this is her precursor to her big “I’m bi” press tour.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And then — nothing.
NICKY: And then nothing.
PLOY: And I genuinely am still like — who let her do this?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And part of me is genuinely like, “Maybe she chickened out?”
NICKY: Yeah! Because I don’t understand why, specifically, she would dye her hair the colours of the bi pride flag, like, if it had been a rainbow flag, I would have been like, “Maybe she’s coming out” but I wouldn’t have been like, “She is definitely coming out” because I would have been like, “Rainbows, I guess, like, being an ally!” But like, why the bi pride flag, is that, like, that’s specific! Why? And why is it her hair?
PLOY: Again — for someone who is so incredibly purposeful about the things that she does, this — you cannot expect suddenly, for just this one song only, for everyone to be like, “Perhaps it is a mere coincidence.”
NICKY: Yes, like, she is not someone who doesn’t plan things meticulously. She knows that her fans and like the media at large pay immense attention to everything she does –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like she’s not accidentally dying her hair random colours. This bitch did not randomly pick some colours to put in her hair! Like, I honestly — I remember thinking that maybe she genuinely chickened out? Like maybe they had this whole press tour planned and then she suddenly was like, “Maybe I don’t wanna come out?”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: “Maybe I changed my mind.” And that’s kind of relatable, I guess? Like, this seems like something I would do.
BOTH LAUGH
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: But that aside, who let her come out with this song?
NICKY: [Overlapping] Like, how did it get that far?
PLOY: [Overlapping] Even if, like — there are like, fifty celebrities in the video if I am not mistaken?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like, how did they get — and they’re all queer?
NICKY: Yeah — like, the entire cast of Queer Eye, and like, ten Drag Race queens, like — Hayley Kiyoko!
PLOY: [Overlapping] Like, she’s [Taylor] straight! And all of these — random YouTube stars as well, like Hannah Hart? Like, gay YouTubers?
NICKY: Literally just “people who are gay,” when you search “gay celebrities” — Ellen Degeneres!
PLOY: And then it’s literally just — Taylor Swift. You know what the vibe of it is? The vibe of it is very much the “I Really Like You” music video with Tom Hanks.24 Where Tom Hanks is just, there in the music video, and it’s all like, crafted around him, but — for no reason? Tom Hanks is just in this Carly Rae Jepsen video, like, he’s just the star of this video for no reason. Except that was funny because it wasn’t “Carly Rae Jepsen feat. Tom Hanks.” But this was like — it’s Taylor Swift playing Taylor Swift. It would have been really funny if it had been — if the song had been written by, like, Hayley Kiyoko, and it was like, “Starring Taylor Swift,” do you know what I mean? But no. It’s not that.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: I wish it were that!
NICKY: She has too much clout? Like, she has the ability to pull in celebrities into music videos, and then she doesn’t use them. She’s like, “Oh I’m gonna get, like, fifty celebrities into my music video for me and Selena Gomez to have an argument.” But like, for no purpose.
EXTENDED CONNECTION ISSUES.
NICKY: Hello.
PLOY: Oh. What happened?
NICKY: I don’t know, you froze, and then you went — you disappeared. But now you’re here.
PLOY: So you — you didn’t freeze, but I could tell that I had frozen for you. And then you disappeared and then you came back. And it was because I said something funny, and you didn’t respond, and I was like, “I’ve obviously frozen,” because you didn’t laugh at the funny thing I said. Which was: “This makes me think of the cheerleader effect-era, when Taylor decided to pretend she had female friends.”
BOTH LAUGH.
PLOY: And you didn’t laugh and I was like, “Clearly something has gone wrong here.” Yeah, that, like, absolutely bonkers era when she just — hired people to be her friends?
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: And then they were never heard from again.
NICKY: Yes. Like she was like, “Let me hire some random people to be in the “22” music video,” and everyone was like “Why aren’t your female friends in this video?”
PLOY: And “Bad Blood”, which was just like — it’s the classic — it was like the music video equivalent of when you write — what’s the word I’m looking for, when you write an essay, like, backwards? When you’re like, “Okay shit, I haven’t actually read and thought about this text,” and so you’re like, “This is the title of the essay, and I’m just gonna write things to fit this title that I’ve made up.” They were like, “We have ten female celebrities. How do we make a music video where we can feature all of them individually and also as a group?” And someone was like, “Superheroes? But also, robots?”
NICKY: And Taylor will have bad hair but only in the final scene, and this will never be explained.
BOTH LAUGH.
NICKY: That hair keeps me up at night.
PLOY: But like, we’re gonna give them all superhero names. That are never — that are not relevant–
NICKY: [Overlapping] That are never used –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And no-one will ever talk about again, except they will continue to exist in the world of this music video. They will all just have, like, strange superhero alter egos for no reason. Was that also the time when she would just — bring all of them to every awards show?
NICKY: Yes. This was the 1989 era, was like, Taylor and the entire US women’s basketball team, and it was like — why?
PLOY: Like, it was — I don’t — I don’t know why! But yeah, it — it makes me think of how she can just kind of — it’s… There’s something very, like, Marie Antoinette about it.
NICKY: Yes, it is like, there is the illusion of popularity or of community or of like, being an ally to the gays, because they are all in this music video and there is this like, veneer of a relationship that doesn’t exist?
PLOY: And the fact that they can kind of — again, for a specific, allotted period of time — like, create a world in which this female — this like, girl gang — is a real thing. And then literally never speak of it again.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like there was literally — she just like, playacted a friend group –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes –
PLOY: [Overlapping] Of famous hot people — and then, in the blink of an eye, they all disappeared and ceased to exist.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like, have we ever seen her with Zendaya again, ever? No. Or like, Ellie Goulding. Again, because Taylor Swift loves to take things too far, it wasn’t like she brought them on for a music video — it was like, “I’m going to pretend we’re best friends in real life and we’re gonna have crazy staged photoshoots, like the one where she was dating Tom Hiddleston with the “I Heart Taylor Swift” T-shirt –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] And like, “I’m gonna bring my gal pals to the awards shows.” And — and then you never spoke about it again!
NICKY: And then they all disappeared.
PLOY: Again, it’s — I feel with Lover, it’s very much like that. Like, picking things up and putting them down again, but it doesn’t feel — it’s embarrassing but it’s not annoying?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: It very clearly feels like her putting on lots of different hats. In the same way that you were like, “I’m going to write every single possible iteration of a love song, in the hopes that one of them resonates with you.”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: It very much feels like, “I’m going to pick up and put down every possible iteration of like, how it feels to be a person in love, or to be loved”? Including all of the horrible embarrassing bits of it.
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Lover feels very real to me, I think because… Her early albums are all very embarrassing, but they’re embarrassing in a way where it’s like, the person who wrote them thinks that they’re really good?
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: Like, the first two albums where she, like, pretends to be from Nashville, or whatever, and is very carefully crafting these like, extremely embarrassing love songs. Whereas Lover feels much more genuine in a horrible way, which is good? It’s like — a lot of it is like, I don’t think you realise how embarrassing you’re being? And there’s something much nicer about that.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Somehow –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, like there is something much nicer about “False God” being like, basically incredibly explicit about her sex life, than in “Wildest Dreams”, like, “and my clothes are in your room –”
PLOY: “Style” is such an embarrassing song. Like, the tight little skirt, and the Catholic girl vibes — it’s so embarrassing, but it’s like, a person who just started having sex last month, whereas “False God” is like, someone who’s been having sex for a while, but just started having sex with someone she’s really into, and it’s like, being embarrassing about that.
NICKY: Yeah, “Style” is like, she’s started having sex and she already feels like, incredibly mature and worldly about it.
PLOY: It’s like — has sex once: “Style.”
BOTH LAUGH.
PLOY: Whereas “False God” is like, “Oh, someone discovered kink.”
BOTH LAUGH.
PLOY: I actually love “False God.” I think “False God” is an amazing song — obviously because I love me some Christian imagery.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Love to sexualise the religion of Christianity, as a whole. Love that for me. Someone was like, “Are you Christian? Because all of your tattoos have like, really significant Christian imagery?” And they were like, “Sorry, so this tattoo that you have, it’s from a painting called The Annunciation?” And I was like — I was literally the shocked Pikachu meme. And they were like, “Sorry, and this one is a — is a saint? This one is like, the relics of a Catholic saint?” And I was like –
NICKY: You were like, “I’m just a Buddhist with a fetish!”
PLOY: Literally. Then they were like, “Oh and this hazelnut, from Julien of Norwich, the medieval Christian mystic? Where she has a vision of Jesus holding the world in his palm?” And I literally was like, “Yeah, I’m a Buddhist with a special interest — so sue me!” Nicky, it was — I — my world turned upside down that day. To which, I say, yes, I love the sexy Christian imagery in “False God.” But like, all of it is so embarrassing? Like, “Paper Rings” is such an embarrassing song. But in a way that feels much more adult, and much more relatable. It’s more like, “I can’t believe she said what we were all thinking in a song, and made people listen to it.”
NICKY: Yeah, like she’s very earnestly like, “I would marry you with paper rings,” and it’s like, “You guys could just have this conversation.”
PLOY: This is literally — this is the equivalent of like, writing on each other’s [Facebook] walls when you could Facebook message each other. Like, no-one else needed to hear this conversation.
NICKY: Yes, and like, I feel like the Old Taylor would have been like — some kind of really elaborate metaphor about how this love is like a different love to one that anyone else has ever experienced, and this is like, incredibly simple and earnest.
PLOY: And also [documenting] all of the weird things she’s doing? Rather than all of the things the guy is doing for her slash to her. Like, I think “Our Song” is so interesting because it’s just her actively being like, “Why don’t we have this very specific plot point that I would like to have in –
NICKY: [Overlapping] The narrative of our loving relationship –
PLOY: [Overlapping] In my head?” And then simultaneously being like, “And then I just stumbled home, and my house was filled with roses?”
NICKY: “When I was having a bad day!”
PLOY: It’s like when you tell your significant other exactly what you want for your birthday, and they give it to you and you’re like, “I had no idea, howdid you know? How did you know that this extremely specific thing that I wanted was the thing that I specifically wanted for this specific event?” Whereas with Lover it’s like, she’s the one doing all the embarrassing stuff, and being really obvious about it. Like, the bit in “Paper Rings” where it’s like, “And I went home and tried to stalk you on the Internet.”
NICKY: Yeah, “And I read all the books that you have on your bedside table.”
PLOY: Yeah and like — before that, it would have been written in a different — from a different perspective, like, in “Enchanted” when she goes home and is fucking spinning around in her bedroom, like — you didn’t go home and spin around in your bedroom, you went home and looked at his Wikipedia page.
NICKY: You went home and Googled “Owl City.”
PLOY: Sorry, that — also — Owl City doing–
NICKY: [Overlapping] A cover which she then ignored.
PLOY: That Owl City “Enchanted” cover is like the equivalent of the Martin Skhreli article by the journalist who falls in love with him. The “Enchanted” cover was the phone call to prison, and Taylor Swift did not pick up that phone. This is what happens when you try to, like, enter into her narratives.
NICKY: Yeah, she’s just like, “This is my story, you do not have a role to play.”
PLOY: Which is why it’s so interesting that Joe is writing songs with her.
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: What’s his stupid little fake name?
NICKY: William Bowery. Also the fact that like, in the folklore — like, the long pond recording sessions, when she talks about it, she’s like, “Yeah and then I just like came home and Joe was just like, singing this song that he’d made up and playing the piano,” and I was like, “He didn’t just write ‘betty’ by himself,” like I don’t believe this.
PLOY: Also, like. Why would he write a song about your friend’s young children? Like, this — this narrative was not well thought through? You could have just been like, “He was writing a completely different song that turned into ‘betty,’” not like, “I came home and he had written ‘betty.’”
NICKY: It’s also literally the most Taylor song on both albums.
PLOY: Yeah.
NICKY: Like — the structure of “betty” is the structure of a Taylor Swift song to a tee.
PLOY: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
NICKY: I will not believe that he did anything other than be like, “Huh, what if we name them after — Ryan’s kids,” like — I don’t know what his contribution was but I do not believe it was more substantial than that.
PLOY: Yeah yeah yeah, one hundred percent. He was like, “Uh, what if he was riding a skateboard?” Or like, “What if they were like teenagers and like, it was a party?” But not even, because like, that whole setup is so Taylor –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, and it’s so American, like, he’s not gonna come in and be like, “Maybe she switched her home room,” like, what does that mean? You can’t do that in English schools, if I went to my form tutor and I was like, “Can I change forms?” they would be like, “No.”
PLOY: Yeah.
NICKY: “Your surname is Watkinson, you are in this form, it is alphabetical, go and sit down.”
PLOY: Like, but it’s so Taylor, the like — interrupting someone else’s event is the most Taylor Swift thing of all time?25
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: Like — I refuse to believe that Joe Alwyn — I don’t think he had anything to do with any of this. Like — yeah. I don’t know how I feel about him as a person –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah –
PLOY: [Overlapping] I know nothing, he is merely but a foil –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yeah, my — their whole relationship, to me, is very confusing, like I don’t understand what the narrative is.
BOTH LAUGH
PLOY: I don’t know if I have anything else to say. I mean, I definitely do. I just — I’ve found something. I put “Cowboy plus rodeo clown imagery colon why.”
BOTH LAUGH
NICKY: She does seem very obsessed with like, clowns and circuses, like, since Red this has been a theme. And I don’t understand where it comes from or what the function is, because sometimes she is in the circus and sometimes she is outside the circus and the circus is her critics.
PLOY: It’s very — it’s definitely something to do with like, performance
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: I think that’s made very — most explicit in “mirrorball”, obviously, but like, there’s also something kind of mean about it at the same time?
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: And I think it makes sense because like, circuses are also like a mean –
NICKY: Yes, yeah, like it is like, “Let’s go and laugh at people”
PLOY: And like, or like, “Let’s go and see like, animals doing weird things” — like there is something like, inherently cruel about circuses and that kind of like, setup? And so I think it makes sense. But also I feel like whenever I see like, circus stuff I’m like, “Britney Spears did it first”
NICKY: Yeah.
PLOY: I’ve put next to this note, “Americana — I hate this part of her I’m sorry.”
NICKY: Yes.
PLOY: It is literally just a mishmash of like, American, stereotypical American nonsense. And then there’s the — the COVID, the weird COVID song in folklore?
NICKY: Yes. “epiphany”.
PLOY: Which is like, very, like, strangely like — nationalist. And then turns into like — like a period war–
NICKY: Yes, like it’s like, verse one: my grandfather on like, the beaches of Guadalcanal and then verse two is like: COVID.
PLOY: Yeah. And it’s again it’s weird because it’s a specific type — she’s like, invoking a really specific type of nostalgia, that is like — rooted in like, history? Or like, nationalism?26 In a very strange way. But there was something very like, that, running through — starting with reputation and running through folklore and evermore, and I don’t know whether it’s because she’s set it in this weird like, log cabin in no specific time period feeling to it? Because I feel like, both folklore and evermore are like, they’re like cold weather albums but like, folklore is a very woodsy, foresty album. Like, in the imagery that she chose for the album and everything. But it also has this — like in my mind, I feel like, it also feels very barren to me? Like, “mirrorball” is very much like a deserty song, in my mind.
NICKY: Yes
PLOY: Like when I think about the, the tightrope, it’s like a — it’s like plains, do you know what I mean? There’s something very, like, barren about — and like dry, and like–
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes. And there is a lot of like, imagery about like, ash and like fires that have burnt out and like, the apocalypse.
PLOY: Like it feels very like, the site of Burning Man one month after Burning Man energy, to me? Which is interesting because it’s an album that is so clearly meant to be –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Like, woods
PLOY: Lush, and foresty
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: That there’s this whole — kind of like, weird, dry, like, ravaged vibe to it? Which I think is interesting in comparison to evermore as well which I feel is a very icy album.
NICKY: Yeah
PLOY: Lots of like, metaphors about like, cold and ice and like, frozen wintery
NICKY: Yeah like frozen ground and snow and –
PLOY: No-one around to tweet it? Yeah like, and the fog on the windshield and it’s all like, frozen over — but — I’m just saying things aloud now. Just saying things aloud now. Yeah. I just think it’s funny that folklore has a very like, simultaneously like woodsy, dank, foresty –
NICKY: [Overlapping] Yes, like, wet, like wet forest vibe and like, dry, arid barren huge landscapes.
PLOY: Yeah, and evermore is just like — cold. Very icy.
The conversation did go on a bit longer but we really did not say anything else of use, not that I necessarily believe that the above is of use to anyone either. If you have made it this far, thank you and I’m sorry — and if for some reason you have a burning desire to consume more Taylor content, you can read my original folklore analysis here, my essay on reputation here, and you can contact me if you would like to read my essay on Taylor, Lana, and Americana and/or my presentation on revisionism in Taylor’s music, which I gave at the inaugural SwiftCon last week.
N: so i have developed a theory since we had this conversation, and it is this: i think folklore is about a feeling, or like a constellation of feelings, around like “being too much” “trying too hard” “failing to be normal”, and that evermore is about a theme, and that theme is “leaving” (also including: thinking about leaving, not leaving, being left). and i think that’s probably why i connected so much more to folklore, because that specific group of feelings is one i have personally been wrestling with a lot, and was last summer especially, whereas evermore felt a lot less emotionally heightened and i think it’s because it’s more of like … a meditation on a theme, and it’s a theme that i intellectually am interested in, especially in the context of taylor’s work, but not emotionally connected to in the same way.
P: This makes so much sense to me, especially in the context of where I was emotionally when evermore came out, ie. this: “thinking about leaving, not leaving, being left.” It’s interesting that evermore feels less emotionally heightened to you because for me, evermore feels Very Emotional? Perhaps because the dynamic ‘moving’ elements of it (driving in “‘tis the damn season,” falling in “gold rush”) sit very stark against the stasis and stagnancy and the “I have decided to sit and watch the things happen to me” of it all.
P: Also RE: falling in “gold rush”: a fantastic counterpoint to the “I don’t like that falling feels like flying ’til the bone crush” line in this song is “Townie” by Mitski, which is one of my top three favourite Mitski songs. These lyrics, if you please: “And I want a love that falls as fast / As a body from the balcony, and / I want a kiss like my heart is hitting the ground” !!!!!!!
N: and i think this supports my theory, because the songs on evermore that are incoherent feel like the ones where she’s been like “here are some images and/or concepts that relate to this idea of leaving/being left/etc and i am going to combine them” and that doesn’t always work for me tbh ! also true tbf of “my tears ricochet”, probably literally my least favourite folklore song for the same reason bc i still don’t understand what it is About
N: oh my god i had no idea what polyvore was and i just googled it and i had assumed that it was like, some kind of like, plasticine or something that you use to physically create like, material items and it turns out it is a digital image-based moodboard thing and (a) i’m freaking out bc now i have to rewrite my understanding of this entire part of our conversation but also (b) i feel like this kind of speaks to the tension between the material and the digital in taylor
P: I just tried to find the OG Polyvore set and of course I could not because Polyvore closed down years ago, but I remember very clearly that it featured a plaid shirt, a lacy black bra, “girl boxers” (were they a thing for you? They were very much a Cool Underwear option at my boarding school), and board games.
Another thing my best friend and I used to do was keep a list of lyrics that Spoke To Us on our phones, and I remember so so clearly putting these ones from “Tell Me Why” on mine, even though I knew she’d ask me what they were about because that’s what we did, and I would have to lie and pretend they weren’t about her:
“You put up the walls and paint them all a shade of gray / And I stood there loving you, and wished them all away / And you come away with a great little story / Of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you”
EMBARRASSING. Love u forever, redacted best friend name
P: Big ‘R’ (Shelley and Wordsworth and ~The Sublime~) vs. little ‘R’ (candlelight and rose petals and silly little mini-breaks to the Lake District)
N: “Take my hand / Wreck my plans / That’s my man” // “Please take my hand and / Please leave me stranded”
P: I really like this video as a very clear visual example of how every early Taylor Swift song is about Taylor Swift. She puts her own thoughts into other people’s mouths and she plays every character in her own head and it is so very relatable and yet, so very about her and no one else, her listeners included.
N: I don’t think we got to this SO i think driving is usually something that Other People Do For Taylor and is often very linked to her agency — e.g. in “Our Song” she’s the passenger, she’s asking her boyfriend to come up with a song for them, she’s not telling him what the song is. But she’s like — the protagonist who is pretending not to be the protagonist, like she’s pretending to give up agency. She’s being a bottom, is what I’m saying!!! Anyway. And in both “White Horse” and “Breathe” she drives away from someone/somewhere, because she is Reclaiming Her Agency Over Her Own Story etc. In “All Too Well”, she doesn’t explicitly say that he’s driving but they are in HIS car getting lost upstate so I think we can reasonably assume. Obviously driving is really big as a metaphor in 1989, and like, him driving them off the road and she is again the passive victim of him fucking everything up. And then in reputation we have “Getaway Car” and she steals the car and drives away and in 2018 this seemed to me to be incredibly significant of her once again taking back the agency she had given over to this man/men/people, parallel to her ~taking back control of her story on reputation. and THEN in Lover, in “I Think He Knows”, she’s like “lyrical smile indigo eyes hand on my thigh we can follow the sparks I’ll drive” and i SCREAM because it is once again Driving As A Metaphor For Control. There are more examples which I will go away and look up, tbc.
N: and THEN (im so sorry this is the point i intended to make when i started typing and then all the above fell out of my brain and i forgot what i was supposed to be doing) obviously there is the car in betty and there is the car in tis the damn season but what i was SPECIFICALLY THINKING OF when i STARTED TYPING NICKY was “i always felt i must look better in the rearview” in “long story short” (evermore) bc it feels like a direct reference back to the Fearless era (“that was a small town / there in my rearview mirror disappearing now” / “i see your face in my mind as i drive away”)
N: also (im SORRY) that interview which might have been a rolling stone cover??? i cant remember the outlet but it must have been a cover or at least a centrefold bc it was a long feature and the journalist spent like 2 days with her and while they were with her she was in TWO car accidents bc she’s a bad driver
N: update it was a rolling stone cover in 2012 and they have deleted it (!) (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/taylor-swift-on-her-messy-love-life-20121012) but she talks about it in multiple interviews eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY0wNOhJtSE
P: ALSO ALSO obviously “‘tis the damn season” which I think we touched on v briefly earlier (or later? What is sequence), about how she is giving directions to the guy whose truck it is. Also I think we talk about this later on about Lorde vs. Taylor, where even when Taylor is in the passenger seat, she is the main character
P: Also wrt cars and driving and the material and the digital , there’s an interview with Lorde and Tavi Gevinson where they talk about the “notes from my admirers / Fill my dashboard just the same, ah-ah” line from “White Teeth Teens,” and how “dashboard” here is a reference both to the dashboard of a car and the homepage of tumblr which was also called a “dashboard” (https://www.rookiemag.com/2014/01/lorde-interview/11/)
P: Also I always link this line and this interview to how to be both (of course) and how it grapples with walls as a structure and a thing that holds up but is also pressed / imprinted / inscribed upon (George is a wall “against which other things impact without her permission”) vs. Facebook walls vs. metaphorical emotional walls, linking us back to Taylor and her room / architecture analogies — “you put up walls and paint them all a shade of grey” — and our conversation about filling up the floor plan of your mind with other people’s stuff. Cyclicality! (htbb!) We love to see it
P: SORRY one more driving / car reference for Taylor! This line from “You All Over Me” — “The way the tires turn stones, on old county roads / They leave ’em muddy underneath / Reminds me of you” — to be compared with “messy as the mud on your truck tires” from “‘tis the damn season”
P: FUCK sorry I have one more for the “Taylor driving” arc, which is “Renegade” by Big Red Machine ft. TS. My (not at all groundbreaking) theory is that the very first line — “I tapped on your window on your darkest night” — is her tapping on the guy’s car window, and is the beginning of the literal and metaphorical narrative of her meeting him at his car and carrying his literal and metaphorical “baggage up [her] street” to her house, and then she switches up the metaphor and he becomes a house: “Open the blinds, let me see your face.”
Linking this also to the bit where we talk about Taylor becoming the house in “ivy,” pls and thank u
P: All you had to do was! Stay!
P: There’s something here, too, about coming alive during performance, or performance being the thing that makes her or us or anyone alive, and linking all of this to the very brief bit at the end where we talk about circuses and the theatre of cruelty and how the magic and malice of circuses exists necessarily by way of illusion and performance and trickery and sleight of hand and the willing watching audience
P: I was also thinking about car crashes here, about that awful phenomenon when there’s a car crash and drivers automatically slow down to look at the crash without meaning to? We all love watching something (someone) crash and burn, making a spectacle of themselves (from Latin spectaculum ‘public show’, from spectare, frequentative of specere ‘to look’)
P: If a Taylor Swift playlist inspired by The Social Network, doesn’t already exist (I’m sure it does), someone lmk and I myself will make it in the year of our lord 2021, amen
N: which again i think this comes back to what we talked about before about agency vs passivity in these 2 albums? and illicit affairs is VERY much like :) watch me make the bad choice :) i am forcing u to watch me :) isn’t it bad :)
P: Taylor Swift is a bratty bottom and my God, do I relate! (Is this too horny for public consumption)
N: :)
P: :) :) :)
N: a reference that we absolutely do not need to keep but i can’t stop thinking about denise riley’s “commitment to the thing that is song”
N: I also, again this is a Recent Theory that i haven’t explored much yet but i feel like 1989 is a very static album with the exception of the like, dramatic breakup songs? Which are Very dynamic. But like “pictures in frames / of kisses on cheeks”, “standing in a nice dress staring at a sunset”, “you two are dancing in a snowglobe round and round / and he keeps a picture of you in his office downtown” — like there’s such an intense focus on static images, whether those are literal photos (as in the polaroids!) or like, imagined images that she is trying to plant. But it feels like all of these love songs are for the most part quite removed and static and the only songs that are dynamic and Exciting are the ones with car crashes lol. (also I have written about this before in my medium piece about how her requests to be remembered go from like, dynamic collages in Tim McGraw and Long Live, to this incredibly static single image in Wildest Dreams where she’s like “if you take ONE thing away, i am just asking you for ONE thing, please PAY ATTENTION to the SINGLE SMALL THING I AM ASKING OF YOU” and i think that’s interesting and also probably related, in that she’s feeling less in control of the narrative and only has control over these smaller images/portions of the relationship rather than the wider arc, she can’t trust her lovers any more than she can trust her audiences? this might not make sense without the context of that essay sorry if i am rambling ! :)
N: also again Denise Riley: “pictures in frames / of kisses on cheeks” // “Maybe a retouched photograph or memory, / […]it’s framed / Glassed in, breathed hard on, and curated.” (A Part Song)
P: Yes @ all of this, the other song on 1989 that I think really crystallises the static containedness of the album is “New Romantics,” which for such a poppy glittery shimmery song with lyrics that talk about moving — “baby, we’re the new romantics, / come on come along with me” — at the core of it, it’s about how everyone is stuck, how everyone is holed up behind their walls: “baby, I could build a castle / out of all the bricks you threw at me”. It is about the illusion of movement or impact or rupture, and that’s why the song is so singsongy and know-it-all-y about all the small awful things we do to each other? Because ultimately they mean nothing because we are all “[waiting] for trains that just aren’t coming.” The bridge of this song KILLS me every time (Please take my hand and / Please take me dancing, and / Please leave me stranded / It’s so romantic / ah ah ah ah ah AH”) because she is ASKING him to fuck her up and to leave her alone afterwards because we are all! already! alone! And this is all part of the Romance Narrative, the Story of Love and Heartbreak that she has written over and over again in so many different ways but are kind of all the same
P: this links back to how I felt when she came out with reputation, and about how jarring that album was for me, bc Taylor’s always the main character and because her music is written in a way where you feel aligned with Taylor, her music up until this point always made me feel like the main character. And reputation was when I realised, “Oh, I thought I was the main character, but the whole time I was just the ethnic best friend.”
N: also just on Taylor being the main character — when someone has left her she is wounded and gets to wallow in her victimhood and when she is the one who has left them, it is also still all about her?? like, champagne problems, back to december — I am the victim here because i feel bad about what i did to you, no we don’t have time to talk about your feelings sorry
P: Instead of skipping this “byline” vs. “margin” error, perhaps I will play devil’s advocate and suggest that she purposely used “byline” to draw a connection to authorship and taking responsibility for one’s words and stories? “Byline” evokes journalistic connotations, and in turn makes me think about truth-telling and good reportage vs. scandal and clickbait and also let’s not forget the whole newspaper thing she had going on during the reputation era.
N: I also think that like, “tolerate it” is not about her, it is about him, and wrt this stuff about the bylines and changing the story it’s like — “I can assert my authority by leaving the story, which will change the ending, but by doing that I will not be in the story any more. And I would rather be in the story, and perhaps have that potential power at my fingertips, than exercise that power and remove myself from the story because then I am nowhere and no-one.” Alexa play “Burn” from Hamilton and also there is an “excluded from this narrative” joke to be made here.
P: Yes! Okay so to continue from my comment above: the tension between being in the story, as a main character, and somehow paradoxically having agency, vs. being the writer of the story, being the person with the byline, but actually having no agency and being stuck “drawing hearts” where her name should be because she is no one when she is not in the story.
N: and lyrics on her arm on the Speak Now tour!
N: Also “dorothea” which is basically a rewriting of “‘tis the damn season” from the other perspective, like, being the person who is left and waiting for the person who has gone off and got famous and wanting them to come back. also “gold rush” feels similarly related even though it’s not so much about leaving as making the choice not to engage in the first place, but it’s also like wistfully looking back even though it is wistfully looking back on something unreal which never happened. (which, by the way, is called “disnarration” and she does it a lot on these two albums, maybe especially evermore! someone gave a paper about it at the conference and i have forgotten everything they said except the word itself :) )
N: also also, lbr she does not identify with dorothea she is once again cosplaying as dorothea and pretending that she cares as much about the interiority of the person left behind in this scenario as she does about the person doing the leaving, which she evidently does not bc “‘tis the damn season” is a much much better song, it’s like in “dorothea” she forgot how to play the victim
P: “it’s like in “dorothea” she forgot how to play the victim” @ the whole of reputation tbh, even though I know that was the whole Point, like, “I am now a cruel mean villain not a swoony white heroine, but jk because I get to be Both, because White Privilege!”
N: i think i meant to say this at the time but “illicit affairs” is an EXTREMELY unsexy song for that title & subject matter, like, it’s literally just a song about the anxiety and terribleness of having an affair and there is nothing erotically illicit about it at all. which i enjoy and also find Interesting TM as a kind of subversion but it’s so interesting that she’s now not pretending she’s a virgin who never drinks, she’s actively made sexy music on previous albums, and then she’s like “here’s a song about having an affair which is entirely about having an affair when you have an anxiety disorder and like him more than he likes you”
N: hilariously, since this conversation Sophie Turner has come out in an incredibly not-Taylor way and I just want to note that for the record
P: I fucking love this music video and this song is actually also very horny and violent and weird about being horny, which is very CRJ but is a completely different conversation for another time
P: cf. the “You Belong With Me” music video
N: im thinking a thought here about “The Moment I Knew” and how that’s maybe the only time w/in her oeuvre that it’s her event that someone else ruins?? A thought to continue thinking
N: also again like. i know it was a long time ago and so on but i’m sure she said that it was specifically about her grandfather at the battle of Guadalcanal and it’s like — not everyone shares the same understanding of American history that you do, Taylor! this story of some soldiers dying in the trenches is only sad if you support American soldiers! you have fans whose ancestors were civilians killed by those soldiers fighting over their land!
