Extremist Swifties Are Anti-Artistic
All it takes is a few swipes on Tiktok or a scroll down #RedTaylorsVersion on Twitter to see the fireball of emotions that Taylor Swift ignited when she released a new version of her album Red, including re-recorded versions of the original lineup and various “From The Vault” tracks that had never been released. Anyone who hasn’t checked out the album should; Taylor Swift is a really good songwriter, and the album proves how her skills have matured as she has gotten older (my favorite song on the album is “Nothing New” ft. Phoebe Bridgers, which is about the way the music industry and pop culture treat female artists as they age). The track on the album that was most anticipated by Swifties is “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault),” which, as the name suggests, is a 10-minute version of her song “All Too Well,” which was originally about 5 minutes long.
“All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” packs a punch. It describes the feeling of processing memories about a relationship after a difficult breakup. Here is a selection:
As people within and outside of the Taylor Swift fandom heard this verse, they quickly came to an unshakeable conclusion: that Swift wrote “All Too Well” about her brief relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. The first two lines in the verse, specifically, are taken as a call-out of Gyllenhaal for dating a 21-year-old when he was 30. As buzz about the verse spread across the internet, things turned sour for Gyllenhaal. “Fuck Jake Gyllenhaal” became a mantra, representing Swift’s perceived anger at Gyllenhaal but also something more: that there was a wrong that needed righting.
The lyrics in the 6th verse of “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” weren’t the only ones on the album to attract attention. The last lines of the 1st verse of “The Very First Night (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)” are as follows:
Certain Swifties noticed that the last line deviated from the rest of the verse’s rhyme scheme: “hotel” rhymes with “fell,” but “picture” does not rhyme with “miss you.” Incidentally, the phrase “miss her” does rhyme with “picture,” which, these particularly imaginative Swifties concluded, shows that the song was intended to be written about a woman, thus proving that Swift is queer. (“Gaylor” is the name of the theory about Swift’s queerness, and its proponents have latched onto various lyrics through the years.)
I will be writing another post soon about how much I despise the forced queerification of celebrities, including Swift. Aside from that, the song is written in the second person, so it would make no sense if Swift randomly switched to third person for one line and then switched back afterwards.
The point of this post is not to debate whether “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” is a take-down of Jake Gyllenhaal (definitely seems probable) or whether “The Very First Night (Taylor’s Version)” is undeniable proof that Swift is queer (almost certainly false). Those matters have been discussed at length already. And that is the point of this post.
Extremist Swifties have a tendency to pick apart Swift’s lyrics, outfits, and Instagram captions in attempts to build evidence for the narratives that they’ve constructed about her and about her life. If a song references an age gap, it must be about her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. If a song deviates from a rhyme scheme in a certain way, it must mean that she’s queer. If this, then that. With this mindset, the entire body of Swift’s work is nothing more than a collection of references to Swift’s own life. It’s a biography, but in musical form. What she experiences, she sings about: nothing more, nothing less. And to enjoy the art is to deduce the specific experiences that the art supposedly narrates.
Sorry Swifties: this is an anti-artistic way to engage with art.
Art is so much more than performance. By that, I mean that art is not just a fancy way to present things about oneself. It’s a form of expression: the performance is important, but so are the emotions behind the work and the artist’s skill. I am sure that many artists can comfortably use their own memories as inspirations for their craft, but if that is all they can do, then they might not be that great.
Swift herself is a good example of an artist that can do both. A lot of her music does seem somewhat biographical. But another portion of her music, like much of the album Folklore, involves fictional characters and plots that Swift devised (for example, “Betty,” which is my favorite song on that album). She is not telling her own story; she’s telling stories that she crafted, and she’s using her considerable skill to do so in an emotionally powerful and complex way. That’s the joy of artistic expression: you can express emotions as much as you can express the details of your past relationships or any other part of your biography.
By approaching Red (Taylor’s Version) as a jambalaya of clues that Swift left for her fans (almost 10 years ago, I might add), Extremist Swifties show how limited their view of art is: that it is purely biographical, and artists like Swift take no creative liberties in pursuit of their craft.
Extremist Swifties did not invent this mindset, nor are they the only people that engage in it. The popular YouTube channel CinemaSins is perhaps a bigger violator: it picks apart movies down to the frame and tallies the times where the plot doesn’t line up, characters do something logistically difficult, or the movie “gets something wrong” in any number of ways. It is a purely literalist way to watch a movie that allows no room for artistic license on the part of the filmmaker or the actors. But, while they’re not the only proponents of artistic literalism, Extremist Swifties provide the most recent and most obvious example of this ideology.
Swifties: try to find a way to enjoy Taylor Swift’s music without picking it apart and putting it back together. Maybe “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” is about Jake Gyllenhaal, and maybe it’s just a scorching repudiation of age-gap relationships. Maybe “The Very First Night (Taylor’s Version)” is a further hint that Swift is queer, and maybe it’s not (it’s not). The art is good regardless of what it represents and regardless of whether it’s biographical. Swift is a skilled artist, so let her be an artist: let her express rather than simply narrate.
