Blank Space by Taylor Swift — real world music theory

Album “1989” by Taylor Swift including the track “Blank Space”

Today I will analyze the song „Blank Space“ by Tylor Swift in terms of music theory and its harmonic content. The idea is to bring the dry topic of music theory to the real world and help you understand why songs like „Blank Space“ work and sound like they do. So let’s get started…

By the way: If you’d rather watch & listen, play the video from my YouTube channel (when I say “minor parallel” I mean the German meaning, which would correctly be “relative minor” in English):

Overall

“Blank Space” has a blatantly standard pop song structure

The song was written by the Swedish team Max Martin and Shellback together with Taylor Swift. It is in the key of F major throughout and follows a very traditional pop song form. Everything is based on multiples of 8 bars — no experiments here. The chords change consistently every two measures and thus the harmonic rhythm of the song always stays the same. Taylor Swift is making fun of her own…