Archive for February 8th, 2010
Taylor Swift. No. Seriously.
Okay, sorry for having been away for a while. Had to stay up very late listening to novice policy debate. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to do that, I suggest you run away as fast as possible. Still very busy IRL, so this will be a shorter entry. Not 3000 words or whatever.
So, anyway, I’m going to spend a bit of time on “Love Story”, by Taylor Swift. Why “Love Story”? Because my neighbors yesterday were blaring it for several hours right next to their home-created hockey rink and I have not been able to get the song out of my head since then. As a result, I have not only learned all of the lyrics to the song, but have had ample time to attempt to understand the myriad references in the “US Billboard Top 40 Mainstream number-one single” of February 28, 2009. Don’t get me wrong; I actually like the song, I’m just going to mock it also. I don’t like having songs stuck in my head.
So it’s apparently somewhat about Romeo and Juliet. Apart from the “they don’t kill themselves at the end” and the “tragedy” parts, I think Taylor (yeah, I first typed “Ms. Swift” and then realized how wrong that felt, so it’s Taylor) nails it. The first few stanzas are a pretty clear indicator of the first few scenes of the play, particularly the party/ball where Romeo and Juliet, you know, first fall in love or whatever. There’s some clever references within those verses themselves (“So I sneak out to the garden to see you / We keep quiet ’cause we’re dead if they knew”), which, of course, allude to the famous “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” scenes (as one can tell, my Romeo and Juliet is a little weak on the edges. What can I say? Hamlet‘s my favorite Shakespeare play).
There’s also a clever little reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, in the next line: “‘Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter”, which I really appreciate; not only does it utterly capture Hester Prynne’s isolation, but it also captures the primary root cause of that isolation, which was her love. I’m not sure that the narrator is necessarily a woman constrained by Puritan society, but the use of the reference really adds to the depth of the narrator’s feelings (in my opinion).
Interestingly, for a pop song (yes, I know it’s technically country, but let’s get real here; Taylor Swift is as much pop as she is country), the change in tempo and vocal usage is accompanied by a change in mood in the song: “I got tired of waiting / Wondering if you were ever coming around / My faith in you is fading”. That’s the Romeo and Juliet we’re used to, as it’s darker and far less bright, and the next line (“When I met you on the outskirts of town”) is, I imagine, a reference to what Romeo and Juliet were intending to do when they left the town. Or something of the sort.
Could the song then function as an idyllic version of Romeo and Juliet, a Utopian hope for them to live happily ever after? Whenever one (correction: one with a heart) reads the story for the first time, one wants them together, to live away from the strife in their lives. Wouldn’t it be nice to see “He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring / And said, marry me Juliet / You’ll never have to be alone / I love you and that’s all I really know /I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress”. The dad thing is especially unrealistic. It’s almost as if Taylor wanted to preserve the love and beauty of Romeo and Juliet while glossing over the rest of it.
Maybe I’m just reading too much into it (y’think?!?). Maybe the chorus (“It’s a love story baby just say yes”) is really the intention of the song. Maybe we just need to pretend like we’re watching the play when we listen to the lyrics. Or maybe people just don’t listen to the lyrics of Taylor Swift songs.
What does Taylor say?
This is a song I wrote when I was dating a guy who wasn’t exactly the popular choice. His situation was a little complicated, but I didn’t care. I started this song with the line “This love is difficult, but it’s real.” When I wrote the ending to this song, I felt like it was the ending every girl wants to go with her love story. It’s the ending that I want. You want a guy who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, what anyone says. He just says, “Marry me, Juliet, I love you, and that’s all I really know.” It’s sort of told in a character kind of thing, where it’s Romeo and Juliet, and it’s not me saying that I’m getting married or anything…but I think it’s fun to write about it.
More thoughts after the jump.
