Has Taylor Swift jumped the shark?

Switched on Pop

Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding analyze Taylor Swift's four new tracks from 'Life of a Showgirl: The Encore,' addressing online criticism that she has

Key takeaways

• Charlie Harding identifies the violin in 'Patient Zero' as creating a creepy, foreboding atmosphere appropriate for its metaphor of shared immunity with a toxic ex.
• Nate Sloan notes that 'Cleveland!' uses a 1950s rock and roll double-time feel and cinematic vibes to celebrate Swift's marriage to Travis Kelce.

Main topics

• Taylor Swift's 'Life of a Showgirl: The Encore' release
• Songwriting critique and musical analysis

Notable quotes

"It's polyphonic autofiction."

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while the new material may not satisfy all critics due to its

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Support for the show comes from Sonos. If you listen to the show, you know that good music doesn't just emerge out of thin air. There's a lot of design and thoughtfulness that goes into crafting a great song. Sonos brings that same level of thoughtful design to their sound system. For Sonos, it's not just about engineering one great speaker. It's about creating a holistic system that lets you control the sound from room to room and moment to moment and totally immerse yourself. It's a sound system engineered to make you feel. Visit Sonos.com and build your system. Sonos. Love the sound. Feel the system. Speaker 1 (0:42) The biggest pop star on the planet just released new music and the internet is in an uproar. Not happy. Taylor Swift has just dropped four new songs to follow up last year's release, Life of a Showgirl. It's called Life of a Showgirl, the encore. And it has people asking, has Taylor Swift jumped the shark? Has Taylor Swift lost the plot? Charlie, I'm asking, is Taylor Swift in her Ozymandias era? Ozymandias? Ozymandias. The Percy Bysshe Shelley poem from the 19th century, you know. Of course. Look on my works ye mighty and despair. We will answer all of the above and in the process, we're going to take you to songwriting school. Speaker 1 (1:33) Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And Speaker 2 (1:36) I'm songwriter Charlie Speaker 1 (1:37) Harding. Charlie, you'll recall that it was a year and three days ago that we were discussing the release of Life of a Showgirl. It was Taylor Swift's return to form, supposedly, her album full of the bangers that we had been missing thanks to co-production. from her longtime collaborators, Max Martin and Shellback. You know that I count my days as a music journalist in between Taylor Swift releases. Here we are. They come fast and furious these days, Charlie. Not a lot of downtime. And you'll, of course, remember how you described that release, right? Yes, but, you know, maybe some other people could use a refresher. Okay, well played, Charlie. Yes, I'll quote to you. It's polyphonic autofiction, you said. Speaker 2 (2:28) That's right. One of the things that Taylor does for us is that she makes us think that we know what's happening through all the clues, the Easter eggs that she leaves. We're trying to map out what song is about who. And yet she's also known for writing songs that are entirely fictional. And so she's interweaving reality and fiction and that we ought to perhaps be in a greater space of suspended disbelief when we're listening to a Taylor Swift song. Speaker 1 (2:56) Right. And your polyamorous auto erotic. Sorry, sorry. I mean, polyphonic autofiction. There we go. Was one of many reactions to this album, which was somewhat polarizing. I would I would think is a fair way to describe it. Now, a year later, we have four new songs. This is Life of a Showgirl Encore. These are tracks that Taylor created. as a sort of celebration of the success of Life of a Showgirl, which did indeed debut at number one and produced radio hits such as The Fate of Ophelia. She went back to Stockholm and she celebrated, I guess, the only way she knows how, which is by writing more songs with Max Martin and Shellback. Does it hurt that releasing four new songs might also bump awareness of Taylor Swift as we move into a crucial Grammy voting season? Perhaps. Sure. Yeah. She's nothing if not canny. But if the reaction to Life of a Showgirl was, let's say, polarized, I feel like the reaction to these four new songs has been a little more unanimously, ugh. Speaker 2 (4:15) Let's see, we're recording this, what, like four or five days after those songs were released. I have not listened to them. I was taking care of my nephew and niece over the weekend. I have been working diligently. And yet, I have seen the discourse everywhere. Like, I feel like I've been told that I'm not supposed to enjoy these songs. So I'm curious about how you might lead me through them to Speaker 1 (4:40) maybe listen with a fresh set of ears. Well, here's what I propose, Charlie, because you can find no shortage of hot takes on the internet from Reddit pages with titles like I'm a Swifty and even I don't like these new songs to Guardian reviewers who use profanity in their description of these songs, which is not something I think I've encountered in the pages of that August British publication before. But that's not what we want to do here on Switched on Pop. And I'm so glad you haven't listened to these songs. You haven't been poisoned by the internet discourse and you haven't had time to develop your own reaction. So we can listen to these songs with your fresh ears and we can answer a question that I think is more interesting ultimately than whether these songs are good or bad. We can approach these songs maybe like you. would approach one of your songwriting classes, Charlie? I Speaker 2 (5:43) mean, it makes me think about, you know, every week I get like a couple dozen songs that I need to listen to quickly and provide feedback on. Perhaps we could use the methods that I Speaker 1 (5:57) do in my graduate classes. What would you say, Charlie, if a student came into your class, hit play on their latest recording, and you heard this? Speaker 3 (6:30) I actually think Speaker 2 (6:32) this is a really compelling introduction. The bowing on that violin is very loose. It feels almost, you know, a little bit amateurish. Like, you're not pressing the bow hard enough. It's creating that, like, screechy sound on the violin, making it feel creepy, eerie. It's sort of, there's something foreboding, which then is appropriate given the next set of piled-on metaphors about... disease and, you know, this unhealthy relationship. Patient Zero does make me kind of uncomfortably draw me back to the area of the pandemic. And I'm like, yeah, Taylor Swift, are you the Patient Zero? What happened here? We have really strong hook writing. The melody is strong. The rhythm is exactly the same across each line or like close enough that it's very memorable. Speaker 1 (7:22) This song is Patient Zero. It's the first of the four as part of this encore release. And yeah, I think you're onto something, Charlie. Patient Zero, it may make you think of the dark days of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, but here it's a metaphor for surviving a toxic ex and trying to share your immunity, so to speak, with... his current victim. This is a love lab leak, if you will. A love lab leak. Yes, let's go with that. All right. And I also want to say something before we get too far here, which is Taylor Swift doesn't need a songwriting lesson. No, definitely not. From us or anyone else. We have huge respect for her and we've learned a lot from her about songwriting. Yeah, I wrote a whole article, an academic journal article in Contemporary Music Review called Taylor Swift and the Work of Songwriting. I more want to take these pieces and hear how you would listen as someone giving a songwriting critique. And maybe by the end of this process, we'll have a better understanding of why people are having the reactions they're having to these tracks. Well, Speaker 2 (8:41) I feel like the first thing that I do when I'm listening to songs in the classroom is I'm always just... trying to first understand what is the song trying to do? Because then once I have a feeling of like, I know what the song is trying to say, what the concept is, I feel like I'm better equipped to then give feedback. And that feedback for me is always, what are the pluses? What's working well to communicate that idea? And then what are the deltas? What are the things that need to change in order to communicate that main idea better? Yeah. So maybe we can listen a little further because I feel like I have an idea of the concept, this patient zero, this shared immunity between Speaker 1 (9:17) the shared partners of a lover, something like that. Let's keep listening. And we're actually going to move into the verse because patient zero, like a lot of songs in the 2020s, begins with a chorus. And now let's kind of settle into verse one. Speaker 3 (9:40) No, it's not a bad time at all Speaker 3 (9:45) Somebody's saying there's trouble in Paris Speaker 3 (9:50) And my lips are sealed tight now It's not Speaker 1 (9:58) I've got to be honest, I've been expecting your call. No, it's not a bad time at all. So this is in the long tradition of songs that are giving us one end of a phone call. You Speaker 2 (10:10) know, right off the bat, though, there is something that I'm hearing that tugs at my ear, which is when the emphasis is on the wrong syllable. And I feel like I heard I've been expecting your call rather than I've been expecting your call. Am I right? Speaker 3 (10:26) I gotta be honest, I've been expecting your call Speaker 2 (10:31) The next bag, take your car. It's, I mean, I guess it creates a sense of suspension, but it's an unusual way of saying expecting. I also felt like the way that she sings Trouble in Paradise, it feels a little bit like maybe some of the Swedish influence of like writing the rhythms and the melody first are taking precedent over. Getting the natural flow of speech? Speaker 1 (11:03) That pause between para and dice. Yeah. I mean, I guess the generous interpretation is that signals a kind of trouble Speaker 2 (11:12) that the word itself has been splintered in this way. She then pairs it with a nice rhyme. My lips are sealed tight. This sort of slant rhyme, para dice sealed tight. We don't quite expect it. And then she gives us a now. And so that now does a lot to propel us further into the pre-chorus. Speaker 3 (11:35) And my lips are sealed tight now It's Speaker 3 (11:47) So Speaker 1 (11:47) we have the slant rhyme between paradise and tight. And then that extra word that doesn't rhyme now you're saying kind of carries us into this new section of the pre-chorus. Yeah, I like that. Speaker 2 (11:59) I mean, Speaker 1 (11:59) the Speaker 2 (11:59) melody Speaker 1 (12:00) is catchy here. I think I need to know more. Let's keep listening. Speaker 3 (12:10) What to do Speaker 2 (12:26) This is one of these things where it's like you've got you've got a shoulder to