The pop superstar who embraced her madwoman
Note: This is a translation of the article I wrote in Spanish for the online maganize "Damiselas en apuros" when Taylor Swift brought The Eras Tour to Argentina (http://www.damiselasenapuros.com.ar/2023/10/la-superestrella-pop-que-abrazo-su.html). It's mostly a Google translation, but I tried to make some corrections.
This is for my wonderful friend Anna, and my lovely fellow swifties. I hope you enjoy it <3
A multi-faceted artist and determined entrepreneur, Taylor Swift is coming to Argentina for the first time, during her world tour The Eras Tour. An extraordinary lyricist, tireless and detail-oriented worker, Swift is much, much more than the current pop superstar. So young and already with more than 15 years of a constantly evolving career, which she is managing at her own risk in all areas.
Who's Taylor Swift anyway? Ew!
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Pennsylvania. This basic Google search is not just trivia: TAS (her initials) is the company that handles her copyright and legal issues; 13 is her lucky number and the one she drew on her hand at one point in her career; and 1989 was the album that marked her transition from country to pop, her first massive worldwide hit. It is also her next re-recording that she is going to release on October 27.
To say that Taylor Swift is a pop singer (or country and pop singer), or a skilled songwriter, or a histrionic performer, or a hit factory that generates fervent support... would be the same as sticking with the polaroid from last night's party. These labels don't even begin to scratch the surface of every thing there is to say about the current blonde ambition. Because it's not an easy task to cover all the aspects of a person with more than 15 years of career (not only musical, but also as a director, actress and producer), who since the enormous success of her second album ( Fearless , 2008) had ups and downs in an excessively public life (largely due to paparazzi, certain media outlets hunting for clickbait and the opinion makers of the moment) and in her own risky musical, sonic and, above all, lyrical search.
Several of the many aspects of this boundless artist can be found in Miss Americana (Lana Wilson, 2020), the documentary that traces part of our girl's journey, from her beginnings to the way she became one of the most hated people in the United States, and how she knew how to reinvent herself and get out of that trance. This film, available on Netflix, tells us about her fears as a pop music woman about to turn 30 (a death sentence in that industry), her own problems with her image at a stage in her career, and the moment in which she begins to make certain personal and political decisions. For example, the lawsuit she files as a victim of sexual harassment or her support for Democrats in the state of Tennessee, after having remained silent on political issues until that point in her career.
The film, which also includes archival footage from Swift's life, was shot between 2018 and 2019, a key moment in her empowerment, as it was the time when she left her first record label, Big Machine Records. This change took place because, at the expiration date of her contract with the label, Swift requested that her masters (the original recordings of her albums) be sold to her, but Big Machine responded that they would only do so if she renewed her contract.
The parties failed to come to an agreement, and Swift signed with Republic Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music. Behind Taylor's desire to own her art is evidently a yearning to reclaim her voice, in every sense. That's why she makes the documentary, and begins to speak more clearly in interviews about her opinions, her political stance, her feminism. And naturally, she makes sure that her new contract with Republic Records establishes that she automatically owns the masters of the albums she releases with this label.
There is no madness more furious than that of a madwoman
Because Taylor Swift is the primary writer of all her songs, American law allows her to re-record her music as many times as she wants, with any label she wants, without having any copyright problems with Big Machine Records. Thus, after this label not only did not allow her to buy her masters, but also sold them to a businessman with whom she had had several problems in the past (Scooter Braun), Swift decided to make use of her rights as a composer and put her fury to work re-recording the six albums she had published with Big Machine (Taylor Swift -her debut album-, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation). Not without first, it is worth noting, publishing a letter on her social networks explaining to fans -and whoever wanted to find out- the details of her situation.
Specialized journalists, record label executives and many Twitter (now X) trolls agreed that Taylor Swift's idea was crazy. They wondered who was going to buy records they already had; they argued that it was an absurd expense to rerecord them, even more so considering that Swift had said she was going to try to make them as similar to the originals as possible. It was established that both versions would lose value, that the singer was nothing more than the archetype of the dumb blonde and she was proving it with her attitude of a spoiled child.
As Taylor says in mad woman (a song from the album folklore ), "nobody likes a madwoman ." The expression is perfect: "Mad" in English means both angry, furious, and crazy, insane. In the classic interpretation of 18th and 19th century English and North American women's literature, The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar focus part of their analysis on the character of the madwoman, a woman who is crazy of rage, furious out of her insanity. A character who appears in texts written by 19th century narrators and poets to give voice to their own anger at the situation in which women artists (and women in general) found themselves, victims of a patriarchal society that was making them sick, both physically and mentally (this is, of course, only a small part of the complex and extensive work of the authors).
The madwoman in the recording studio
Swift boldly embraced her own madwoman, hugged her tightly, and got into the recording studio. She first released two surprise albums in the midst of the pandemic (folklore and evermore), where she once again changed her style: a calm indie style, with crafted and meaningful lyrics and some sounds that puzzled casual listeners of her previous music. This sonic shift brought her to a new audience, and the time of confinement allowed for more attention to be paid to the lyrics.
The albums were a huge success, and they received well-deserved recognition from the press, from her peers, from people who had never heard her before. And, of course, from her loyal fans, the Swifties, who support her in everything.
It is precisely on folklore, the first of these releases, that Taylor includes the aforementioned mad woman, a song in which she speaks of the maddened fury she feels over the situation of the masters of her first six albums, certain mismanagement by the previous record company and the new owner, Braun. She also refers to the opinions of third parties who want to minimize her problem and basically -as expected- brand her as hysterical, a diagnosis famously applied to women, before and after Freud.
In a low, soft, but emotionally charged voice, Swift says, "Every time you call me crazy / I get more crazy / What about that? / And when you say I seem angry, I get more angry / And there's nothing like a mad woman / What a shame she went mad / No one likes a mad woman / You made her like that . "
The song is terribly personal, and therefore, completely universal. It ranges from the character of Bertha Rochester (Jane Eyre , by Charlotte Brontë) to las locas de la plaza (the madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, who had their sons and daughters abducted and disappeared by the military dictatorship of the 70s); from the "you are hysterical" to the crazy ex girlfriend to "the witch of my wife" or Bridget Bishop or Sangweni Jostina. Because, as Gilbert and Gubar analyze, there are certain universal archetypes that haunt the feminine (be it cis women, trans women, queer people with feminine or feminized traits or attitudes): the crazy woman, the emotionally unstable woman, the witch, the she-devil. Therefore, it is inevitable to recognize oneself in Swift's words, in the anger that can be provoked when a woman demands something fair and is answered with a tone of false innocence "are you on your period?"
The resounding success of folklore and evermore also generated a review of her previous discography. Both new listeners and certain members of the critics and other intellectual spheres began to review previous albums and notice that, indeed, Taylor Swift's lyrics had always been good. Some more complex and others simpler; some more poetic and others more prosaic; some that seem to come from an 18th century book and others that are enormous pop anthems. Not only were there interesting journalistic articles about this artist's lyrics (like a remarkable one Washington Post Essay, which proposes reading his songs as art, and not as the intimate diary of a public personality), but even several universities (Stanford, Arizona State, Breklee College of Music in Boston, and the list goes on) have created courses that analyze his lyrics and composition.
So much so that the Nashville Songwriter Association International awarded her the prestigious Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award for the period 2011-2019. In her acceptance speech, Swift herself categorized her writing into three groups: "songs written with a glitter pen," "written with a fountain pen," and "written with a quill and inkwell." It's not hard to spot which songs fall into each group.
This rethinking was accompanied by the release of two key re-recordings: Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Red (Taylor's Version) . The first,
Fearless (Taylor's Version) , released in April 2021, was, in a way, a test: her second album had been her first big hit, praised by critics and the public, with multiple awards (it is the most acclaimed album in the history of country music), with well-known and super catchy songs; in other words, to play it safe and see what happened. She knew she had her devoted fans on her side.
And it turned out well, of course it did. For several reasons: the constantly changing public; the younger ones who had little notion of the anti-Taylor campaigns that had taken place in past times; the possibility of immediately reaching any place in the world via streaming devices; above all, the change in discourse and in post-Me Too thoughts brought a new look at her post-folklore and evermore lyrics...
Fearless (TV) -"TV" means "Taylor's Version"- showed that the artist's project was not madness or a folie à deux between Swift and the swifties: if Taylor wanted to launch into the titanic effort that involved re-recording her discography originally released under Big Machine, there was an audience willing to join that fight, and to take those versions as the only ones that had to be heard. So much so that several American radio stations decided that as the Taylor 's Versions were released, those would be the only versions of the songs that would be played.
The impact of the reception of the re-recordings not only involved Swift's commercial success and superstardom, or the review of each re-recorded album she put out (there were even cases where journalists retracted previous reviews, admitting they were wrong), but also interesting conversations about how artists often end up not owning their art, how unfair record contracts are, the manipulations of the powerful in the industry. And there were even cases of some artists who, finding themselves in a similar situation to the singer-songwriter's, followed in her footsteps and re-recorded their discography (for example, Bryan Adams).
All the eras, one era (the Eras Tour)
The re-recordings also gave Swift the idea behind her current tour: the “Eras Tour” takes its name from the singer’s various “eras,” each corresponding to a separate album. Since 2019, when she had to cancel her Lover tour due to the pandemic, Taylor has released six albums: the new albums folklore , evermore (both in 2020) and Midnights (2022) and the re-recordings Fearless TV (2021), Red TV (2021) and Speak Now TV (2023); and her first major pop hit, 1989 Taylor’s Version, is soon to be released .
So, with the excuse of the Taylor's Versions, and because she hadn't toured since the release of Reputation (2017), Swift put together a colossal show that spans her entire career (ergo, the tour of the eras). This concert is titanic from any angle: the show lasts more than three hours with around 45 songs, the stage is the largest the singer has ever used, the list of cities she is going to visit is the most extensive, as it includes places she had never been to before, such as Buenos Aires.
The show, at least in the version that toured the United States and Mexico (it's always possible that Swift will make changes, especially as she releases re-recordings), has a structure in which each album has its moment to shine. But before the blonde superstar comes on stage, there's a clock on the screen that counts down the time left until the show, while the feminist anthem of the sixties You Don't Own Me plays, and the words sung by Leslie Gore are reinterpreted in relation to the situation of Swift's masters and art.
The show, which was filmed in Los Angeles and will be showcased in cinemas everywhere starting October 13, opens with a few songs from the Lover album , as if Taylor wanted to pick up where she left off and give fans a taste of what the cancelled LoverFest would have been like. Then each of the albums takes its place, not chronologically, but alternating the later ones with the earlier ones, to allow for moments of greater energy, dancing and pop, as well as moments of rest and drama. Finally, after two surprise songs that change with each show (one on acoustic guitar and one on piano), they close with seven songs from Midnights, her latest "new" album.
Each era has its own style, choreography, costumes, energy, lighting and projections on the screen, and in each one there is something interesting to rescue. More obvious things, like when in Fearless (TV), Swift puts on an outfit clearly inspired by that period of her career and covers her way of dancing from when she was 19 and her classic gesture of making a heart with her hands or when she remakes the shirt she used in the video for 22 to sing the song more than ten years later. More subtle details, like including a couple of two men among the lovers who dance to the tune of Lover or including a bit of ballroom voguing in Bejeweled (a moment that has become one of the show's favorites).
Among so many winks, references, inside jokes and direct messages, the singer chose to include in the set of evermore the song Marjorie , which she wrote about her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, an opera singer and performer who was one of her greatest influences. In its lyrics, Taylor remembers her grandmother's advice, regrets the things she couldn't ask her, and describes how she always feels her present, beyond her absence. The song ends with a sample of Finlay's voice singing opera, and this allows Swift to share the enormous stage of her tour with her grandmother, and to have a moment in which Marjorie can accompany her once again.
(People, thank you so much for reading, I hope you liked it!)
