{"id":93280,"date":"2024-06-04T12:22:30","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T16:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=93280"},"modified":"2024-11-13T16:16:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T21:16:04","slug":"opinion-elizabeth-vlossak-discusses-taylor-swifts-use-of-history-in-her-songwriting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2024\/06\/opinion-elizabeth-vlossak-discusses-taylor-swifts-use-of-history-in-her-songwriting\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Elizabeth Vlossak discusses Taylor Swift&#8217;s use of history in her songwriting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This article written by Elizabeth Vlossak, Associate Professor of History at Brock University, originally appeared in <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/taylor-swift-is-ready-for-her-history-to-be-rewritten-229434\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Taylor Swift is\u00a0famous for writing her life\u00a0(and, most notoriously, her ex-boyfriends) into her music.<\/p>\n<p>But she is also fascinated by history, and regularly incorporates historic figures, places and events into her songs.\u00a0An avid reader since early childhood, Swift has long drawn inspiration from women of the past (both real and fictional) who challenged social conventions and were punished for not conforming to traditional gender roles.<\/p>\n<p>In her\u00a0most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department,\u00a0Swift positions herself in a long history of women who upset patriarchal norms \u2014 women accused of \u201cbehaving badly\u201d \u2014 while also revealing the importance of\u00a0revisiting our understanding of the past\u00a0based on shifting evidence.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Exploring fictional and family stories<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the albums\u00a0folklore\u00a0and evermore\u00a0(both released in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic), Swift moved away from purely autobiographical storytelling to exploring other people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to creating a cast of fictional characters, she also delved into her family history, with moving songs about her paternal grandfather who fought in\u00a0the Battle of Guadalcanal during the Second World War (\u201cEpiphany\u201d) and her maternal grandmother (\u201cMarjorie\u201d),\u00a0whose career as an opera singer was limited by marital and maternal responsibilities.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flexvideo\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Taylor Swift - marjorie (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hP6QpMeSG6s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>\u2018Last Great American Dynasty\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s \u201cThe Last Great American Dynasty\u201d on folklore that marked a major shift in Swift\u2019s songwriting. Swift recounts the life of Rebekah Harkness (1915-1982), the American composer and philanthropist who married the heir to the Standard Oil fortune and scandalized her wealthy neighbours with her eccentric behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>In a surprising twist, Swift reveals that she now owns the Rhode Island saltbox house where Harkness threw her wild parties, and Swift is now the crazy woman upsetting the neighbours. Swift not only reflects on how she continues to be perceived by society and portrayed in the media, but also questions the extent to which attitudes toward women who are \u201cdifferent\u201d have actually changed since the 1950s.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018The Bolter\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Similarly, Swift appears to be alluding to how her own dating history has been recounted and scrutinized by the media.\u00a0Some commentators think\u00a0Swift explores the life of\u00a0Lady Idina Sackville\u00a0(1893-1955), the English aristocrat who scandalized upper-class society for marrying five times. Because she left her husbands so frequently and suddenly, Sackville was nicknamed \u201cthe Bolter,\u201d (also the title of Swift\u2019s track on\u00a0Tortured Poets).<\/p>\n<p>Sackville was also the inspiration for English novelist\u00a0Nancy Mitford\u2019s character the Bolter,\u00a0also the name\u00a0of\u00a0a book by Sackville\u2019s great-granddaughter\u00a0Frances Osborne about Sackville\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flexvideo\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Taylor Swift - The Bolter (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bAi80EylyXQ?start=1&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Swift\u2019s track could be heard to imagine Sackville\u2019s perspective, allowing her to explain what attracted her to these men but why she eventually sought to escape them, regardless of the social cost of taking back her freedom. It\u2019s not clear if Swift is writing about Sackville or if she is writing about herself. Either way, we are asked again to question how much has changed for women.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Madness, misogyny, female rage<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The themes of madness, misogyny, fame and\u00a0female rage\u00a0are at the heart of\u00a0Tortured Poets, and Swift frequently invokes women of the past as a poetic device to add meaning and nuance to her stories.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to likening herself to a witch, Eve and the Trojan priestess Cassandra, she references American poet and musician\u00a0Patti Smith, rock legend\u00a0Stevie Nicks\u00a0and the hugely successful 1920s silent film actress\u00a0Clara Bow, who abandoned stardom in 1933 at age 28 after being treated terribly by Hollywood.<\/p>\n<p>Swift places herself within this pantheon of 20th-century American women artists who, in their different ways, fought against the sexism of the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n<p>Swift is keenly aware that she is herself both active making history and a product of a particular moment in time, living in a world shaped by the events and people that came before her. While she has agency \u2014 she actually wields far more power than most \u2014 she operates within systems that continue to limit and affect her choices.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flexvideo\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RQMz4JDbtmI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Re-interpreting past relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At this year\u2019s Grammy Awards, when Swift\u00a0announced she had recorded a new album,\u00a0fans assumed it would focus on the end of her relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, her boyfriend of six years with whom she had broken up shortly after the start of her Eras Tour in the spring of 2023.<\/p>\n<p>But fans are now convinced that much of what turned out to be\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department\u00a0surprise double album\u00a0is about her on-again-off-again \u201csituationship\u201d with Matty Healy, the\u00a0controversial frontman of the English band The 1975\u00a0who was\u00a0reviled by many Swifties. Fans have gone back to Swift\u2019s previous albums to reinterpret them through the lens of this revelation.<\/p>\n<p>Were the songs that had once been assumed to be about Alwyn, including those on her 2017 album\u00a0reputation, actually about Healy? Were the fictional characters in\u00a0folklore\u00a0real after all?<\/p>\n<p>Swift\u2019s discography is her archive, each album a collection of files that she has chosen to declassify. These newly released files can help her fans fill in some of the gaps\u00a0on the Swiftian\u00a0timeline, and shed new light on what they already know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Swift\u2019s own shifting story<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, drawing renewed attention to her past work and\u00a0keeping her own versions of her\u00a0older albums streaming is a slick business move by Swift. But new information can also\u00a0challenge previous assumptions and interpretations, and be devastating to those who hold dear a particular image of their beloved Taylor.<\/p>\n<p>Swift seems to understand that history isn\u2019t supposed to be comfortable. Just as she has reinterpreted the stories of Rebekah Harkness, Lady Idina and Clara Bow, she knows all too well that the way her story has and will be told will change over time. And she is ready for it.<\/p>\n<p><em>EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE: Photo credit: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Taylor_Swift_Eras_Tour_TTPD_Set_Fortnight.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Taylor Swift Eras Tour TTPD Set Fortnight<\/a>&#8221; by <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?title=User:Vixy13&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vixy13<\/a> is licensed under <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CC BY 4.0<\/a>\u00a0via Wikimedia Commons.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;\" src=\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/229434\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced\" alt=\"The Conversation\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elizabeth Vlossak, Associate Professor of History at Brock University, wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation about how Taylor Swift draws on history in her songwriting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93291,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37,6],"tags":[506,6521,384,13275,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93280"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97294,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93280\/revisions\/97294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}