God, what will it take to make Taylor Swift stop bitching about guys who broke up with her? Why is it such a crime??
Can anyone think of another female vocalist who complained so much about being dumped?
If you happened to see her perform on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, you are probably wondering how you can get those ten minutes back. A tedious new version of some song that her fans loved back in the day when it was only 5 minutes long, it was the stupidest thing ever. My husband and I both laughed and groaned throughout, wondering why there was a video of a couple mooning around in the background. Didn’t she think she could hold our attention with her big chunky white veneers and hair-flipping?
Anyway, if you didn’t see it, the new song is about her break-up with Jake Gyllenhaal, when she was 21 and he was 30. Apparently, the 9 year age difference is one of his felonies, like keeping her scarf. 21 and 30 sounds pretty normal to me. Do couples have to be within a couple of years in age these days? Is anything else exploitation or a power imbalance? Poor Jake really takes a beating, because he dared to get tired of her. But victimhood is her brand. First it was Jon Mayer, boo hoo, then a million other bad, mean boyfriends.
I admit that I don’t know why she’s a star. She seems like such an awful person, obsessed with making money and shifting genres to suit the times. I also admit to a visceral dislike of her physical self. She looks like a rodent and her hunchback or scoliosis is disturbing.
I further admit that she’s been annoying me for years and years. Here’s something I don’t even remember writing!
But it’s so nuts to read a fawning appreciating of her in the New York Times, which I thought was a refuge for normal adults.
“All Too Well” parallels the emotional work that many women have been privately undertaking in the wake of the #MeToo movement: Looking back on past encounters or relationships that left them with a seemingly outsize feeling of unease; wondering what exactly constitutes exploitation or emotional abuse; wishing they could go back and extend some compassion or wisdom to their vulnerable younger selves.
Haha, whatever. If this break-up song is a masterpiece, what is Back to Black?? To paraphrase Etta James, I’d rather go blind than see Taylor Swift perform again.
I wish I had something incisive to say about her as an “artist” or phenomenon, but I’ve always been at a loss, urging millennial friends to explain her appeal. But they always hate her too, because none of my friends are idiots, I guess.
What if all her mean boyfriends got together and wrote a song about dating her?? Why can’t we have that? All the guys would get cancelled for their toxic masculinity, sure, but why can’t they sacrifice themselves for the greater good?
If you can explain Taylor’s success, please, I would love to know! Mean while, enjoy Amy and Etta, who know how to take a romantic punch.
*Scarf exegesis here.
Amy was a talent the world wont ever see again. Its such a shame she died, consumed by a variety of addictions and issues. I read the book her friend Tyler wrote. Saddest thing ever.
Kellie – Yep, my heart still hurts from losing her.
Amy knew pain. Suffering made her writing great, her word’s sincere.
Taylor only knows the privilege of being Taylor. Take from that what you will.