Like many, I can’t assist evaluating Taylor Swift’s newest single, “The Destiny of Ophelia”, together with her 2008 hit, “Love Story”, which was the primary music of hers that I ever heard. It’s a pure comparability to make, on condition that each songs are re-tellings of Shakespearean tragedies. What’s fascinating to me, although, shouldn’t be solely Swift’s development as a songwriter since “Love Story”, but in addition how a lot has modified about the way in which that we take heed to music over the intervening 17 years.
Again in 2008, we barely had social media (I had Fb, however my mates and I primarily used it to share blurry picture dumps of our numerous escapades at college). I heard Love Story not as a result of it was trending by way of any algorithm or as a result of I’d seen an Instagram put up or tweet about it, however as a result of my finest buddy was listening to it on repeat and cajoled me into dancing and singing alongside together with her whereas making ready for events, clutching hairbrushes like tongue-in-cheek clichés of teenage girlhood.
Throughout my first listen-through of Swift’s newest album, The Lifetime of a Showgirl, my mind was instantly busy selecting up threads of lyrics that she’s written and tales that she’s informed over time. Whilst I teased out which means from the lyrics and danced to the catchy tunes, although, I used to be already hyper conscious of how the album could be obtained by the remainder of the world in a approach that I don’t assume I used to be a decade or perhaps even just some years in the past. I instantly discovered myself scrolling countless articles and response movies dissecting the lyrics, album artwork, advertising and marketing, and Swift’s private life from each conceivable angle. It made me surprise if I used to be listening to Swift’s music by means of the lens of different individuals’s reactions now, quite than from my very own intestine.
Sure, listening to what different individuals consider one thing is essential; these cultural conversations are fascinating and might definitely be enjoyable. I used to be wanting to seize my cellphone and message that exact same finest buddy who first launched me to Taylor Swift and listen to her response to the brand new album. However I can’t assist considering that seeing 1000’s of strangers’ takes in such fast succession isn’t how we’re meant to obtain or interact with artwork.
After which there’s the truth that Taylor Swift fandom tends to be very all-or-nothing—in keeping with the narrative you’re both a Swiftie or a hater—and this sense has solely elevated with time and the rise of social media, reaching a fever pitch with this newest album launch. As Substack author @asoflatebymartina put it, “Your ideas about music will be scrambled and messy, and two issues will be true without delay.”
I believe that Swift herself has inspired the quite black-and-white nature of the way in which individuals interact together with her work, given how masterfully she navigates social media and all the advertising and marketing and enterprise round promoting her music. She constructed a really loyal fandom, and her dedication to sustaining management over her repute and legacy is such part of her music that her diss tracks and efforts to have full possession over all of her work are legendary. Whereas in some ways a few of that is admirable, I believe there’s additionally a darkish aspect to it which is a component and parcel of the way in which that social media is altering our expertise of artwork and leisure.
Algorithms are designed to seize our consideration and enhance our engagement on-line, and to promote us one thing, whether or not that’s a product or a life-style and concepts. If we’re not cautious we’re held captive and pushed additional and additional into echo chambers and on-line niches, because the algorithm feeds us extra of the sort of content material and subjects we’ve already engaged with.
The French thinker René Girard talked concerning the risks of mimetic want, the phenomenon of wanting issues not since you really need them however as a result of these round you want (or have) these issues. I don’t assume it’s excessive to recommend that the entire motive algorithms work is all the way down to mimetic want. Movie star and a fascination with public figures is definitely as historic as human nature, however social media has discovered a strategy to endlessly feed that urge for food in unhealthy methods.
Experiencing Swift’s Eras Tour in London final summer time jogged my memory of my behavior of choosing the songs that I like or that talk to me, placing them on a playlist, and forgetting that the remainder of her songs even exist. There have been many songs which I knew all of the phrases to but in addition many who I didn’t, whereas it appeared like everybody round me knew each single line. I used to be reminded that the eras of her music that I don’t like a lot, that don’t maintain the identical emotional resonance for me, are another person’s favourite. Fame is my least favourite album, however then I do know somebody whose life was turned the wrong way up by betrayal who finds deep resonance with that Swift period. One other buddy, whose companion left her after dangling the potential for marriage on and off for a few years, relates deeply to The Tortured Poets Division.
After I take into consideration the artists behind the work which means essentially the most to me, from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf’s writing to Joni Mitchell’s music, I by no means love an artist’s complete physique of labor, and infrequently agree wholeheartedly with their life philosophy or need to emulate their life. A part of the work of being alive and engaged with tradition and artwork is being discerning, in search of goodness, magnificence, and reality all over the place you look, and discovering out what different individuals see in artwork that you just don’t get pleasure from or discover invaluable within the hopes of getting your perspective widened (even for those who don’t agree with them).
It’s additionally fascinating to consider how we come to know and respect the artwork that we love. I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell as a result of my mum beloved her, and as I developed my very own style in music her work turned the soundtrack to my teen years and early twenties. I believe it was my older sister who first gave me a duplicate of I Seize the Fortress, a e-book that in a short time turned so beloved by my closest mates that quotes and references to it turned weaved into our lexicon just like the language of a secret society. In distinction, after I take into consideration how I come throughout new artists as of late, it’s largely by way of an algorithm like Spotify’s advised listening, or the discover web page on social media. It’s unhappy to assume that algorithms at the moment are turning into a key a part of the way in which that we uncover and devour artwork, even when it may be useful at occasions.
So, what’s the antidote to the algorithm-icization of the way in which we interact with artwork in our present period? Maybe simply being aware of the issue and making an effort to rehumanize our consumption of artwork is a begin. Making an effort to speak to mates about what they’re listening to and are watching in the intervening time. Going to the cinema in particular person with mates once more. Sending somebody a postcard of a portray you really liked from an artwork exhibition you visited, or a quote from a e-book that you just’re studying that made you consider them. Asking somebody why they love what they love, and teasing out what it’s concerning the artwork that speaks to them specifically, even for those who don’t share that love. My husband isn’t significantly eager on Joni Mitchell or Taylor Swift, however I really feel beloved and seen when he asks me what I see of their artwork and actually listens to my reply. He loves the way in which I like them, even when he doesn’t share that love, and that’s sufficient for me.
We additionally have to be intentional about the way in which that we develop our style; I believe that is one thing my dad and mom have been superb at after I was younger, as they selected what they thought-about the perfect of all totally different sorts of music and literature and artwork to reveal me to, and talked to me about it, in order that as I grew up I used to be in a position to gravitate towards artwork that felt significant and have some ingredient of timelessness, quite than being pushed by what everybody else round me preferred. David Foster Wallace talked concerning the significance of selecting what to concentrate to in his 2005 graduation tackle at Kenyon Faculty when he stated: “Studying easy methods to assume actually means studying easy methods to train some management over how and what you assume. It means being aware and conscious sufficient to decide on what you take note of and to decide on the way you assemble which means from expertise. As a result of for those who can’t train this sort of alternative in grownup life, you can be completely hosed.”
We are able to prepare our consideration on this approach by curating our personal playlists, and maintaining journals or scrapbooks the place we notice down our favourite lyrics, traces from poetry, and different quotations that encourage or communicate to us. Charlotte Mason referred to as this maintaining a “commonplace e-book”—typically I additionally consider it as a cultural almanac—and it’s a good way to assume extra deeply about what you’re studying and listening to, and tease out the deeper which means of what strikes you as stunning and true within the artwork that you just’re participating with.
After I take a look at my very own curated playlist of Taylor Swift’s music, what emerges is a fancy and nuanced story of the fun, sorrows, challenges, and pitfalls of recent womanhood. The factor that initially drew me to Swift was her wholehearted, unashamed eagerness for all times and love, her sincerity, and her highly effective storytelling. Her music articulates some common feminine experiences in such intelligent methods, and even the songs of hers that I dislike, I typically dislike as a result of they remind me of elements of myself and different girls that I don’t like—mates who harm me who I want I might neglect about, previous wounded satisfaction and sensitivities, dangerous habits or tendencies I’d quite not admit to. That is what I take away from my favourite Swift songs.
It’s okay in case your response to artwork is messy, advanced, even seemingly contradictory. We’re all works in progress. Isn’t this a part of what it means to be human, and to have human responses to artwork? Within the age of AI, we have to maintain onto our humanity in all its complexity greater than ever.
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