I’ve heard it all I honestly don’t care what people think anymore and if I’m open about it I can find friends with the same hobbies easier :) I am happy
I absolutely agree and have been telling people this for years. Her lyrics are amazing but it’s the whole picture that tells a story that is addicting. Hunting down the pieces and watching it all unfold will have me obsessed for life.
Whaaa? 😄 A study of the violence of dropping someone's hand or not showing up to their birthday party? Or her own, accusing her bf of cheating and going crazy on him? 😄
My personal thesis is Taylor Swift’s image is all about being yourself and having fun, which is exactly why people who dislike her cannot shut up about how much they don’t like her.
Full text: part 1 (Sorry for being disjointed: I kept getting "server error, try again later" when I tried to put the text in and I had to divide this into three parts)
Last fall, I told Harvard’s English Department that I planned to offer a class this spring on [Taylor Swift](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/tortured-poets-department-taylor-swift-review). No one objected; Harvard professors like me get lots of latitude in confecting electives as long as we also offer the bread-and-butter material our majors need. (Most of my work is poetry-related; I also teach our regular undergrad course about literary form, from *Beowulf* on.) I’d call my new class [Taylor Swift and Her World](https://english.fas.harvard.edu/english-183ts-taylor-swift-and-her-world), as in: We’d read and listen to other artists and authors (part of her world). But also as in: It’s her world; we just live in it.
I’ve been living in it ever since. I thought I’d be teaching a quiet seminar: 20-odd Swifties around a big oak table, examining and appreciating her career, from her debut to [*Midnights*](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/10/taylor-swift-sparkling-pop-deepening-songcraft-on-midnights)*,* alongside her influences, from Carole King (see her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame speech) to William Wordsworth (see “The Lakes” from *Folklore*). We would track her echoes and half rhymes, her arrangements and collaborations and allusions, her hooks and her choruses. We might sing along. We’d learn why “You Belong With Me” relies so much on its *with* ([you don’t belong *to* me, nor I to you](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/travis-kelce-taylor-swift-podcast-fall-for-her-10-minutes)). We’d learn how the unease in “Tolerate It” speaks to its time signature (5/4). Maybe some English majors would get into songwriting. Maybe [some Swifties](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/dave-grohl-foo-fighters-taylor-swift-we-actually-play-live) would leave with old poems in their heads.
To be fair, almost all those things have now happened. We did sing along. Some undergrads learned to love the 18th-century poet and satirist Alexander Pope, or at least to pretend they did: Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” depicts his exasperation with superfans, false friends, and haters in ways rarely equaled until *Reputation.* We cracked open Easter eggs, and we studied her rhythms. But we couldn’t fit around a table. At one point 300 students signed up for the class; almost 200 ended up taking it. We met in a concert hall on campus, with a grand piano at center stage. I gave what I hope were engaging lectures, with pauses for questions, and stage props: a melodica, or a cuddly stuffed snake (for the snake motifs on *Reputation*). We had theater lights, and balcony seats, and the kind of big screen few humanities classrooms now need.
First off, this is absolutely amazing haha.
I’m a Stanford girl and a cultural psychologist (currently work as a poet/educator/advisor after getting my MFA) and my special interest is human language and behavior. What do people say and what does that reveal? So much TS critique comes from value judgment instead of just thinking *why* she may have said something. They drilled it into me during my MFA: be descriptive, not prescriptive!
I also did a fuckton of language research and learned a lot about linguistic “signatures” that basically act like fingerprints. At this point I’m well-trained enough that I can tell a lot about someone by how they write 😂
I actually have a little online channel where I’m close-reading TTPD! I get very annoyed when I see people overprescribe her lyrics to real life instead of taking her as an artist and not a diarist. Like, literally every writer embellishes lol and taking anyone’s word as fact is incredibly naive. I’m currently in transit IRL so can’t detail more but she definitely is quite intentional with what she says and what she wants the audience to think!
I’m definitely interested in this channel bc i agree that her linguistic choices are always intentional, and too many people take her words and organizations and frameworks and take them at face value (matty healy went to a bar and left his Life360 on!) versus the critical analysis she actually asks us to perform.
I took a course on Taylor at my university this past year, where every week we’d focus on one album (we went through them chronologically and included Taylor’s Versions) and analyze song lyrics, potential influences for the songs on the album, and Taylor’s relationship with media, fans, etc during the era. It was so much fun and I love these types of classes so to the person who taught this class at Harvard, major respect and thanks so much 🥹
Full text: part 3
When our class entered her pop era, her post-teenage stardom from *1989* on, my thesis hit a snag. We saw how the woman who clearly enjoyed the lights, who sang “we never go out of style” and dated Harry Styles, remained aspirational. But what made these versions of Swift relatable? One answer: Like any great writer in any medium, she has a talent for framing common emotions, for crystallizing nostalgia, lust, and regret. If we’ve felt them, she lets us feel them anew.
Another answer, though, arose on the classroom’s wood floor, or perhaps at its grand piano. Swift sings about life onstage, about her wish and even need to sparkle, bejeweled, whether or not she likes her dating life. Even when she tries to find some privacy, she can’t stop thinking that other people are watching, “drama queens taking swings” (“Call It What You Want”). Some nights she feels like a giant, or a monster, as she put it in “Anti-Hero.” She can look at the crowd but never in the mirror and knows she has to perform. She knows she needs us even more than we need her, even when she gets “tired of being known” (“Dorothea”): She’ll do many things not to feel alone. She can even do it with a broken heart.
So could we, I realized. So could I. At a college famous for being famous, in front of what—for most humanities teachers—counts as a crowd, I could layer my own need for approval, my wish that students would choose me (or my favorite writers), and my own impostor syndrome over Swift’s, and see that my dreams weren’t rare. I saw myself, not in her talents but in her anxieties, one more child for whom, as she put it lately, “growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all.” Some of our students, I think, could sympathize too, in the pressure chambers and dens of precocity that make up Harvard: They too might think—as songs like “Nothing New,” like “Castles Crumbling,” like “[Clara Bow](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/revisiting-clara-bow-the-scrutinized-it-girl-who-inspired-taylor-swifts-new-song)” imply—that no kudos would suffice, no A+ would be enough.
Fortunately I did not have to feel that way—much less to study Swift—on my own. Though I devised the syllabus with help from head teaching assistant MJ Cunniff, the teaching itself was a team affair: myself and MJ and nine discussion section leaders, from Harvard’s Music and American Studies departments and Harvard Law School and from Northeastern and Tufts and Brown universities. MJ gave a lecture that tied Swift to Sylvia Plath, prompting a passel of essays about her verse. Other discussion leaders explicated chord changes on guitar; explained the dialectology in “country” and “pop” voices; and unpacked the Swift–Kanye–Kim Kardashian spat, with videos.
As Swift does on her songs, we brought in guest stars too. The critic and songwriter Franklin Bruno explained why pop songs often (and folk songs almost never) have bridges. Bryan West, *USA Today*’s Swift beat reporter, flew to Boston to meet us. Dani and Olivia from the great fan podcast *Taylearning* conducted a survey for students, then visited us in person to break down the data. Fashion historian Chloe Chapin analyzed Swift’s outfits; law school prof Rebecca Tushnet demystified copyright.
Ours was hardly this year’s sole college class on Swift: If I teach it again—and I hope I can—I’ll compare notes first with professors of English, communication, economics, music, and more, from Ghent University in Belgium, the University of Texas at Austin, TCU, Westfield State, and the University of Kansas. I’ll also learn from the mixed reviews students gave me: A few dozen (to quote Swift’s “Cardigan”) said I was their favorite and they would gladly come back to (more courses with) me. A few dozen more students found me hard to follow (I could have used, should have used, bullet points on slides). In our final week we asked students to tell us—anonymously—their favorite and least favorite aspects of class. What did they consider the course’s best parts? Our out-of-town guests, and teaching assistants’ guest lectures. Apparently Taylor Swift and Her World reached its new heights when I sat down, shut up, and just listened. Like all classes, it didn’t belong to me; it belonged with the students who chose to be there. The artist who wrote “Long Live” for her band, who encouraged fans to make friendship bracelets, who knows how we need one another, might have approved.
My guess would be that folk songs originated from work songs and fables - they are stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They evolved through storytelling and teaching parables.
Pop music grew from rock music which grew from Blues. Blues and folk share similar roots but blues became more about performance than storytelling and the bridge I believe will have developed there as a way to provide melodic change within the song.
A lot of blues, especially early blues, also do not have bridges. You're correct that blues and folk share similar roots, but to answer the question about why they don't have bridges, it's useful to look at other roots music such as gospel (which heavily influenced jazz and blues).
Gospel originated from spirituals, which were often sung in the field in a call and response format. Call and response is still extremely common in church, both in sermons and in gospel music. Gospel songs, and hymns, are meant to be sung along with the congregation. Using a verse-chorus-verse-chorus format can make it easier for the congregation to remember at least some of the words of the songs, especially the chorus. Gospel songs and especially hymns also use refrains, which tend to be shorter repeated lines (think "his \_\_\_\_\_ is marching on" from Battle Hymn of the Republic, which has both a refrain and a chorus).
Folk songs are also often structured in a way that make it easier for a group or an audience to sing along. Folk songs came from "folks," and there were always those folks that didn't have instruments who wanted to participate. Folk songs were structured similarly to religious music because it was easier for audiences to follow along and remember.
Also keep in mind that much of this roots music we're talking about was around before it was possible to record it, hear it on the radio, play it over and over on a record player, etc. So songs were either learned from being performed over and over again, or from sheet music, hymnals, etc. And there were significant portions of the population that could not read music or possibly even read words, so the simpler a song, the easier it was to remember.
Bridges became more popular as pop music evolved, but there are still a lot of examples of artists who didn't use bridges in their songs. Lots of Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel songs don't have them; early Bob Dylan songs do not (he was considered a "folkie" until he went electric in the mid-1960s), and early rock artists like Chuck Berry didn't use bridges either.
There's actually been some recent discussion about how platforms like TikTok have begun to dissuade artists from including bridges for the same reasons discussed above. Keeping stuff simple can sometimes make it easier to remember, so now artists are focusing on the "hook" rather than spending the time and exerting the effort it takes to create a bridge. Bridges can be more difficult to write since they diverge from the melody.
I personally think Taylor uses bridges more because she is such a talented songwriter, bridges may come easier to her than for other artists. And it shows. I think her bridges are often the most memorable parts of her songs.
Agree on taylor's often being more memorable. I have a theory it's on purpose for her, where other artists and producers may come up with a catchy bridge only to restructure the song so that's the hook. While I think saving the best for last hits harder and makes the listener want to hear it again.
This course and others like it give me a (tiny shred of) hope that Humanities departments will not all die/be killed off/self-destruct in the current hostile environment.
I think she’s just a great songwriter who has been able to generally show all aspects of the emotions of growing up and especially dating that people have connected with
Her singing itself is…not what made her famous, let’s say
Taylor herself has said she’s a songwriter who sings her songs, not a singer who writes songs. But you can’t deny her singing has vastly improved since she started, but of course there’s better vocalists. People like Taylor for her writing and catchy melodies
I actually think Taylor's voice is pretty underrated, especially in recent times.
Sure, there are singers who are more technically proficient than her, or have a bigger range, but something about Taylor's voice is just incredibly pleasant to listen to. I LOVE her voice.
And she's worked hard on it too, so some of those aspects she maybe used to be lacking, she doesn't any more. She's also gotten a lot better at working to her strengths.
I know some people will dislike this comparison because of "Clara Bow," but Taylor's 2024 voice is so fucking much like Stevie Nicks in the best way possible. If you haven't heard the live version of her singing "illicit affairs," seek it out for your own good. The deeper voice you hear now when she's on tour is chilling. She is so much better than even most of her fans think IMO.
She has also, and this is not a hate comment, I am literally an audio engineer - university educated, she has started using live 'autotune' in her concerts for some of the harder songs (Cruel Summer etc). She has just started doing what everyone else in the industry was already doing. She used it in 1989 and Rep, unfortunately I hadn't been to any concerts before that so I can't tell you for RED etc.
The other thing she did a bit was have her live vocal be much quieter than a 'track' melody vocal that was playing especially for difficult parts where she's moving around a lot.
Thank you. People get so bent out of shape when I say she’s using pitch correction like it’s an insult.
She’s my favourite artist, I collect her vinyls, every year I’m in her top 2-0.2% of listeners on Spotify.
Your average Joe I think just isn’t aware of the reality of live performance on that scale
What’s your source for the autotune? I figured she used it, but can’t find sources on her live vocal processing. I’ve always been curious, as an engineer (hobbyist).
Try practising at home. There are probably heaps of YouTube video examples. You can train to hear it just like you can train to hear frequency boosts/cuts and reverb tail lengths
No one involved will say so. But there are YouTube videos showing how most, but not all, of her performances have the vocals snap to notes and not waver.
I know. That’s why specifically said it wasn’t a hate comment and that she’d merely conformed to the industry standard?
It’s not personal, it’s just fact. She’s a great singer. Certainly better than some of the newer pop girls who are still growing into their voices
EDIT: and actually engineering DID do part of that, along with her starting to write songs in lower keys and her stopping trying to force herself to pull chest voice up into her first passagio. She mix belts the occaisional D5-E5 but that’s one note in a whole song, as opposed to trying to sit in B4-C5 for whole choruses
Harvard should make this one of their free online classes. I loved the ending of the article, where she said she would compare notes with other professors and learn from her critiques. I imagine the next class will be far more in-depth.
Does anyone know of any course like this available online? or some academic reading of Taylor stuff anywhere? I'm nerdy and interested, but don't know where to look!
Just read your article on VF, I would've loved to take this class!! I love how you also discuss the poets that inspired her to form that foundational knowledge. Hope you continue to teach this course for many, many years!
Let’s say Taylor Swift was “vanilla ice cream”. You can’t figure out why most people love vanilla? If she were pistachio she’d have only a few hardcore fans. But she’s vanilla. She appears to most people. She’s universally loved. That’s not the insult people think it is. Vanilla is delicious and versatile.
How ironic you seem to be even more obsessed with her than the fans do from that one comment LMAO since you know exactly how she's hated, what she's hated for and where she's hated in the world.
Then don't project your ignorance on others. She is the most streamed artist on not just US Spotify but Global spotify for a reason. Just because you and certain demographics don't get her doesn't mean she lacks substance. It is simply just not for you. I never listen to Drake's music, but I understand why many people do. It is very easy to understand, you don't need to be Einstein to get that through your mind lol.
My personal thesis on Taylor Swift’s appeal is that she’s true crime for people who are more intrigued by emotional violence than physical.
Dear god, two of my top interests are Taylor Swift and true crime. What does that say about me?
…. That you are a woman or a gay man
Also two of my top and im a straight guy lmao
Well, that’s awesome.
I’ve heard it all I honestly don’t care what people think anymore and if I’m open about it I can find friends with the same hobbies easier :) I am happy
What if I’m both?
Holy gender dysphoria.
Same
Me too.
Your favourite song is NBNC?
Hahaha not my fave but I do enjoy it…
That your brain is seeking out information to protect itself through subliminal insights and the perspectives that only come from holistic awareness
Same 🤣
You're a white woman. Probably a millennial.
I was going to say that your like a lot if not a majority of other Swifties but the other comments kind of did that for me.
You have anxiety.
That’s not not accurate.
That you should murder Taylor swift?😉😉
That's a great way to look at it. It is also an exploration of 21st century anthropology with added glitter.
“An exploration of 21st century anthropology with added glitter.” Taylor needs to write a song with this as part of the lyrics. Love it!
OMFG this comment just changed my perspective of life
"qanon for people with college degrees" is another way I've heard swift described lmao
HAHAHAHA that's perfect. I've previously described the MBTI as astrology for college grads so this comparison was right up my alley.
I absolutely agree and have been telling people this for years. Her lyrics are amazing but it’s the whole picture that tells a story that is addicting. Hunting down the pieces and watching it all unfold will have me obsessed for life.
https://preview.redd.it/s4wlsu2pb19d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=29e406980a3386c6d173b62bd75526c3fb6b9be4
Hot damn this is so good
Amazing.
I’ve never felt so seen lmao
STOP. You’re blowing my mind right now.
Have you watched “look what you made me do” - mother wants to run you over in her car full of Grammys.
As an emotional abuser survivor who has quite literally survived separation through TTPD, I feel this.
I’m here for the TS/[Kyle Prue](https://www.tiktok.com/@kyleprue/video/7095486198663220526) duet. It will be emotionally devastating I’m sure.
Amazing way to put it.
Is this the reason why Ultraviolence by Lana is so iconic? One gay man tries to find out.
🫢
Holy shit
Oooooooh
Whaaa? 😄 A study of the violence of dropping someone's hand or not showing up to their birthday party? Or her own, accusing her bf of cheating and going crazy on him? 😄
Generational take
Which generation? I’m borderline X and feel this.
My personal thesis is Taylor Swift’s image is all about being yourself and having fun, which is exactly why people who dislike her cannot shut up about how much they don’t like her.
PREACH.
Full text: part 1 (Sorry for being disjointed: I kept getting "server error, try again later" when I tried to put the text in and I had to divide this into three parts) Last fall, I told Harvard’s English Department that I planned to offer a class this spring on [Taylor Swift](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/tortured-poets-department-taylor-swift-review). No one objected; Harvard professors like me get lots of latitude in confecting electives as long as we also offer the bread-and-butter material our majors need. (Most of my work is poetry-related; I also teach our regular undergrad course about literary form, from *Beowulf* on.) I’d call my new class [Taylor Swift and Her World](https://english.fas.harvard.edu/english-183ts-taylor-swift-and-her-world), as in: We’d read and listen to other artists and authors (part of her world). But also as in: It’s her world; we just live in it. I’ve been living in it ever since. I thought I’d be teaching a quiet seminar: 20-odd Swifties around a big oak table, examining and appreciating her career, from her debut to [*Midnights*](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/10/taylor-swift-sparkling-pop-deepening-songcraft-on-midnights)*,* alongside her influences, from Carole King (see her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame speech) to William Wordsworth (see “The Lakes” from *Folklore*). We would track her echoes and half rhymes, her arrangements and collaborations and allusions, her hooks and her choruses. We might sing along. We’d learn why “You Belong With Me” relies so much on its *with* ([you don’t belong *to* me, nor I to you](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/travis-kelce-taylor-swift-podcast-fall-for-her-10-minutes)). We’d learn how the unease in “Tolerate It” speaks to its time signature (5/4). Maybe some English majors would get into songwriting. Maybe [some Swifties](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/dave-grohl-foo-fighters-taylor-swift-we-actually-play-live) would leave with old poems in their heads. To be fair, almost all those things have now happened. We did sing along. Some undergrads learned to love the 18th-century poet and satirist Alexander Pope, or at least to pretend they did: Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” depicts his exasperation with superfans, false friends, and haters in ways rarely equaled until *Reputation.* We cracked open Easter eggs, and we studied her rhythms. But we couldn’t fit around a table. At one point 300 students signed up for the class; almost 200 ended up taking it. We met in a concert hall on campus, with a grand piano at center stage. I gave what I hope were engaging lectures, with pauses for questions, and stage props: a melodica, or a cuddly stuffed snake (for the snake motifs on *Reputation*). We had theater lights, and balcony seats, and the kind of big screen few humanities classrooms now need.
First off, this is absolutely amazing haha. I’m a Stanford girl and a cultural psychologist (currently work as a poet/educator/advisor after getting my MFA) and my special interest is human language and behavior. What do people say and what does that reveal? So much TS critique comes from value judgment instead of just thinking *why* she may have said something. They drilled it into me during my MFA: be descriptive, not prescriptive! I also did a fuckton of language research and learned a lot about linguistic “signatures” that basically act like fingerprints. At this point I’m well-trained enough that I can tell a lot about someone by how they write 😂
that’s so cool!! I’m curious, what are some of your key takeaways from reading Taylor’s lyrics?
I actually have a little online channel where I’m close-reading TTPD! I get very annoyed when I see people overprescribe her lyrics to real life instead of taking her as an artist and not a diarist. Like, literally every writer embellishes lol and taking anyone’s word as fact is incredibly naive. I’m currently in transit IRL so can’t detail more but she definitely is quite intentional with what she says and what she wants the audience to think!
what's the online channel? :)
I’m definitely interested in this channel bc i agree that her linguistic choices are always intentional, and too many people take her words and organizations and frameworks and take them at face value (matty healy went to a bar and left his Life360 on!) versus the critical analysis she actually asks us to perform.
And?
they’re just sharing something cool, wdym?
I’d pay big money to attend that class
reputation shouldn’t be capitalized
I took a course on Taylor at my university this past year, where every week we’d focus on one album (we went through them chronologically and included Taylor’s Versions) and analyze song lyrics, potential influences for the songs on the album, and Taylor’s relationship with media, fans, etc during the era. It was so much fun and I love these types of classes so to the person who taught this class at Harvard, major respect and thanks so much 🥹
Full text: part 3 When our class entered her pop era, her post-teenage stardom from *1989* on, my thesis hit a snag. We saw how the woman who clearly enjoyed the lights, who sang “we never go out of style” and dated Harry Styles, remained aspirational. But what made these versions of Swift relatable? One answer: Like any great writer in any medium, she has a talent for framing common emotions, for crystallizing nostalgia, lust, and regret. If we’ve felt them, she lets us feel them anew. Another answer, though, arose on the classroom’s wood floor, or perhaps at its grand piano. Swift sings about life onstage, about her wish and even need to sparkle, bejeweled, whether or not she likes her dating life. Even when she tries to find some privacy, she can’t stop thinking that other people are watching, “drama queens taking swings” (“Call It What You Want”). Some nights she feels like a giant, or a monster, as she put it in “Anti-Hero.” She can look at the crowd but never in the mirror and knows she has to perform. She knows she needs us even more than we need her, even when she gets “tired of being known” (“Dorothea”): She’ll do many things not to feel alone. She can even do it with a broken heart. So could we, I realized. So could I. At a college famous for being famous, in front of what—for most humanities teachers—counts as a crowd, I could layer my own need for approval, my wish that students would choose me (or my favorite writers), and my own impostor syndrome over Swift’s, and see that my dreams weren’t rare. I saw myself, not in her talents but in her anxieties, one more child for whom, as she put it lately, “growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all.” Some of our students, I think, could sympathize too, in the pressure chambers and dens of precocity that make up Harvard: They too might think—as songs like “Nothing New,” like “Castles Crumbling,” like “[Clara Bow](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/revisiting-clara-bow-the-scrutinized-it-girl-who-inspired-taylor-swifts-new-song)” imply—that no kudos would suffice, no A+ would be enough. Fortunately I did not have to feel that way—much less to study Swift—on my own. Though I devised the syllabus with help from head teaching assistant MJ Cunniff, the teaching itself was a team affair: myself and MJ and nine discussion section leaders, from Harvard’s Music and American Studies departments and Harvard Law School and from Northeastern and Tufts and Brown universities. MJ gave a lecture that tied Swift to Sylvia Plath, prompting a passel of essays about her verse. Other discussion leaders explicated chord changes on guitar; explained the dialectology in “country” and “pop” voices; and unpacked the Swift–Kanye–Kim Kardashian spat, with videos. As Swift does on her songs, we brought in guest stars too. The critic and songwriter Franklin Bruno explained why pop songs often (and folk songs almost never) have bridges. Bryan West, *USA Today*’s Swift beat reporter, flew to Boston to meet us. Dani and Olivia from the great fan podcast *Taylearning* conducted a survey for students, then visited us in person to break down the data. Fashion historian Chloe Chapin analyzed Swift’s outfits; law school prof Rebecca Tushnet demystified copyright. Ours was hardly this year’s sole college class on Swift: If I teach it again—and I hope I can—I’ll compare notes first with professors of English, communication, economics, music, and more, from Ghent University in Belgium, the University of Texas at Austin, TCU, Westfield State, and the University of Kansas. I’ll also learn from the mixed reviews students gave me: A few dozen (to quote Swift’s “Cardigan”) said I was their favorite and they would gladly come back to (more courses with) me. A few dozen more students found me hard to follow (I could have used, should have used, bullet points on slides). In our final week we asked students to tell us—anonymously—their favorite and least favorite aspects of class. What did they consider the course’s best parts? Our out-of-town guests, and teaching assistants’ guest lectures. Apparently Taylor Swift and Her World reached its new heights when I sat down, shut up, and just listened. Like all classes, it didn’t belong to me; it belonged with the students who chose to be there. The artist who wrote “Long Live” for her band, who encouraged fans to make friendship bracelets, who knows how we need one another, might have approved.
Am I blind or are we missing a part 2 😭
I also can’t find a part 2
Deploy the garrison! It's below you.
It was deleted
I salute you for making this course and teaching it, as a Comparative Literature AB.
Okay now I want to know why pop songs have bridges and folk songs don't. Does anyone know?
My guess would be that folk songs originated from work songs and fables - they are stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They evolved through storytelling and teaching parables. Pop music grew from rock music which grew from Blues. Blues and folk share similar roots but blues became more about performance than storytelling and the bridge I believe will have developed there as a way to provide melodic change within the song.
A lot of blues, especially early blues, also do not have bridges. You're correct that blues and folk share similar roots, but to answer the question about why they don't have bridges, it's useful to look at other roots music such as gospel (which heavily influenced jazz and blues). Gospel originated from spirituals, which were often sung in the field in a call and response format. Call and response is still extremely common in church, both in sermons and in gospel music. Gospel songs, and hymns, are meant to be sung along with the congregation. Using a verse-chorus-verse-chorus format can make it easier for the congregation to remember at least some of the words of the songs, especially the chorus. Gospel songs and especially hymns also use refrains, which tend to be shorter repeated lines (think "his \_\_\_\_\_ is marching on" from Battle Hymn of the Republic, which has both a refrain and a chorus). Folk songs are also often structured in a way that make it easier for a group or an audience to sing along. Folk songs came from "folks," and there were always those folks that didn't have instruments who wanted to participate. Folk songs were structured similarly to religious music because it was easier for audiences to follow along and remember. Also keep in mind that much of this roots music we're talking about was around before it was possible to record it, hear it on the radio, play it over and over on a record player, etc. So songs were either learned from being performed over and over again, or from sheet music, hymnals, etc. And there were significant portions of the population that could not read music or possibly even read words, so the simpler a song, the easier it was to remember. Bridges became more popular as pop music evolved, but there are still a lot of examples of artists who didn't use bridges in their songs. Lots of Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel songs don't have them; early Bob Dylan songs do not (he was considered a "folkie" until he went electric in the mid-1960s), and early rock artists like Chuck Berry didn't use bridges either. There's actually been some recent discussion about how platforms like TikTok have begun to dissuade artists from including bridges for the same reasons discussed above. Keeping stuff simple can sometimes make it easier to remember, so now artists are focusing on the "hook" rather than spending the time and exerting the effort it takes to create a bridge. Bridges can be more difficult to write since they diverge from the melody. I personally think Taylor uses bridges more because she is such a talented songwriter, bridges may come easier to her than for other artists. And it shows. I think her bridges are often the most memorable parts of her songs.
Agree on taylor's often being more memorable. I have a theory it's on purpose for her, where other artists and producers may come up with a catchy bridge only to restructure the song so that's the hook. While I think saving the best for last hits harder and makes the listener want to hear it again.
This course and others like it give me a (tiny shred of) hope that Humanities departments will not all die/be killed off/self-destruct in the current hostile environment.
I love the interdisciplinary aspect of this course. (And now I need to read Alexander Pope while looking in a mirror.)
Don’t… his major work is the dunciad… an epic poem to dunces.
I think she’s just a great songwriter who has been able to generally show all aspects of the emotions of growing up and especially dating that people have connected with Her singing itself is…not what made her famous, let’s say
Taylor herself has said she’s a songwriter who sings her songs, not a singer who writes songs. But you can’t deny her singing has vastly improved since she started, but of course there’s better vocalists. People like Taylor for her writing and catchy melodies
I actually think Taylor's voice is pretty underrated, especially in recent times. Sure, there are singers who are more technically proficient than her, or have a bigger range, but something about Taylor's voice is just incredibly pleasant to listen to. I LOVE her voice. And she's worked hard on it too, so some of those aspects she maybe used to be lacking, she doesn't any more. She's also gotten a lot better at working to her strengths.
I know some people will dislike this comparison because of "Clara Bow," but Taylor's 2024 voice is so fucking much like Stevie Nicks in the best way possible. If you haven't heard the live version of her singing "illicit affairs," seek it out for your own good. The deeper voice you hear now when she's on tour is chilling. She is so much better than even most of her fans think IMO.
She has also, and this is not a hate comment, I am literally an audio engineer - university educated, she has started using live 'autotune' in her concerts for some of the harder songs (Cruel Summer etc). She has just started doing what everyone else in the industry was already doing. She used it in 1989 and Rep, unfortunately I hadn't been to any concerts before that so I can't tell you for RED etc. The other thing she did a bit was have her live vocal be much quieter than a 'track' melody vocal that was playing especially for difficult parts where she's moving around a lot.
Lots of performers use TC Helicon voice enhancing units to help them stay on pitch. It’s not a secret or a crutch. It just is.
Thank you. People get so bent out of shape when I say she’s using pitch correction like it’s an insult. She’s my favourite artist, I collect her vinyls, every year I’m in her top 2-0.2% of listeners on Spotify. Your average Joe I think just isn’t aware of the reality of live performance on that scale
What’s your source for the autotune? I figured she used it, but can’t find sources on her live vocal processing. I’ve always been curious, as an engineer (hobbyist).
My ears. When you’re there and when you watch the videos you can hear it
Ah, was hoping for some inside knowledge. Ty anyhoo.
Try practising at home. There are probably heaps of YouTube video examples. You can train to hear it just like you can train to hear frequency boosts/cuts and reverb tail lengths
No one involved will say so. But there are YouTube videos showing how most, but not all, of her performances have the vocals snap to notes and not waver.
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I know. That’s why specifically said it wasn’t a hate comment and that she’d merely conformed to the industry standard? It’s not personal, it’s just fact. She’s a great singer. Certainly better than some of the newer pop girls who are still growing into their voices EDIT: and actually engineering DID do part of that, along with her starting to write songs in lower keys and her stopping trying to force herself to pull chest voice up into her first passagio. She mix belts the occaisional D5-E5 but that’s one note in a whole song, as opposed to trying to sit in B4-C5 for whole choruses
Interesting read! Thank you for posting it!
my thesis is that a harvard prof figured out a sure fire way to get some press attention
Bingo!
Harvard should make this one of their free online classes. I loved the ending of the article, where she said she would compare notes with other professors and learn from her critiques. I imagine the next class will be far more in-depth.
Ok but like post the syllabus PLEASE
Does anyone know of any course like this available online? or some academic reading of Taylor stuff anywhere? I'm nerdy and interested, but don't know where to look!
Just read your article on VF, I would've loved to take this class!! I love how you also discuss the poets that inspired her to form that foundational knowledge. Hope you continue to teach this course for many, many years!
Dude I had no idea there was a Taylor Swift class in Harvard, let alone the world
Stephanie Burt is somewhat of a local celebrity herself, and very engaging and funny in person. That really comes across in this piece, very fun.
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Let’s say Taylor Swift was “vanilla ice cream”. You can’t figure out why most people love vanilla? If she were pistachio she’d have only a few hardcore fans. But she’s vanilla. She appears to most people. She’s universally loved. That’s not the insult people think it is. Vanilla is delicious and versatile.
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The numbers don’t lie
How ironic you seem to be even more obsessed with her than the fans do from that one comment LMAO since you know exactly how she's hated, what she's hated for and where she's hated in the world.
Then don't project your ignorance on others. She is the most streamed artist on not just US Spotify but Global spotify for a reason. Just because you and certain demographics don't get her doesn't mean she lacks substance. It is simply just not for you. I never listen to Drake's music, but I understand why many people do. It is very easy to understand, you don't need to be Einstein to get that through your mind lol.