"This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” Taylor has said of her latest project, Midnights, and this Friday, fans' eyes will open wide to 13 all-new tracks following the success of her back-to-back 2020 releases folklore and evermore. But what is the meaning of Taylor Swift?
LISTEN NOW: Into It: A Vulture Podcast with Sam Sanders: A Portrait of the Artist as Taylor Swift
She's performed damsel in distress, but represents women’s empowerment. She’s a confessional artist, but is careful about how much she reveals. She's an adult, but is often still viewed as the teenager she used to be. As fans await the arrival of Midnights, host Sam Sanders dives into the mythos, craft, and Taylor Swift's place in history among the likes of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Adele, and Beyoncé with his guest, NPR music critic and correspondent Ann Powers, on this week's Into It podcast, 'Taylor's Version.'
With everything that we know already about the Pop star, both hosts agree that after following her music and social media and seeing her documentary, there's still so much we all seem to be missing. "I think one thing that always is important to remember about Taylor is where she started within Country music and that sort of consummate crafts-person that she was even when she was a teenager," says Powers. "If disclosure is one of her main ways of operating in the world, just remember that she comes from a place where disclosure is always crafted so minutely that you can read it as a universal no matter how personal it gets."
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The Country music writing experience Taylor grew out of, Powers adds, "is people writing songs that are deeply personal in rooms with other people, like in an office. You go into an office, and you're going to write a song about your brother's alcoholism, or your husband's bad experience in Iraq... but you're doing it in an office as a professional, and you're going to workshop it and you're going to look for the perfect rhyme."
"These are two rival impulses within Taylor Swift," she offers: "There's the part of her that's always going to be that high school high-achiever who wants to craft the perfect song, and is looking toward a lineage that perhaps she's abandoned officially but that is in her blood of Country music. And then there is the other part of Taylor who looks to genius elders like a Joni Mitchell and says, 'I want to learn how to truly disclose.'"
"I just think her music is so much about order in storytelling, and creating the perfect frameworks, and finding the perfect characters... she's got that intellectual side constantly challenging her emotional side," Anne adds. "For me, she doesn't seem that elusive, she just seems well managed internally -- and I think that's frustrating for us, though!"
Listen to the full Taylor-centric episode -- now streaming on Audacy -- on Vulture's flagship podcast Into It, to help you obsess… better. So much pop culture. So many movies, TV shows, music, and memes. Every week, they break down the pop culture we can’t stop thinking about, with friends from Vulture and the occasional celebrity. From the tiny, dumb scene on loop in our brains, to the big, deep questions we have about what it all means… get into all of it - amazing, terrible, or just insanely memorable. New episodes drop every Thursday.
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Celebrate the release of Taylor Swift’s brand new album, Midnights, by tuning into the Taylor Swift Midnights playback special, only on Audacy.
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