“Written and Directed by Taylor Swift” can be just a credit at the start of a video or the title of the story that encapsulates every step the Pennsylvanian has taken to owning her own story. He appeared in the long version video of Very good -included in the re-registration of Report– and appears in the Anti-herothe first single from Midnights, his tenth studio album presented yesterday morning. When she announced the release two months ago, Swift called it “a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams.” With Anti-hero He started with the first category. “I don’t think I’ve gone into my insecurities in such detail before,” he said. one of the videos shared on their social networks before the premiere. “I don’t want to sound too dark, but I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.” The song’s pop tune isn’t dark at all, but all of its demons show up in the lyrics, starting with itself.
“It’s me. Hi. The problem is me,” one Swift snaps at another in a music video in which she talks about self-loathing and calling things by their proper names, despite showing that she knows how to make good use of metaphors. “Gorda” reads on the ladder her nemesis forces her to climb, which wears shorts very similar to those the artist wore on tours during which she confessed to suffering from eating disorders in the Netflix documentary miss american of 2020. “It’s not very good for me to see pictures of me every day,” she commented after saying that if in those pictures she looked too tall or heard a comment on her waist, “she just stopped eating”. He had spoken of complicated episodes, of “low times” or “bad weather”. Until now, he had not called them “depression”.
In the five-minute video, there are references to her panicking that her star is taller than her (in the style of Alice in Wonderland), the idea that his public persona would end his private life (Swift had a low-key relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, who also collaborated on the album, for at least five years), at the time in 2016 when he thought his career had ended because of the conflict he had with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian (the rapper snatched the microphone from him to say that the award was deserved by Beyoncé) or the punishment he suffered from the part of many Republican supporters for positioning themselves politically for the first time and doing so against Donald Trump. Then he invites us to his own funeral, where his children, played by actors Mary Elizabeth Ellis (Philadelphia is always sunny) and John Early (30 rocks); and comedian Mike Birbiglia are only shocked to find that most of their assets are going into their cats’ paws.
How do you deal with these insecurities and intrusive thoughts? Between certain scenes and others, she uses (and sometimes abuses) alcohol, which we see her using to relax, forget herself or stop listening to herself. This removes the role model label once and for all, although there is a moral to this story: peace with oneself involves accepting and understanding each of our versions (in the case of Swift, steps which end up turning into discs), as unsympathetic as they are. they can be for us.
For the uninitiated, Taylor Swift is still a teen star of the country. Too blond, too tall, too close to the American cliché of perfection. For her fans, she is a bit like her best friend. Someone to listen to on good days, bad days and normal days. The difference between the first perception and the second is in his songs, in which wherever you come from and wherever you come from, it is easy to find yourself.
