On a down day in the autumn of 2022, I turn on the Jeep radio, which is weird because I usually stream music and podcasts via Bluetooth.
A dreary drum track begins to play and then a sad-sounding woman sings about abandoning people, waking up screaming, mistrusting family members, aging without gaining wisdom, and losing all of life’s meaning forever.
I turn up the volume.
I’ve not heard this song before.
It feels like the perfect anthem for a down day, which somehow invigorates me.
I’m so taken by the strange mirror, that—for a good ninety seconds—I can’t place the very familiar singing voice.
“Is this Taylor Swift?” I say to myself, at which point an ugly question pops into my head: What does she have to be so sad about?
Sitting there in my Jeep in the fall of 2022, I don’t know that Swift’s song Anti-Hero and album Midnights are going to help her dominate the the global zeitgeist in a way that feels unprecidented. But as she’s already mega-successful at this point, her melancholy fascinates me.
Even with your own private jet? Even with multiple mansions? With all that money? With adoring fans in unfathomable supply?
I become obsessed with the song for a hot minute, downloading it and then listening on repeat for days. It doesn’t cure my own melancholy—which has been coming and going for most of my life—but Anti-Hero makes me feel less alone. I’m not quite sure why, as I’m probably not the target audience, to say the least.
Love or hate Taylor Swift, the woman can write a song. Her images flicker bright. Her word economy should be studied seriously by young writers. In many ways, Ms. Swift is a lyrical sorceress, able to put billions under a spell, three or so minutes at a time. Celebrities get nervous around her. Regular people pay insane amounts of money just to see her perform live. NFL cameras can’t stop panning over to her during playoff games. People believe she can sway presidential elections. She might be the closest thing we have to a modern-day goddess, and yet she somehow maintains a bit of her girl-next-door charm. She even gets sad, just like the rest of us.
It’s now Monday, March 4, 2024 and—in a blue moment—I find myself thinking about that first time I heard Anti-Hero, before I realized it was Taylor Swift, when I was simply connecting with the music in my Jeep, sans everything else the tall, blonde pop icon constellates.
Some strange voice inside says I must write about all this.
I’m not sure why.
I find an acoustic version and listen to the lyrics.
Anti-Hero still feels authentic, meaning I believe it was written by a person who sometimes feels very low—a woman who has probably done a lot of therapy and self-reflection in an effort to heal the broken parts inside. I have no idea if that’s true. Full disclosure: other than listening to a few of her songs, I’ve done zero research on Taylor Swift. (I happened upon the hot link above by accident, while researching Adam Sandler’s Spaceman for my two-man movie club.) But after mainlining Anti-Hero for weeks and months—and an hour today—I believe Swift is writing from lived experience. I believe that she is telling me how she actually feels, that the song is wildly confessional. And my believing is what makes Anti-Hero come alive for me. It creates a sense of intimacy, which I imagine is what many love about her work. She’s clearly a highly effective first-person writer.
Could Taylor Swift’s gift be an ability to reflect back and sell to us what we already believe about the human condition? Does she know what she’s doing? Is it all engineered? Is she a self-creation? Is she acting? Is it all persona?
Could be.
But I suspect that what you hear is what you get. That Swift writes with raw emotion and a truth that should be alienating but somehow glides right into the mainstream, making us want to tap our toes and emote along with her.
Anti-Hero is about self-loathing, paranoia, and a horrible inability to connect with others—the I in the song even imagines exhausting the patience of her fans with the very psychodrama she describes in the lyrics—and yet it was a smash hit. Most of us ate it up.
But why is one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time—a young woman with mind-boggling amounts of talent, money, fame, and power—writing such dreary lyrics?
I long ago read Kurt Vonnegut’s take on why we need artists. He prescribed to the canary in the coal mine theory. Just like the canary in the coal mine, the artist is more susceptible to life’s toxic gasses, which makes them fall ill sooner than non-artists. The artist displays suffering through art, which is the metaphorical death of the canary. Audiences can take note and get out of the mines before it’s too late. The artist suffers so the rest don’t have to, or can choose to suffer much less. The artist sounds the alarm.
It’s an old hypothesis.
If Anti-Hero is an accurate representation of where Taylor Swift was when she wrote it, what is the mine shaft that was/is making her sick? What is the toxic gas? And how do the rest of us get out of this mine before we also succumb?
It’s just a song, some will say.
Maybe.
But it sure sounds like an intimate confession written by a talented woman who is just about to take over the world—smashing entertainment records in the process of reaching unparalleled heights.
I imagine it’s quite hard to be Taylor Swift. Millions of people see her as a star or an ideal, rather than a person. The intensity of her travel schedule alone would psychologically break most of us. And having your entire life recorded, so many people trying to capture a slip-up or a crack in the image. Her downfall would make the tabloids mega millions.
Songs like Anti-Hero come from somewhere and they mean something, even if we just dance and sing along mindlessly. Taylor Swift is tapping into psychological realities. She’s documenting. She’s mirroring. She’s capturing a collective mood. And untold people are saying, “Yes, that feels right.”
There are times when I think I shouldn’t be writing about my own blue moods, that readers will want to read something lighter, happier. But easy’s never been what I’ve reached for whenever I’m feeling down.
Other times I get angry with myself, as though my bouts of melancholy are a self-installed governor slowing down the engine of my life, rendering me obsolete, useless to others, useless to myself.
But then I’ll remember that my writing is usually done on lonely sidelines, where I intensely think and feel in ways I wouldn’t if sadness hadn’t snared me.
Maybe artists aren’t canaries in the coal mines so much as they are people who dare to publicly probe what the rest of us fear. Maybe artists are sacrificial lambs, people we pay to walk the minefields we are too scared to walk ourselves. We marvel at their reports, ride the vicarious thrills.
I’ve also heard artists described as psychic livers for the culture. The makers of art process the toxins so the general public can experience the world as something more ordered, more vivid, more beautiful, or simply less painful. Many artists pay a high price for this.
There was another day when I was feeling depressed back in the late summer of 1991. I was a senior in high school. In my memory now, via snail mail, a tape arrives from a youth group friend who has already left for a college far far away—a place that has given him early access to a Gen-X treasure. The accompanying note reads, Dude, you have to hear this.
I pop the cassette into the tape deck. The building electricity of jangling guitar chords. Drums firing like pistons. And then an all out assault of rage. It feels like being kicked in the face. It feels like kicking someone else in the face. It feels like the antithesis of everything my friend and I have been taught by our church. And then a strange voice sings about acquiring guns and how it’s better to lose and that life is easier with the lights off. I instantly know I’m listening to my generation’s new anthem.
Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirt was an attitude that teenage me hadn’t previously been able to articulate. Kurt Cobain was lyrically and emotionally going places my young mind never dreamed possible. Yet, it all felt so familiar and true to so many of us.
Three years later, he was gone.
I remember a young man in my college dorm crying when he found out Cobain had committed suicide. Keening for a man he knew only through music. A canary in the coal mine. A psychic liver. A sacrificial lamb.
Taylor Swift lives on. Well past twenty-seven now.
And I’ve managed to write this post through another low-energy mood.
Last night on the couch, I played the acoustic version of Anti-Hero for Alicia who is much less interested in Taylor Swift than I have been these past few days.
“It’s a beautiful song,” she says. “Clever writing.”
“Does it capture anything for you?” I ask.
“Your mood will pass. It always does.”
“This is what I’ve been writing about this week. Do I need to fear the Swifties?”
“Just keep writing. Write.”
It’s what Alicia always advises.
And so I do.
It’s Wednesday, March 6, 2024 and I’m finishing this post on our screened-in porch with the blinds pulled down and my hood up and a pop goddess singing in my ear, claiming she feels like a monster.
I’m a little proud of myself for pushing through. Some of you have been commenting this morning on the March 6th TWBM post. That’s buoyed my spirits. The writing keeps saving me—offering connections with others who understand, pulling me back toward the light.
As I type these last few words, cardinals and warblers are singing to each other, the sun is shining, the temperature is heavenly, and—with what feels like genuine excitement—Alicia’s just asked when she can read this post.
PS - Did you read the April 24th post? Letting The Green Lion Eat The Sun (Writer’s Block Again)
I paused from reading this to tell my wife that Matthew Quick's post today is about her favorite modern musician, Taylor Swift. She, a woman in her 40's, defends Swift's artistry whenever necessary. She is also a huge MQ fan, so she is going to love reading this one!
I find Swift to be an amazing musician who is too outside my abrasive wheelhouse, but I appreciate that you weaved an introspective piece of writing by pondering the current queen of pop. You are a man who seemingly finds inspiration in everything, and feels compelled to share these insights with us so we can also reap something deeper from them - perhaps that's what an artist is. As a constant reader, I, for one, thank you.
I am fascinated by Taylor Swift. I am a 47 year old Swiftie. There are many of us. To me, her vulnerability and authenticity are what we are really drawn to and the songs are written in a way we can all relate to somehow. A “lyrical sorceress” indeed.
I love the idea of artists as canaries in the coal mine. I never thought about it that way but it makes perfect sense. I love how you used writing to push through your melancholy. I have used my own writing this way in the past and plan to do so again as I am in a state of big transition.
Thank you, Matthew!!! I am reading this at a time when I need it most. Synchronicities are not lost on me. As always your words are helpful.