Taylor Swift & the Passage of Time

Examining a trio of songs in which Taylor Swift confronts pop mortality

Taylor Swift has always been preoccupied with age, dating back to “Fifteen,” a song that she wrote at eighteen. That song is about the foolish romanticism of young teenage girls, and it is written with the grateful wisdom of a woman who knows better now. But as she got a little older, Taylor’s perspective shifted, and she started to think more about the possibility of aging out.

The first sign of this came on Red, which cemented Swift as a pop crossover success, someone capable of penning smash hits in any number of genres. The song I’m referring to is “The Lucky One,” which takes the mid-tempo, folk-pop sound of that Swift era (she wasn’t yet acquainted with the synth-heavy sound that would come out of her later work with Jack Antonoff).

The song’s setup is simple enough, as Swift sings about a young woman’s rise to stardom:

New to town with a made-up name

In the angel's city, chasing fortune and fame

And the camera flashes make it look like a dream

//

And they'll tell you now, you're the lucky one

Yeah, they'll tell you now, you're the lucky one

But can you tell me now you're the lucky one?

But quickly we see that Swift is after something else, something a little darker, as she sings about the downsides of fame.

Now it's big black cars and Riviera views

And your lover in the foyer doesn't even know you

And your secrets end up splashed on the news front page

And they tell you that you're lucky, but you're so confused

'Cause you don't feel pretty, you just feel used

And all the young things line up to take your place

Then comes the POV switch, as Swift sings explicitly from her own perspective, bringing the song full circle.

It was a few years later, I showed up here

And they still tell the legend of how you disappeared

How you took the money and your dignity and got the hell out

//

They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere

Chose the Rose Garden over Madison Square

And it took some time, but I understand it now

'Cause now my name is up in lights

But I think you got it right

//

Let me tell you now, you're the lucky one

Let me tell you now, you're the lucky one

Let me tell you now, you're the lucky one

This song is in the fairly straightforward storytelling mode that Swift preferred at the turn of the 2010s, but she keeps it from feeling rote with her signature specificity. “Big black cars and Riviera views” is very evocative, and choosing the “rose garden over Madison Square (Garden)” is a clever bit of wordplay. It feels genuine, and emotionally plausible. You can tell that it comes from somewhere real.

I was perhaps the only straight teenaged male in the Cleveland-area community who loved Red as much as I did when it was released in 2012. I graduated high school the following summer, and went to Israel for a gap year program. In Israel, I got into some trouble—I wasn’t eating or sleeping very much, I was interested in trying all sorts of dumb things, and there were very few constants in my life. This album—Red—was one of them.

I didn’t have a smartphone, or headphones, so I torrented the deluxe version onto my laptop. I would curl up in the last row of the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and lay my head right next to the computer speakers so that I could shuffle the album directly into my ears. Sometimes I would miss my stop, doze off on my fourth listen, and end up back in Tel Aviv, short my bus fare. Forgive the tangent. The point is, I was obsessed with this album, I thought about it constantly. And at the time, I thought “The Lucky One” was about Joni Mitchell.

Mitchell, of course, rose to immense fame in the mid-1970s as part of the Laurel Canyon scene, feted and fetishized as a long-hair folk goddess. But she didn’t take well to celebrity status, and recorded a few poorly-received albums over the next five to eight years before moving to rural British Columbia in 1985. Since then she has rarely performed live, released very little new music, and spoken numerous times about the “cesspool” music industry and its “petty rules.”

Around the same time as this album came out, Deadline reported that Swift was in the running to play Joni Mitchell in a biopic about her life.

This fact, combined with the biographical correlations, made me feel pretty sure about the song’s subject. Of course, what makes the song interesting isn’t necessarily what Taylor Swift wrote about Joni Mitchell. It’s Taylor Swift writing about herself, and the implications therein: lovers who barely know you, secrets in the tabloids, and a deep sense of dissociation from the events of your life. One line stands out to me as a particularly Swiftian anxiety: “All the young things line up to take your place.”

A decade later—and ten years older—Taylor Swift released Red (Taylor’s Version), rerecorded to regain control of her masters, and featuring a few “vault” bonus tracks. The most notable bonus track was “Nothing New,” featuring Phoebe Bridgers (more on this feature choice later). The song covers much of the same thematic territory as “The Lucky One,” but it’s less broad, instead zeroing in on the depressive emotional state of a famous woman who knows her time is coming.

I've had too much to drink tonight

And I know it's sad, but this is what I think about

And I wake up in the middle of the night

It's like I can feel time moving

//

How can a person know everythin' at eighteen

But nothin' at twenty-two?

And will you still want me

When I'm nothing new?

It is hard to get a handle on the existential nature of the terror that Swift apparently felt at 22 years old. Well on her way to becoming a billionaire, one of the most famous people in the world, an awards winner who conquered multiple genres. Despite all that, it seems, this was a young woman who routinely woke up drenched in fear, terrified that an “ingenue” would take her place.

What I find most fascinating—and eyebrow-raising—is the bridge, which is often the most important part of a Taylor Swift song. She uses Bridgers’ haunting vocals to great effect as they trade off words. Thankfully, the song’s spare acoustic production allows the lyrics to take center stage.

I know someday I'm gonna meet her, it's a fever dream

The kind of radiance you only have at seventeen

She'll know the way and then she'll say she got the map from me

I'll say I'm happy for her, then I'll cry myself to sleep

The choice of Phoebe Bridgers as the feature on this song is interesting because Phoebe Bridgers—despite being younger, and also blonde—is not coming for Taylor Swift’s throne. Bridgers is a deliberately indie musician, even in success, and her solo albums are downtempo enough to make Elliott Smith (one of her heroes) sound like a rock singer. I think Swift chose her, at least in part, because she’s not much of a threat. Bridgers is an effective collaborator here, but the more obvious choice—given the song’s theme—would have been Olivia Rodrigo.

Rodrigo released the song “Driver’s License” in 2021, and it became a smash hit overnight, anointing her as an A-List pop star before she had a second single out. Rodrigo was already a known superfan of Swift, and the two seemed pretty tight at first. The media was all over it, crowning Olivia as Taylor’s heiress in the emotional pop singer-songwriter succession. Swift even commented “That’s my baby and I’m really proud” on an Instagram post from the time, and later sent her a handwritten letter and personalized ring. Rodrigo called her the “kindest individual in the world” when speaking to Billboard in April of 2021.

Things shifted quickly from there. On May 21st, 2021, Rodrigo released her album “Sour,” which borrowed the piano melody from Swift’s “New Year’s Day” for the Rodrigo song “1 step forward, 3 steps back.” Swift and Antonoff were credited, and the interpolation was pre-approved, but it didn’t stop there. Rodrigo’s biggest hit from the album was “deja vu,” and that song, as it turns out, may have borrowed heavily from the Swift song “Cruel Summer.” Specifically, the shouty bridge, which definitely sounds similar to me (see below). You can decide for yourself; whatever the truth, Swift and Antonoff were credited two months later in July, and the Taylor Swift-Olivia Rodrigo love affair was cut short.

The two have not been seen together in public since, nor have they interacted on social media, or at any of the awards shows they both attended. Every celebrity in the world, it seemed, attended a night of the Eras Tour—except for Olivia Rodrigo.

Red (Taylor’s Version) was released on November 12th, 2021, along with “Nothing New,” around eleven months after Taylor would've become aware of Olivia Rodrigo. The song’s lyrics reference a 17 year-old who give Taylor credit for her influence. The song’s lyrics also suggest that the existence of this 17 year-old fills Taylor Swift with unbearable dread and jealousy. How old was Olivia Rodrigo when “Driver’s License” came out, you might wonder? Seventeen.

Nearly three years later, Taylor released The Tortured Poets Department during the back half of the highest-grossing stadium tour in world history. I have much (too much) to say about that album, but for now I just want to talk about “Clara Bow,” perhaps the strongest track from the project.

In her later era, Taylor Swift has complexified her songwriting. These days, her songs tend to contain more than one idea, and shift perspective and thematic mode quickly enough to demand repeat listens. Clara Bow, the purported subject of this song, was an early silent film star who succumbed to alcoholism and mental illness. But Taylor Swift is really the subject of this song, the one who was “picked like a rose,” elevated to stardom. In the song, Taylor takes on the voice of “Suits from L.A.,” who say:

This town is fake, but you're the real thing

Breath of fresh air through smoke rings

Take the glory, give everything

Promise to be dazzling

//

"You look like Stevie Nicks

In '75, the hair and lips

Crowd goes wild at her fingertips

Half moonshine, a full еclipse

Here, Swift calls back to the imagery of “The Lucky One,” fantasizing about being the shiny new thing in the mid-70s. The L.A. “suits” speaking to her, telling her how special she is, reminds me of Pink Floyd’s classic “Have a Cigar,” which features a cruel-voiced agent, crassly pitching his services and asking, “By the way, which one’s Pink?”

The bridge of “Clara Bow”—again, Swift’s most direct thematic lyrics, or narrative payoff, will almost always come at the bridge—makes it clear just how seriously she thinks about the drawbacks of fame.

Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours

Demanding more

Only when your girlish glow flickers just so

Do they let you know

It's hell on earth to be heavenly

Them's the breaks, they don't come gently

Taylor Swift is 35 years old now; she was only 16 when “Tim Mcgraw” came out (great fucking song, by the way). More than half of her life has been spent chasing the dragons of fame/fortune/beauty, and while she doesn’t show any signs of letting up, her lyrics are starting to reflect a dark awareness of the costs associated with the life she leads.

The song becomes truly cutting in its final verse, when Taylor takes on the voice of the “suits” one more time. But this time, they aren't speaking to her. They're speaking to a different young star.

You look like Taylor Swift

In this light, we're lovin' it

You've got edge, she never did

The future's bright, dazzling

You could say this is about Olivia Rodrigo; you could say it’s about someone else. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s about people like her.

What matters is that Taylor Swift is looking off the cliff’s edge, nearing forty years old, having scaled peaks that the Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks of the world never approached. She would be forgiven for wondering what the future holds, as her youth recedes. Not just what’s next, but what’s left.

Taylor Swift loves history. This is someone who wrote a Joni Mitchell tribute at 22, and pulls names like Clara Bow from the depths of early-20th century Wikipedia. She knows the stories surrounding the rise and fall of female icons, stories that ended before Taylor Swift was even born. In other words, she knows what came before her. In these songs, we learn that Taylor Swift also knows who is coming after her.

What she chooses to do with that knowledge—how she chooses to distinguish competitor from collaborator, and how her various fame-related pathologies manifest through song—is worthy of continued attention.

In the meantime, as she tells us on “Nothing New,” Taylor Swift will continue to feel time moving. In this, at least, she is deeply relatable.