Like many, I can’t assist evaluating Taylor Swift’s newest single, “The Destiny of Ophelia”, together with her 2008 hit, “Love Story”, which was the primary track of hers that I ever heard. It’s a pure comparability to make, on condition that each songs are re-tellings of Shakespearean tragedies. What’s attention-grabbing to me, although, isn’t solely Swift’s progress as a songwriter since “Love Story”, but in addition how a lot has modified about the best way that we hearken to music over the intervening 17 years.
Again in 2008, we barely had social media (I had Fb, however my associates and I primarily used it to share blurry photograph dumps of our varied escapades at college). I heard Love Story not as a result of it was trending through any algorithm or as a result of I’d seen an Instagram publish or tweet about it, however as a result of my finest buddy was listening to it on repeat and cajoled me into dancing and singing alongside together with her whereas getting ready for events, clutching hairbrushes like tongue-in-cheek clichés of teenage girlhood.
Throughout my first listen-through of Swift’s newest album, The Lifetime of a Showgirl, my mind was instantly busy selecting up threads of lyrics that she’s written and tales that she’s instructed over time. Whilst I teased out which means from the lyrics and danced to the catchy tunes, although, I used to be already hyper conscious of how the album is likely to be obtained by the remainder of the world in a means that I don’t suppose I used to be a decade or possibly even just some years in the past. I instantly discovered myself scrolling countless articles and response movies dissecting the lyrics, album artwork, advertising and marketing, and Swift’s private life from each conceivable angle. It made me surprise if I used to be listening to Swift’s music by way of the lens of different folks’s reactions now, reasonably than from my very own intestine.
Sure, listening to what different folks consider one thing is essential; these cultural conversations are attention-grabbing and may actually be enjoyable. I used to be wanting to seize my cellphone and message that exact same finest buddy who first launched me to Taylor Swift and listen to her response to the brand new album. However I can’t assist pondering that seeing hundreds of strangers’ takes in such fast succession isn’t how we’re meant to obtain or interact with artwork.
After which there’s the truth that Taylor Swift fandom tends to be very all-or-nothing—in keeping with the narrative you’re both a Swiftie or a hater—and this sense has solely elevated with time and the rise of social media, reaching a fever pitch with this newest album launch. As Substack author @asoflatebymartina put it, “Your ideas about music will be scrambled and messy, and two issues will be true without delay.”
I believe that Swift herself has inspired the reasonably black-and-white nature of the best way folks interact together with her work, given how masterfully she navigates social media and the entire advertising and marketing and enterprise round promoting her music. She constructed a really loyal fandom, and her dedication to sustaining management over her popularity and legacy is such part of her music that her diss tracks and efforts to have full possession over all of her work are legendary. Whereas in some ways a few of that is admirable, I believe there’s additionally a darkish aspect to it which is a component and parcel of the best way that social media is altering our expertise of artwork and leisure.
Algorithms are designed to seize our consideration and improve our engagement on-line, and to promote us one thing, whether or not that’s a product or a way of life and concepts. If we’re not cautious we’re held captive and pushed additional and additional into echo chambers and on-line niches, because the algorithm feeds us extra of the form of content material and matters we have now already engaged with.
The French thinker René Girard talked concerning the risks of mimetic want, the phenomenon of needing issues not since you actually need them however as a result of these round you want (or have) these issues. I don’t suppose it’s excessive to recommend that the entire purpose algorithms work is right down to mimetic want. Superstar and a fascination with public figures is unquestionably as historic as human nature, however social media has discovered a solution to endlessly feed that urge for food in unhealthy methods.
Experiencing Swift’s Eras Tour in London final summer time jogged my memory of my behavior of choosing the songs that I like or that talk to me, placing them on a playlist, and forgetting that the remainder of her songs even exist. There have been many songs which I knew all of the phrases to but in addition many who I didn’t, whereas it appeared like everybody round me knew each single line. I used to be reminded that the eras of her music that I don’t like a lot, that don’t maintain the identical emotional resonance for me, are another person’s favourite. Repute is my least favourite album, however then I do know somebody whose life was turned the wrong way up by betrayal who finds deep resonance with that Swift period. One other buddy, whose companion left her after dangling the potential of marriage on and off for a few years, relates deeply to The Tortured Poets Division.
After I take into consideration the artists behind the work which means probably the most to me, from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf’s writing to Joni Mitchell’s music, I by no means love an artist’s entire physique of labor, and infrequently agree wholeheartedly with their life philosophy or need to emulate their life. A part of the work of being alive and engaged with tradition and artwork is being discerning, searching for goodness, magnificence, and fact in all places you look, and discovering out what different folks see in artwork that you just don’t take pleasure in or discover priceless within the hopes of getting your perspective widened (even for those who don’t agree with them).
It’s additionally attention-grabbing to consider how we come to know and admire the artwork that we love. I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell as a result of my mum cherished her, and as I developed my very own style in music her work grew to become the soundtrack to my teen years and early twenties. I believe it was my older sister who first gave me a replica of I Seize the Fortress, a guide that in a short time grew to become so beloved by my closest associates that quotes and references to it grew to become weaved into our lexicon just like the language of a secret society. In distinction, after I take into consideration how I come throughout new artists lately, it’s principally through an algorithm like Spotify’s urged listening, or the discover web page on social media. It’s unhappy to suppose that algorithms at the moment are changing into a key a part of the best way that we uncover and devour artwork, even when it may be useful at instances.
So, what’s the antidote to the algorithm-icization of the best way we interact with artwork in our present period? Maybe simply being acutely aware of the issue and making an effort to rehumanize our consumption of artwork is a begin. Making an effort to speak to associates about what they’re listening to and are watching in the mean time. Going to the cinema in particular person with associates once more. Sending somebody a postcard of a portray you liked from an artwork exhibition you visited, or a quote from a guide that you just’re studying that made you consider them. Asking somebody why they love what they love, and teasing out what it’s concerning the artwork that speaks to them particularly, even for those who don’t share that love. My husband isn’t significantly eager on Joni Mitchell or Taylor Swift, however I really feel cherished and seen when he asks me what I see of their artwork and actually listens to my reply. He loves the best way I like them, even when he doesn’t share that love, and that’s sufficient for me.
We additionally must be intentional about the best way that we develop our style; I believe that is one thing my mother and father had been superb at after I was younger, as they selected what they thought of the perfect of all completely different sorts of music and literature and artwork to show me to, and talked to me about it, in order that as I grew up I used to be capable of gravitate towards artwork that felt significant and have some component of timelessness, reasonably than being pushed by what everybody else round me preferred. David Foster Wallace talked concerning the significance of selecting what to concentrate to in his 2005 graduation deal with at Kenyon Faculty when he stated: “Studying methods to suppose actually means studying methods to train some management over how and what you suppose. It means being acutely aware and conscious sufficient to decide on what you take note of and to decide on the way you assemble which means from expertise. As a result of for those who can’t train this type of selection in grownup life, you’ll be completely hosed.”
We are able to practice our consideration on this means by curating our personal playlists, and holding journals or scrapbooks the place we observe down our favourite lyrics, traces from poetry, and different quotations that encourage or communicate to us. Charlotte Mason known as this holding a “commonplace guide”—generally I additionally consider it as a cultural almanac—and it’s an effective way to suppose extra deeply about what you’re studying and listening to, and tease out the deeper which means of what strikes you as lovely and true within the artwork that you just’re participating with.
After I have a look at my very own curated playlist of Taylor Swift’s music, what emerges is a fancy and nuanced story of the fun, sorrows, challenges, and pitfalls of recent womanhood. The factor that initially drew me to Swift was her wholehearted, unashamed eagerness for all times and love, her sincerity, and her highly effective storytelling. Her music articulates some common feminine experiences in such intelligent methods, and even the songs of hers that I dislike, I usually dislike as a result of they remind me of components of myself and different ladies that I don’t like—associates who damage me who I want I may neglect about, previous wounded delight and sensitivities, unhealthy habits or tendencies I’d reasonably not admit to. That is what I take away from my favourite Swift songs.
It’s okay in case your response to artwork is messy, advanced, even seemingly contradictory. We’re all works in progress. Isn’t this a part of what it means to be human, and to have human responses to artwork? Within the age of AI, we have to maintain onto our humanity in all its complexity greater than ever.
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