I became a new Taylor Swift fan last year. The release of Midnights brought Swift off the radio and into my headphones. Slowly, I added Reputation, then Lover, then Folklore, Evermore and eventually the rest. The slow burn of adding one album and then another and another to my regular rotation was surprising. I was shocked to discover not only how much of her music I already knew, but how it all stitched together and made something for every season of the year and season of life. This music I thought I knew, was unchanged, but something else entirely.
As I listened, I began to recognize her lyrical patterns, words she uses on every album, metaphor structures repeated and rewritten and improved over the course of her career. One perspective is that Taylor Swift is not very creative, not the masterful writer that some claim her to be, but repetitive and basic. My perspective is that she is obsessive about a certain form of expression, that she is indeed, improving and developing universa…
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