Taylor Swift - Mirrorball

There's been many songs I've related my emotions and experience with, but occasionally a song comes into my life and I think "um, excuse me, how the fuck do you know exactly what's going on inside my head?" and that was this song, my favourite from Folklore (favourite from Evermore is “Gold Rush” so far) and to this date one of the best examples I can think of that demonstrate Swift’s knack for lyrics of unusual emotional sophistication that can also entwine the sonics with how the words are absorbed.

A dream-pop song driven by a glimmering but unhurried guitar slowly arpeggiating the chords and a faint-but-driving pulse from the drums whose brief fills also continue a gently-spinning motion with enough *distance* in the mix that you can almost imagine it like an object slowly rotating and reflecting light in different directions. And the melody is one of her best ever, exchanging between her upper and lower registers convey that right balance of feeling intimate and enigmatic. But it’s the way the lyrics take the extended metaphor laid out by the title and become both about an artist’s relationship to their fame and audience, but also an even larger metaphor for social behaviour too. The chorus line “Hush! When no-one is around my dear/You’ll find me on my tallest tiptoes/Spinning in my highest heels, love/Shining just for you” I’ve interpreted a dozen ways some of them for Swift - a statement of romantic devotion to her partner (something the intimacy of “I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight” also implies); the feeling of having to perfectly perform and rehearse every move you make in the public eye, but also a comment on her ability to re-invent herself in the public eye and a promise to continue doing so as she ages into her career (something the follow-up line “I know they said the end is near/But I’m still on my tallest tiptoes/Spinning in my highest heels, love/Shining just for you” furthers while also feeling uncertain and overworked).

Then there are the interepations I’ve made for myself: My hard experiences with social ostracism growing up and persistent need to become a more socially-accepted person meant I felt like I had to learn social skills and cues from other people around me and I more or less spent my teen years trying to learn that (yes I was a nerdy gifted kid with few friends at primary school who burned out hard in secondary, how did you guess?). And in my adult life where I work in hospo with years of practicing my customer service skills to my own professional commitments to my band and my partner and family, and also - of course - how much I love performing for people. Hearing those lines really did take me back to thinking about how much time I’ve spent trying to live up to the expectations of everyone around me, something that was starting to really wear me out by the end of last year. It encapsulates everything that is both rewarding and wearying about all of that in a way that is somehow both very intimate and existentially terrifying (I remember PhilosophyTube describing a theory of the self being defined in front of an audience made by Hegel, which this song *also* reminded me of). It makes all the other lyrics - her declaration that “I can change everything about me to fit in”, the way “You are not like the regulars/The masquerade revelers/Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten” think of how volatile the spectacle of celebrity can be (including one harrowing admission from her Miss Americana documentary about having an eating disorder while touring for 1989 at the height of her fame where she thought it was normal to feel like fainting after performing a 2-hour concert each night - that says a lot of horrifying things about the abuse of fame I don’t think I need to elaborate on) and the admission at the end of the bridge “I’m still trying everything to keep you looking at me” - fall into place. A song about an object with many reflective surface that also reflects in many different ways. Just like a uh… oh nevermind.