On with Kara Swisher - Into It: A Portrait of Artist as Taylor Swift

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

Today, we’re sharing a special episode of Into It: A Vulture Podcast with Sam Sanders about one of Kara’s favorites: Taylor Swift. What is the meaning of Taylor Swift? She's performed damsel in distress, but represents women’s empowerment. She’s a confessional artist, but is careful about how much she reveals. She's an adult, but is often still viewed as the teenager she used to be. On the eve of Midnights, Sam dives into the mythos and craft of Taylor Swift with NPR music critic Ann Powers about her place in history among the likes of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Adele, and Beyoncé. We also hear about the culture that's haunting us: Explain to us again why Bobby Cannavale's character in The Watcher wants to replace a Carrara marble countertop with butcher block? To make red sauce? To listen to more of Into It: A Vulture Podcast with Sam Sanders, follow the show: https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/into-it-a-vulture-podcast-with-sam-sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. It's on! Hey, I'm Kara Swisher, and this is not On with Kara Swisher. Instead, we're going to share another show from New York Magazine we think you'll like. In fact, I know you'll love it. It's called Into It, and it's hosted by my colleague, the one and only Sam Sanders. In every episode, Sam brings in a special guest to dive into the pop culture topics we can't stop thinking about and unpack

why they matter. In this one, Sam speaks to music critic Ann Powers about one of my faves, Taylor Swift. They explore how Swift's carefully crafted persona has changed over time, the public's misconceptions about her, and what her legacy will be. Obviously, I'd like to discuss all of these topics and more, including the power she's had over giants like Apple and Ticketmaster, in an interview with Taylor herself. We've asked about 406 times, and we will ask a 407th because we really want to have a chat with her. But that won't happen just yet. So till then, listen to Sam.

And if you're into it, search for Into It in your podcast app and hit follow. It's me. Hi. And it's me. Hi. And it's me. Hello, I'm Sam Sanders, and you are listening to Into It from Vulture, Taylor's version. Welcome to a new series I'm calling Midnight's Mayhem With Me. Anywho, Taylor Swift is out with a new album this week, I'm sure you've heard. I'm going to be using this technologically advanced device to help me.

It's called Midnight's. It's her 10th. And most likely it will be a hit. Like all the other ones. As we enter this Taylor weekend, I have been thinking a lot about Taylor. And I'm realizing I'm not quite sure how I feel about her. I like a lot of the songs. Blank Space first among them.

I pay attention to what she's up to. Okay, so this is a video reenactment of my Tumblr post about fall. I even watched her documentary. Just gonna go have fun. No one out there that I know of in the audience actively hates me. But of all the big pop stars of her era, I feel like I know her

the least. And if you ask me to sum up in like 20 seconds or less the meaning of Taylor Swift, I couldn't do it. Yes, I agree. But then, well, okay, we're talking before we're actually talking. Yes, Swift, I couldn't do it. Yes, I agree. But then, well, okay, we're talking before we're actually talking. Yes, okay, we're going to save it. We're going to get there.

But I'd like to try. So on the eve of midnight, I'm going to chat now with truly one of my favorite music writers of all time, Ann Powers. I'm a critic and correspondent for NPR Music and also have written a bunch of books, done a lot of things, and followed Taylor Swift for many, many years. Anne has been thinking a lot about Taylor Swift

since as long as there has been Taylor Swift music on the radio. To make a massive hit that feels very personal. And I'm ready for that. I would love to hear what that would be okay yeah so knowing that we can't have a full conversation about the new album i do want to ask you something i've been thinking about a lot as the new taylor swift album comes to us i think a lot about pop stars and what they mean what their philosophy of self is and i want to talk about the meaning of Taylor Swift as a pop star and as a woman in pop some 15 plus years into her career. And I want to do this

because I feel like when you really think about what Taylor Swift means, she's harder to nail down than it might seem. It feels like a lot of the conventional wisdom about her isn't really true. This idea that she's performing damsel in distress and white bestial virgin, well, not at all anymore, right? This idea that she writes songs just for teenage girls, well, not anymore. This idea that she's a prude, but also she's had a bunch of famous boyfriends that she's talked about. This idea that she represents women's empowerment, yet she's been in some petty feuds with other women.

And I still am not sure how to feel about her whole squad era. I just feel conflicted and confused by her public persona more than I do about other pop stars. I can see that. Why? Why? I don't know why she confuses me so much, but she confuses me. Well, I think one thing that always is important to remember about Taylor

is where she started within country music and that sort of consummate craftsperson that she was, even when she was a teenager. If disclosure is one of her métiers, if disclosure is one of her main ways of operating in the world, just remember that she comes from a place where Disclosure is always crafted so minutely that you can read it as a universal no matter how personal it gets. That's what country music is. Country music is people writing songs that are deeply personal in rooms with other people, like in an office. You go into an office and you're going to write a song about your brother's alcoholism or your husband's bad

experience in Iraq or something, but you're doing it in an office as a professional effort. And you're going to workshop it. Right. And you're going to workshop it and you're going to look for the perfect rhyme. So I think these are sort of like two rival impulses within Taylor Swift. There's the part of her that's always going to be that high achiever, that high school high achiever, you know, who wants to craft the perfect song

and is looking, you know, toward a lineage that perhaps she's abandoned officially, but that is in her blood of country music. You're on the phone with your girlfriend She's upset, she's abandoned officially, but that is in her blood of country music. You're on the phone with your girlfriend, she's upset She's going off about something that you said She doesn't get your humor like I do And then there is the other part of Taylor who looks to genius elders like a Joni Mitchell and says,

I need, that's another part of her high achievement. Like, I want to learn how to truly disclose. I hear a constant pulling back in Taylor. Like, I hear a constant, oh, how much can I say? How can I say this musically in a way that still makes it relevant to a 14-year-old and her mom and her aunt, you know, and the radio programmer? I still want to play my music, but where it feels personal. So she's got that super ego. She has the strongest super ego of any artist, you know, any musical artist you've ever had. Well, I just think her

music is so much about kind of order in storytelling and creating the perfect frameworks and finding the perfect characters. And so she's got that intellectual side, just like constantly challenging her emotional side, you know? And so for me, she doesn't seem that elusive. She just seems well-managed internally. And I think that's frustrating for us, though, you know? Yeah, because for me, it's like, on the one hand, she is an incredibly confessional singer-songwriter who wants to share so much of herself in a way that feels raw.

Yes, absolutely. But she's also a very calculating pop star. Totally, at the same time. Yeah, and usually those two things don't go together. Right. And yet, and yet, you know? And so I think it's hard for me to wrap my head around that, you know? To make a probably completely inappropriate leap, and people are going to jump on me big time for this, it's kind of like Bob Dylan. Oh, my goodness.

Expound. Tell me everything. Well, I just think Bob Dylan's always talked about himself as a channel for the culture and stuff. But there's a side of him in his songwriting that's very much like about kind of being a ruffian, being an outsider. But then no one from the beginning to this point in his career, no one in music has been as aware of his own legacy, of his own reputation, of his own place in history. And I see that ambition in Taylor Swift. And I think maybe that's what's confusing too, because, okay, we get it with a Bob Dylan in our patriarchal society that favors white men. Okay, Bob Dylan wants to be great. He wants to be historical. How can a young woman who looks like a supermodel, how can she dare to think she could be historical?

And yet she does. And yet she does. And she's very much aware of where and how she wants to fit into history. It seems her entire career she's been quietly chasing Joni Mitchell. Because she knows. This is a clear lineage that she wants to establish. And it's funny. I feel like she worries about legacy a lot more than someone like Beyonce or Adele does, which is interesting to me. Well, I think Beyonce thinks about legacy in terms of her family.

When I look in your eyes, I feel alive. Like literally, and then also sort of business-wise. Like she's built an empire. We call it an empire. We could also call it a family. It's like literally what am I passing on to the next generation? And also culturally and politically, what am I passing on to the next generation?

I think Taylor's goals are much more individualistic. I want to be remembered as a great artist, capital A. And heck, we could have a whole other conversation about if it's even possible to inhabit the role of the great artist in our moment of virality when everything is so fragmented. I'm not sure, but she's gone pretty far in making the case for herself. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mentioned earlier a lot of the conventional wisdom of Taylor that I find, if not true, at least confusing. What is a piece of well-accepted conventional wisdom about Taylor Swift that you think isn't really true at all? That she's petty. I don't think she's petty. I don't think she's petty. I think she is embedding kind of serious messages in these very individualistic,

very seemingly confessional tales. I just have been like biting my tongue here, wanting to talk about the scarf, the immortal scarf. Left in my scarf there, it's your sister's hat. No, the famous Jake Gyllenhaal scarf. I've got it in your drawer even now. And I can't remember who wrote about that song. It's like about her losing her virginity.

Oh, interesting. Oh, your sweet disposition and my wide-eyed gaze. I'm not entering into the cheap discussion of whether that's really when she lost her virginity, but it's very interesting if you think about that song and that symbol in that way, because then it doesn't become petty anymore. That's like a major moment in any young person's life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so I think oftentimes what's happening in the songs that are the most kind of connected to a celebrity narrative, she's actually reaching through her personal narrative, always trying to reach through it to these milestones in people's lives, and especially in the lives of the young women who are so devoted to her. If you are looking at the entire arc of Taylor Swift's career from like Tim McGraw to now and you had to make a one or two sentence thesis statement about that career, what is it? Okay, I think I'm ready to do this even though I didn't close notes it. All right, let's go. I think she took the confessional songwriter tradition into a new era by paying attention to everything around her and engaging with things we wouldn't expect someone in her identity category, a white, young white woman to engage with, like hip hop, for example, like the way rappers talk about themselves, you know, as well as those more conventional sources like Joni Mitchell and the internet, all of these things. She looked at how young people are forming their identities and forming their own truths.

And she figured out a way to write songs that spoke to that, to write songs that spoke to that. We can't make any promises That also honored the lineage, the classic lineage of confessional singer-songwriting. Dive ball on the east side where you at Phone lights at my nightstand in the black Come here, you can meet me in the back And I think in doing that,

I'm never going to call her avant-garde, but she's far more innovative than most people give her credit for. Yeah. And I think she will go down as one of the greats, inarguably, but that's the reason. that's very much of the 21st century, very much relevant to the fragmentation of the self, to the way ourselves are in dialogue with our persona. Every one of us, you know, we're all in dialogue with our Instagram feeds. And she, without making a big pronouncement about doing that, she did it. She found a way to write the perfect pop song about being a human who's also a persona. And we're all doing that now. More with music critic Ann Powers after the break.

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Yeah. When I was a youth, the people who were like the singer songwriters just with the guitar their whole shtick was i retreat from the world exactly years and what taylor does is she says i'm going to be as confessional of a singer songwriter but i'm going to have my eyes peeled the whole time exactly she has become this surprisingly successful composite of megawatt pop star and bedroom singer songwriter. Yeah, yeah. And to do both as well as she's done for well over a decade, that is a feat of business and marketing and strategy, whether you like the songs or not. I totally agree. I mean, I've always thought that a better comparison in some ways than Joni Mitchell

is Carole King. Really? One of us is changing, or maybe we've just stopped trying. And it's too late, baby. Now, Carole King, who also came out of kind of a song factory, was a songwriter in the Brill Building, wrote incredible songs like Will You Love Me Tomorrow, the greatest hits of the, co-wrote them with her then partner, Jerry Goffin,

and then went on to make the album that, and you know, Joni, I still think Blue is number one, but that many people think is the ultimate singer-songwriter album, which is Tapestry, Carole King's album Tapestry. Oh, yeah. Which does exactly the same thing that you're describing, Sam. It melds the essence of Top 40 Pop with, you know, these very profound disclosures about one woman's life. Very much connected with the exact place where, you know, feminism was, where women's liberation was at the time, and yet it is enduring and it appeals across generations.

So far away, doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? You know, Taylor's different in that she read, or 1989 read, you know, you could argue that's sort of like her tapestry era. But she doesn't really have one mega album like that. But I do think she has that gift for making pop music her own. Yeah. So that's where we're going with this. We're saying she is a real living woman who is also the perfect product, the perfect model. I don't know. Does that make her like an AI? Oh my gosh, she's a cyborg. That's where we're ending

up. You know, it's funny. I talked with Gia Tolentino when her last book, Trick Mirror, came out and she had this chapter about the cyborgification of popular culture. And I was like, who was our biggest cyborg in popular culture? Like human, but better. She's like, oh, it's Beyonce. It's Beyonce. You know, in my book, Good Booty, I wrote about Britney as a cyborg. Britney's not in control of her narrative in the same way and wasn't, as we all know.

But the way she was so perfectly suited to be manipulated by technology, her voice, you know, like that was the voice for that. Here's something Taylor might not admit to or might not like, but I'm going to say, I bet she listened a lot to those. I mean, there was a reason she wanted to work with Max Martin back in the day. I bet she was like aiming for something British. And, you know, I think that's something that maybe Taylor ultimately couldn't do. Maybe she just, and I don't think it's about her talent, but maybe she couldn't drain herself from the work in the way that, for whatever reason, positive or negative, that Britney could. She couldn't become just a vessel for technology.

She always had to reassert her personality. Yeah. And it's like when I think of like, and I'll take it back to Taylor in a bit, but when I think about the version of white woman that Britney Spears was performing at her peak, it was almost white woman at sacrifice. She gave her body and her voice to the culture,

to the zeitgeist. And she said, give me a hit, I'll sing it. Give me a video, I'll dance in it. I'm a vessel for you to have fun. Like Britney Spears existed just to allow us to have fun through her body, through her visuals, through her music. And when Taylor would ever get that close to it, she would never give herself away enough to just become a vessel. That's so, oh my God, that's so profound and true. I just remember one time years ago, I was working on a museum exhibit. I was helping curate. And I went to the house where Britney's costume designers had a bunch of her costumes, including like the toxic costume.

Oh, yeah. But they talked about how she had the perfect body. Like she had a body that was the ultimate body to design these clothes for. And when now we know how hard she had to work to maintain that body, and it really is a tragic story. It's a tragic story that kind of like jumps, now we're going to completely far field, but jumps back to the Whitney story, this person who had like a perfect voice and yet had to give herself her soul for that voice, you know? And Taylor never, I can't think of one moment in her career where she would be associated with sacrifice. Yeah.

There's this thing that Taylor says in her Miss Americana documentary that really stuck with sacrifice. Yeah. There's this thing that Taylor says in her Miss Americana documentary that really stuck with me. You know, there's this thing people say about celebrities that they're frozen at the age they got famous. And that's kind of

what happened to me. And when I first heard it, I said, yeah, we'll always see Taylor as the 15-year-old crimped-haired girl singing Tim McGraw. That's what we see her as. But then I thought, I don't see Beyonce as 17 and in Destiny's Child anymore.

I don't see Adele as being 18, you know, doing those first small, small songs and albums. Taylor, more than any other artist, has stayed almost crystallized when it comes to age in our imagination, even as she matures very clearly visually and artistically. What's up with that? Why is that? Because I think that that statement, you're always the same age you were when you first got famous, is the most applicable to her more than any other artist working today. I think about Kanye West. He is a different man than the college dropout. Oh, hell yeah.

Different people, right? But we still do this thing where Taylor is 15. It's a Taylor thing and I can't put my finger on it, so I want you to. Well, I do have an answer for this and it goes into a sensitive place. So I think about the great song by The Pretenders by Chrissy Hynde,

Middle of the Road, where there's a line in that song where she says, I'm not the one I used to be. I've got a kid. I'm 33. Taylor doesn't have a child. Taylor is not a mother. And in our patriarchal society, when does a woman change? A woman changes when she becomes a mother. I think, like all the women you mentioned, they became mothers.

And I think that is maybe one of the main reasons why we don't accept Taylor as an adult, because the childless woman remains a strange figure in our society, an anomalous figure. And we don't know how to accept childless women as adults. So, hey, I'm going to thank you, Taylor, for not having kids yet, because I think we really need more childless women out there showing their path into, she's not middle-aged, but full adulthood. We need that. You know, it's funny. I asked you to give a thesis statement for Taylor and you did so beautifully in this chat. And I've been thinking in this whole chat and all week, if I had to give a thesis statement about Taylor Swift, what would it be in advance

of this new album, Midnights? And I think I'm there. And I think I just always go back to high school with Taylor because even as she's become an adult, she still writes about high school love and all of that. And that is like a very fertile ground for her. And when I think of Taylor as an artist and what she wants to accomplish, she wants to be a pop star who is the homecoming queen and also valedictorian. She wants to be the pop star that is ubiquitously popular

and the cool girl. But she also wants to get all A's in everything and get the award for best student. Yes, totally. And she has done that really well. turning into the former prom queen, former valedictorian, coming back for the 10 or 15 year reunion with her shoulders down a bit and ready to tell you some stories. And I wonder if that's what we're going to get from this next version of Taylor. And I got to say, the version of Taylor that I most want to hang out with is not the prom queen, not the valedictorian.

It is the grown woman coming back for the reunion, smoking cigarettes in the back and talking shit. That's what I want. So that is my thesis statement of Taylor if I had to give one. I am a little worried

that her midnight confessions might be a little mild. I don't know. You know, I mean, who knows? Who knows? But we know she's lived a little. We know that she's had some wild nights. Give us a wild night.

I'll give you a cigarette. Right? I'll light it up for you. Put me in a lyric. I'll take it. Yeah. I can't help but think about her and everybody making music this year and compare them to what Beyonce is doing of course and I feel like Beyonce has gotten

to a level of fame and power where she just does exactly what she wants to do and she made a brilliant dance album full of musical ideas and musical throwbacks kind of just for fun I agree and said take it or leave it no videos here it is and she just reached this level where she's so at the height of her powers she could spend as much money to make exactly what she wants and even her just like hanging out in the band hall after school having fun with her band it's still brilliant and i wonder what is the musical equivalent of that for someone like Taylor. But will Taylor ever give herself up to the music enough to make her own renaissance? Renaissance feels like Beyonce

saying, fuck everything else. It's just the fun music. Yes, that's very true. And I'm not sure if Taylor Swift will ever be that kind of pop star. that kind of pop star? That is a good question. Can she do that? Because in a way on Renaissance, of course, Beyonce is still present, but she gave the spotlight to others. She gave the center to others, to her historical reference points, to the queer community, to her collaborators and even the samples to Big Frida again, which is so cool. And it's not that I think Taylor is afraid of giving away the spotlight exactly, but I don't think she experiences the spotlight in that same way. Again, the self, herself, her making of a self has been her, that's her artistic project.

So how do you become selfless, which is sort of what Beyonce did on that record, when the self is really everything for you? And I don't mean that in an insulting way. I think many great artists, you know, it's like she, we could think of her as a self-portrait artist. I'm still trying everything to keep you looking at me. self-portrait artist. You know, like that painter who paints themselves over and over again. Again, the Joni Mitchell.

And what is in the frame if it's not Taylor? Who is in the frame if it's not Taylor? I don't know. Thanks again to music critic Ann Powers. Thank you. on the same page. It's time for a change. It's time for Grammarly. Grammarly's AI ensures your team gets their points across the first time, eliminating misunderstandings and streamlining collaboration. It goes beyond basic grammar to help tailor writing

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need indeed. Geist. About all the things we can't stop thinking about. The culture that's haunting you, haunting me, haunting all of us, for better or worse. What's happening? All right, this is Anusha, Managing Editor at Vulture, and this week I've been absolutely haunted by the work of Colleen Hoover, a wildly popular romance author who was discovered by BookTok during the pandemic.

And she literally outsold the Bible this year. Her books typically feature a white cis hetero romance and the protagonist is almost always working through some sort of major past trauma, having a lot of emotions and a lot of sex. Anyway, she has a new book out this week. It starts with us, which has already been on the Amazon bestseller list for 13 weeks and is certainly number one by the time you're hearing this. But I guess rather than explain why her work is haunting me, I'm just going to let it haunt you too. So don't say I didn't warn you, but without further ado, a dramatic line reading from Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. Thank you for this baby, she says from the backseat. He's beautiful. I laugh.

You're responsible for the beautiful part, Rachel. The only thing he got from me was his balls. She laughs. She laughs hard. Oh my God, I know, she says. They're so big. We both laugh at our son's big balls. Hi, my name is Lauren Passell of Podcast the podcast the newsletter i love everything you've done sam

um i'm sam i'm so glad you asked about a pop culture moment that has been haunting us um do you remember in 2021 when there's this 22 year old namedold named Mia Ponsetto, and she accused this 14-year-old kid of stealing her phone and basically attacked him in the lobby of this hotel in Manhattan. And then she had the nerve to go on an interview with Gil King wearing a daddy hat. You seem to have attacked this teenager about the phone, and then it turned out he didn't even have your phone. Okay, so that's the thing.

Do you wanna get to that? Gail is just trying to get Mia to hold herself accountable and Mia is not having it. And the girl, she said enough to Gail. She said enough to Gail King wearing a daddy hat. Old enough to know better. The hotel did know better. So I will say you're 22. I get it. Enough. The hotel did have my phone. The hotel did end up having my phone. That image of her wearing that daddy hat, I think about it. I think about it once a week.

I, it made me understand that I don't understand people. And this is the moment that haunts me. Hi, this is Catherine Van Arundelk. I'm a critic at Vulture. And right now I cannot stop thinking about countertops. I am specifically thinking about countertops on television and what it means when some characters get obsessed about certain parts of their homes and what their countertops need to be. And specifically what I'm thinking about is the new Netflix show The Watcher, which is an adaptation of a New York Magazine story by our own Reeves Weedman. But in that show, the main character, played by Bobby Cannavale, buys a new house, which has Carrera marble, and

he is just obsessed with ripping out the Carrera marble countertops because he can't make red sauce on it? Well, you see, I don't like Carrera marble. You know, I'm Italian. I like to cook. Carrera marble is Italian, you fucking moron! Which I then googled, and yeah,

I guess it does stain more easily, except then he puts in a butcher block island. And what stains more than wood? And what do these shows mean if they can't even get the details right about the countertops, and why won't people use courts? Those are my thoughts. Thanks again to Catherine, Lauren, and Anusha. Listeners, do you have a culture, guys?

A thing in the culture that's been haunting you for days or weeks or even years? Share it with us. The more specific you are, the better. Send us a short voice memo to intuitatvulture.com. Intuitatvulture.com. Intuit at Vulture.com. All right, Intuit is hosted by me, Sam Sanders. The show is produced by Danae West, Travis Larchuk, Jelani Carter, and Gabi Grossman. Our fearless editor is Jordana Hokeman.

Our engineer is Daniel Turek. Our music is composed by Breakmaster Cylinder. And Hannah Rosen is the editorial director of audio at New York Magazine. All right, listeners, we are back next Thursday with a new episode. Till then, all my best to all the Swifties as you dive deep into Midnight's. All right, bye.

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