Switched on Pop - Generation Taylor: Gracie, Maisie, Phoebe (with Jensen McRae)

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Taylor Swift isn't just a world-conquering pop star at the top of her game, her approach to songwriting has also proven massively influential for an up-and-coming generation of singer-songwriters. Gracie Abrams, Maisie Peters, and Phoebe Bridgers—all of whom opened for Swift during her Eras Tour—each owe a debt to Swift's hyperspecific lyrics, minimal melodies, and bombastic bridges. We break down the key aspects of Swift's songcraft and how we can hear them manifest in the work of her young acolytes, and we speak to another burgeoning artist, the brilliant Jensen McRae, to learn firsthand why Swift's style has been so resonant. Songs Discussed Taylor Swift - All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault) Gracie Abrams - That’s So True Maisie Peters - There It Goes Taylor Swift - Style (Taylor's Version) Taylor Swift - You're On Your Own, Kid Phoebe Bridgers - Motion Sickness Taylor Swift - Our Song Beyoncé - Sandcastles Katy Perry - Unconditionally Taylor Swift - cardigan Dua Lipa - Levitating Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me (Taylor’s Version) Taylor Swift - Dear John (Taylor's Version) Jensen McRae - Praying For Your Downfall Jensen McRae - Savannah Jensen McRae - Immune Taylor Swift - Would've, Could've, Should've MORE Subscribe to our newsletter to receive your own bingo card! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And yet you're not just songwriter Charlie Harding anymore, are you, Charlie? You're music professor, Charlie Harding. That's true. Which is annoying, frankly.

I've caught up and I didn't even do the whole Ph.D. I don't have anything to hold over you anymore. We're basically equals now. It's horrible. I teach you two institutions, so maybe I'm twice the professor you are. Whoa, whoa. Okay, okay. Slow your role, child. You told me something really interesting about your students. And it's something that also resonated with me as a professor as well. You and I have certain musical icons that we looked up to when we were budding musicians. And the generation that's early 20s now, late teens, they have their own. own icons. And who are they? Well, one of the biggest ones is Taylor Swift. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, I feel like in my classes, I'm just constantly hearing songs with allusions to Taylor-like

melodies, her chord progressions, her spoken bridges. You know, Taylor's been in the game for like two decades now, but I feel like she's only just beginning to be a main influence on the next generation of songwriters. She's 35 years old, but as you point out, she's been in this game for a while, so she's had a lot of opportunity to make an impact on impressionable young songwriters. This is something I was also thinking about when I was watching the artist Gracie Abrams on Saturday Night Live back in December. Ladies and gentlemen, Gracie Abrams. I loved her performance, but I really thought, wow, this is someone who was so deeply influenced by Taylor Swift. Brought up on her.

So even though there's so much Swift, course out there, Charles, too much, some might say. I want to take what I hope is an original tack towards approaching this inescapable pop superstar. I want to think about how she's affected other songwriters. Yeah. So how could we do this? Well, first, I think we have to break down some of what the key qualities of Taylor's music are. And then I think we should look at a few different artists who are clearly Swift-pilled. So let's make this even simpler. Let's take artists who opened for Taylor Swift on the ERIS tour.

Sabrina Carpenter? No. Gracie Abrams? Gracie, Maisie Peters, and Phoebe Bridgers. Oh, Phoebe. Cool. And then in the second half of this episode, I sit down with a burgeoning singer-songwriter named Jensen McCray, who has a fourth,

coming album about the ways that Taylor shaped her into a songwriter. Okay, so who do you want to listen to first in this analysis of Generation Taylor Swift? I want to listen to the eponymous figure, Taylor Swift. Let's get our ears around what some of the hallmarks of her writing style might be, and then we can try and detect them in this younger crop of singer-songwriters. I propose there are three things we should listen for when we're thinking of what defines, Taylor Swift music. One, lyrical hyper-specificity.

Two, minimal melodies. And three, bombastic bridges. Okay, so specificity, we're talking red scarves, cardigans, having good style. Charlie, once again, our Vulcan mind meld has made it that you anticipated the song I was going to play for this first category, lyrical hyper-specificity. It has to be

all too well, parentheses, 10-minute version, close parentheses, open parentheses, Taylor's version, close parentheses. I walked to the door with you. The air was cold, but something about it felt like homesome.

And I left in my scarf there at your sister's house and you've still got it in your drawer. Even now. When we're talking about hyper specificity, we're talking about the detail here. The scarf in the drawer, walking in together.

Everything is so cinematic, I would say. It gives you such a clear mental picture as a listener. It's very literary. It's very novelistic. It fills in a lot of the information that other songwriters would leave in the margins. Like co-faculty member, David Welford, always talks about how you want to add furniture to your song. If you can feel the texture of the sofa, you can picture the drawer, the red scarf, it makes it cinematic.

It puts you in the place, so you can imagine yourself in the song. All Too Well is from Swift's album Red, which came out in 2012. But if we go further back in time or further forward in time, we find her using this hyper-specific approach. Like, take an even earlier song, one of my all-time favorites. You belong with me. There are lines in this song that are so detailed that you can't get them out of your head. It's like the introduction to a novel where it's like, this character is wearing this, has their eyes look like this. You can actually see exactly who they are.

And I feel like this comes from her experience as a country writer. Totally. That's where she got her start. In country music is so. detailed. It's so narrative-driven. There's not room for ambiguity. You don't want to be mysterious. You want to say, hey, here I am on my back porch. The door just swung open. I just heard a Tim McGraw song and I can't stop thinking about you. I might be mixing up different Taylor songs in my head, but you have to see where you're going. And I feel like she gets that from her country early days and brings it

into her pop music. And I think that's key because if we're isolating Swift's influence, it has to be different from the mainstream sound of pop. And I think this is one of the key characteristics because can I say that pop music doesn't usually strive for that kind of specificity? In fact, it strives for a vague universality. I mean, that's a vague universality that you're making about vague universality. But I would say that statistically country songs, more specific, hyper-detailed pop songs, party in the USA. Have some fun.

I am absolutely being a generalist here. Sure. But I think this is part of the reason why her music was so influential because it created this imagistic approach to songwriting that young artists heard and were like, I want that. I don't want the generic vague choruses on the radio and not to denigrate them at all, you know. This is the part where I break.

You know, that's a great, that's an epic hook. Yeah, totally. But it's like, it's ambiguous, and that's the point. It's supposed to be accessible to anyone listening, and they can decide what they are breaking free from. Right. When you listen to Taylor Swift, it's a little different. It's her story.

It's very specific, and it puts you in that place, and it allows you as a songwriter to feel empowered to say, I'm gonna tell my story as well. Maybe it's a point of contrast to draw out this, you know, pop genericism versus country specificity in Taylor's writing. We can compare the, metaphors about these stars as presented by her contemporary Duolipa and then by Taylor Swift.

Like, if we go to Duolipa's levitating, we get, if you want to run away with me, I know a galaxy and I can take you for a ride. And you're like, hold on. We're running away to a galaxy, but we're also taking a ride in a car. It's a very interesting mix to metaphor, if you will. Right. Great song. Love that song.

I mean, that got us through the pandemic. But, you know, another pandemic song, Taylor Swift's Cardigan, as for mentioned in her specificity about clothing, also has a line about the stars in the bridge. We can see physical action happening here, right? To kiss in cars and downtown bars was all we needed. We see these characters making out. And then you drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleeding. Highly metaphorical, but you can actually see the action of someone, you know, drawing on someone else's skin. It's very textual. It's very detailed.

And that is, I think, as you pointed out, yeah, what Taylor brings. All right, let's turn from lyrical hyper-specificity to another Taylorism, the minimal melody. Let me be clear what I mean by this, because I feel like Taylor Swift, her melodic approach has been celebrated, but also criticized over the years. It has been said of her that she does not have the range. I am not here to cast judgment on her vocal ability. I will note that her melodies don't have a lot of big leaps. They don't go from really high notes to really low notes. They don't ever go up into that diva range that many vocalists will try to reach to create the maximum emotion.

No, she's following Irving Berlin's guide for writing singable melodies. Keep them mostly within an octave range, mostly stepwise, singable by other people. Right. Irving Berlin, the Tin Pan Alley era composer who wrote White Christmas, putting on the Rits. God bless America, and about like a thousand other songs. Right. It's a very old school kind of approach to melody. The melody is in service of the lyrics, ultimately, is how I think about this approach. You're not really calling attention to the melody itself. You're creating melodies that deliver the lyrics in the most persuasive and effective way possible. And so the result is melodies that often move stepwise through a scale from notes that are neighbors to each other

rather than leaping to these big intervalic distances. And they're melodies that often rhythmically can be sort of simple and straightforward. And they're melodies that can be really catchy because they create such memorable prosody. And by prosody, I mean the way that the lyric and the melody link up really successfully. So what's an example of that? There's so many, but I think I want to go to style from 1989. Midnight. Two notes.

You come and pick me up, no headlights. So we get, on no, we get like a third note. But basically, it's two notes oscillating back and forth. And then it repeats. Long drive. Gooderden burning flames or paradise. Professor. I want to hear your number.

No, you like that? I like that. You like that, doing it for you? Yeah. So minimal melody. notes, just moving in these same patterns over and over again. But it never leaves you wanting as a listener because the punch of these lyrics is so powerful. Midnight. That's a great way to start a song, by the way. And it's very specific too, right? It's like, okay, now immediately as a

listener, you're like, okay, I know what time it is. I'm already like. Seen. Exactly. I'm already creating this sort of vision. Or she's like, it's more like act one, midnight. You come and pick me up, no headlights. Another great line, which is just so evocative. I mean, it's just like, you're already starting to unravel this narrative in your mind. Like, what is happening? Why are the headlights off? You know, there's a lot going on in just that simple sentence. But just as important as the specificity of the lyrics are the prosody of the words. Every single syllable is right where it's meant to be. It matches the melody so perfectly that it never takes you out of the song as a listener. I describe this in my coursework as the sleight of hand that a songwriter is trying to achieve.

You're writing something which is infinitely memorable, but also feels entirely spoken. It's this magic trick. If you accidentally emphasize the wrong syllable, the magic trick doesn't work. If you use too many perfect rhymes and you're like, oh, that's very sing-songy, it doesn't work. she's constantly balancing this highly memorable melodic style with very spoken phrasing that somehow also is often deeply metaphorical in driving the narrative forward. It's a magic trick. Many moons ago we did an episode all about prosody or sometimes called declamation. And you may recall that I played you a song that represents the opposite approach where the melody and the rhythm of the lyrics, the syllabus of the lyrics, the syllabi.

globalists do not match, and how for me that really often takes me out of a song, I think we have to listen to Katie Perry's unconditionally. Unconditionally. Whatever the merits of this song are, I will never know them. Because as soon as I hear the prosity of that line, uncondent. Wait, I can't even, my brain can't even make my mouth do it. It hurts so much. Right. Unconditional. How does it go? Unconditional. Like, what is that word? It doesn't even sound like a, it doesn't mean anything.

Unconditional. If I said that in conversation, you would look at me like I was crazy. Yes. I feel like Lady Gaga gets away with this in her newer song, Abra-Kadabra, which we spoke about, where she's like, apricat-abra. Abra-dabra. Right. And I would never say that artists should never intentionally mispronounce a word in the service of artistry.

Like, I think there is a time and a place to do that that can actually be even more powerful than if you pronounced it correctly. Not to throw too much shade at Katie Perry, but this particular example just does not do it for me. And I know you have one too. I do, yeah. This is where I have totally alienated the beehive. I think that Lemonade is a perfect album, save for, One moment, the first line of the ballad, Sandcastles. We built Sancastles. Nate, would you like to go on a little beach vacation with me and go build San Castles?

Sancastles. It's such a beautiful song. I know. She should have just sung it. We built San Castles. I mean, that's quite nice, actually. We built sand castles. It's a little weird, man.

I have a strong feeling we're going to hear from some listeners saying that that pronunciation is actually exactly the reason why they like the song. Yeah, of course. I have shared this with some of my students and they're like, you are definitively wrong. So here's the thing. Whether you love it or not, you will not find that kind of prosody in the work of Taylor Swift. I would be very curious, actually, if anyone can point us to a Taylor Swift song where she intentionally mispronounces a word. By the way, there are some words like abercadabra, for example, where they do an... invites that playing around, especially in, like, post-choruses where you're playing with the sound of

language. That might exist. But definitely not in a verse. Like, I wonder if even in like, shake it off, does she ever go, like, shake it off instead of shake it off? I don't think she does, Charlie. No. She keeps it natural. I agree. But even in the post-c choruses, I feel like she hues to this rule of the minimal melody with perfect prosody. Let's add that in to our Taylor Swift criteria. I just want to point out one thing about the perfect prosody is that, you know, know, in poetry, prosody, my understanding is all about the rhythm and the sound of the words. But in songwriting, prosody is often used as a synonym for text painting as well, right? The idea of like the words fit the meaning.

Like I sing, hi, when something ascends in my song, or I'm feeling depressed and I sing in a lower register, that kind of a thing. Yeah, this is a term with multiple meanings. Like I said, we could also use declamation to describe the. the setting of syllables to rhythm. But ultimately, that's what we're talking about. What is the rhythm of the words and how does it match the melody? And she does it right. Okay, and then finally, bombastic bridges.

Great. I feel like Taylor Swift single-handedly brought back the bridge to pop music. What are we talking about when we talk about a bridge, Charles? Let's define this feature. The bridge is a section in the final two-thirds of a song that is there to provide a little bit of reprieve from the chorus so that you get a move away from, too much repetition, while also, if done correctly, extending the narrative of the song, maybe changing the meaning of the song, and then allowing you to bridge back into one or two

more final choruses so that the hook gets stuck in your ear. There are so many Taylor Swift bridges to choose from. She is the Robert Moses of the pop world. She's built so many bridges. Power broker reference. She's the Otmar Amin. That's a deep cut. as a deep cut for the New York infrastructure heads out there.

And I want to pick one somewhat at random from the album Midnights. You're on Your Own Kid. Set us up for a second then. Before we get to the bridge, what's the song about? Well, to me, this is one of her more open songs in terms of its meaning. She's reflecting on a past relationship that took place during the summer. She's kind of reminiscing on her youth and how it went wrong and concludes on the chorus of the song that ultimately you're on your own kid.

But then in the bridge, like you were describing earlier, we get this contrasting section, but we also got like an expansion of this whole world. The level of detail and the images start to come at a faster and faster clip. You almost feel like Taylor Swift is like working herself up into a frenzy, and then it all peaks right into the return of the final chorus, which we now hear in a new light, like it's deepened it for us.

Enough of me explaining this thing, Charlie. Let's listen to it. Wow. This has got all of it. It's got the declamation. Perfect, right? From sprinkler, splashes to fireplace ashes. I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this.

Not a syllable out of place. Right. It's got all of the imagery, texture, right? Hyper-specific detail. Perhaps even a reference to the film Carrie with the blood-soaked dress. Oh, my gosh, yeah. And then it's even self-referential because there were pages turned

with the bridges burn. She's literally turning a page within the song within the bridge. Bridges burn metaphor for, oh my gosh. And we haven't mentioned as much as you'd like to establish the stepwise melody.

Here she is doing the one other kind of melody that she loves to do. Oh, I did not even clock it, Charlie. I was so deep caught up in the bridginess of it all that I didn't even clock the melodic device we're hearing here, the patented T-drop, a descent from a minor second, and then down to descending fifth. Da-da-da.

You can hear it in the song we heard earlier. You belong with me. You belong with me. And we can hear it here in You're on your own kid. My friends from home don't know what to say. Da-da-da. There it is again. And love that.

That's right. If Taylor Swift is going to make a leap in her melody, it's going to be the T-drop. It's everywhere. I literally, oh, my gosh. I could, like, if I go to my Apple notes, I have a, like, database of T-drops that I have found. T-drop. Let me search. How many documents do I have that have the word T-drop in it?

About 12. And literally every album, I go through and document them. I should make a spreadsheet. I'd love to see that, Charles, because I feel like there was kind of a lacuna. I recall reputation lover and maybe. Folklore. We didn't have a lot of T-Drops. So maybe she's returned to that device. Oh, they're all over the place. Untortured Poets Department. I heard it on Down Bad. So Long London. But Daddy, I love him. Fresh out the Slammer. And L-O-M-L. How do I say that? I don't know. Sorry, Taylor.

I love of my life. Thank you, Amy, the prophecy, and Robin. Okay. That's quite a few. So maybe she's back on her T-drop grind again. It's a trademark. Okay, so, but I've taken a kind of a skew. Right. Let's return. Bombastic bridges. Minimal melodies and perfect prosody.

Lyrical hyper specificity. Let's take those qualities and now try and detect them in the work of Gracie Abrams, Macy Peters, and Phoebe Bridgers. We'll do one song from each. And with Gracie Abrams, I feel like it has to be that's so true. Let's take it from the first verse. I could go and read your mind. Think about your dumb face all the time.

Living in your glass house, I'm outside. Looking in a big blue eyes. Did it just to hurt me and make me cry? Smiling through it all, yeah, that's my life. So right off the bat, I notice lyrical specificity where some kind of physical object stands in as a metaphor. This one is a fairly cliche one, living in your glass house, I'm outside. I like how she takes that metaphor, though, and actually puts it in a place, and she's outside looking in. We get more furniture later in the song, Charles.

Do we? There's my sofa. I got to have a sofa to lay down on in a song. I like it. Yeah, it's very detailed. It paints a world. Now, if we move to the second category, in some ways, the chorus that we just listen to

actually has quite a few leaps and flourishes here that we might not encounter in the swift oeuvre. But the prosody is there. Every syllable is in the right. place. And certainly the way the song builds, I mean, this is something we didn't mention earlier, but there's like a plainness to the language that I find really endearing and I feel like might be part of that Taylor legacy. You said this earlier. It sounds like the way people speak, you know? There's something so natural about it. I think that's so compelling as a listener.

Oh, bet you're thinking she's so cool, kicking back on your couch, making eyes across the room. Wait, I think I've been there too. Wow, I didn't even realize you were reading lyrics for a second. That was good. Yeah, okay, so point taken. It's very conversational. It feels like kind of ripped from the notebook, so to speak. Okay, so it's sung like it's spoken.

The stepwise melody, though, I feel like we encountered some of that in the verse, right? I could go and read your mind. Think about your dumb face all the time. Living in your glasshouse, I'm outside. Yeah, I mean, that's all stepwise motion, basically. Totally. And we have another, like, three-pitch constellation that we keep returning to here in a very swift-in way. Yeah.

There's another line later on that feels very swiftly to me. I think I like her. She's so fun. Wait, I think I hate her. I'm not that evolved. I like that. This feels kind of blank space to me. Yeah.

Being able to acknowledge your. own frailties in a song and comment on them. I don't know. Maybe that's a loose connection, but it's something that came to me. And she's also doing another shiftism, which is to sing in a half-spoken voice, which is just all over Taylor's work. We could have added these to our list of criteria, but I guess we're expanding it in real time. Finally, the bombastic bridge. Let's cut to that critical two-thirds junction here, Charlie, the golden ratio, as it were. What will we hear from Gracie Abrams? My earrings, don't you nice, that's your prize, well.

That's a bridge, Chuck. Yeah. I really love how the snare drum lines up with the rhythm of her words. Really effective production choice. I mean, it makes this section stand out in the way that the bridge is supposed to, give you that sense of contrast. But it also allows Gracie Abrams to deepen her role in this narrative. And I feel like in this bridge, it gives her kind of a sense of agency that she didn't have earlier in this song, right?

She sings, I'll put up a fight taking out my earrings. It's like as the bridge goes on and on, it gives her more and more empowerment, which I think is a really cool way to take that bombastic bridge from Taylor and, like, put your own spin on it. Yeah, we've gone from, I think she's so fun. No, I think I hate her. Now we're taking out our earrings, prepping for a fight. The stakes are escalating in the bridge. Charlie, I haven't given you the full story here of how deep the Taylor Swift invocation is. Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift actually have a song together called Us.

On this track that we're listening to, that's so true. She's using Taylor Swift's producer and co-songwriter Aaron Dessner, who worked on folklore, Evermore. Also, Julian Bonetta, who worked on espresso, is also a producer on this song. Okay. Fun side note. If it doesn't have to do with Taylor Swift, I don't care at all. I'm sorry.

This is not a support your message. Taylor, all the time. Get them out of here. I only, yeah, Taylor's only. Gracie Abrams, I mean, there's a lot more to say about this artist. I think we're going to hear more from her on the pod in the days to come. But for now, let's turn to another era's tour opening artist, the UK singer's songwriter, Maisie Peters.

Let's find the Taylorisms in her track. There it goes. Okay, so first of all, we're in London. We already established, Taylor has a song, so Long London. Yes. I got that resonance. I feel like we're walking on cobblestone streets just like we were in the song, Cardigan.

Yeah. I don't know. What else? I mean, Cornelia Street comes to mind here, Columbia Road, Cornelia Street. Okay, okay. So hyper-specific, again, putting us in a time and place. Basically, one-note melody. Yeah.

I mean, no, there's a couple of. No, no, there's some more notes. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, three notes. But really kind of hovering around one sort of key target area. Yes, the melody is in service of the lyric. It's helping convey this information more than it is sort of calling attention to itself. Let's jump to the chorus, Charles.

You know what's interesting, Charlie? Kind of like Gracie Abrams, I feel like Maisie Peters departs from the Swift playbook in the chorus. Like, the verses of both of these songs feel deeply swiftian, and then the choruses have a little bit more of their, like, individualistic stamp on it. I don't know. I feel like there's some metaphors that feel very much like Taylorisms. First of all, the love we had was covered in snow, makes me think of snow on the beach. But also, doesn't Taylor have a song where she's constantly like, our love is blank, and she's, like, constantly metaphorizing what her love is? What am I thinking of? I think you're thinking of our song. Our love is a screen door slamming it. the breeze or something like that. I'm misquoting it.

Yes, exactly. It's our song. Her breakout hit. Okay, now I see what my brain was doing. Masey Peters was saying, the love we had was covered in snow, and somehow my brain was like, our love is the color red, but what actually is happening is our song is like slamming doors. It feels like it's in the Taylor Swift world of writing, is I guess what I'm trying to say. Okay, so now we have to go to the bombastic bridge.

Simple melody, nearly spoken, perfect prosody, a black cat in the streetlights, brick lane, in the brisk, cold, a new home, a swan dive. It's all just hyper-specific images after another. All hyper-specific images. I do love that line of black hat in the streetlights and open door. So evocative. And it goes on and not. I feel like the Swift Bridge goes longer than you expect it to. Like, that's part of its magic.

You relish in the bridge. The bridge is not an afterthought. It becomes so big that it's like its own little universe. And then it suddenly sends you back to the chorus. And you're like, oh, this sounds different. It's the Swift suspension bridge. The Swift suspension bridge. Now we're talking.

The Verizano narrows of the Swiftian bridges. Okay. One more. It's Phoebe Bridgers. And yeah, when I said her name earlier, you were like, huh? Because I think we don't think of Phoebe Bridgers, her solo career, her work with Boy Genius, her work with Connor Oberst. She doesn't kind of fit in the same world.

She's like a little edgier, a little more rocky, a little more. More on the alt and rock charts than that. on the pop charts. But she is a self-proclaimed Swift head, and she opened for Taylor on the Erez tour. So let's listen to her song, Motion Sickness, and see if we can also find an influence from Swift on her work. Okay.

Doesn't immediately have the melodic sensibility. I mean, there's a big leap right at the beginning, sort of scoop up to his high note, and then she slowly descends down. And will, I hate you for, what you did totally yeah she just hang on that note for a while which a little swiftian so get into the details of the lyrics well the next line is hyper detailed let's listen to that you gave me 500 to see her hypnotherapist i only went one time you let it slide that is a line you would not encounter in any

other song it's very specific it's very detailed at the same time i don't think it's particularly swift and it's a little too arch and ironic for her i think yeah i mean this just feels like Phoebe Bridgers has her own style of detail that she does. What about the prosody, Charlie? Are you hearing that perfect syllable breakdown here? You gave me 1,500 to see your hypnotherapist. Yeah, I mean, hypnotherapist is a hard word. Yeah, you could really miss that up.

But she lands it. And then she gives us this sort of nice double rhyme. I only went one time, you let it slide. So she doesn't rhyme hypnototherapist. She gives us a sort of internal rhyme. I only want one time. You let it. It's slot.

Time and slide being really nice slant rhymes with each other. So maybe not finding as much of the Taylor in here, but what about a bombastic bridge? Do we have one of those? Well, yes and no. So no in that this is not a Taylor Swift bridge with lots of specific detail, carrying the narrative forward with all the furniture in the room. We have the perfect repetition of this line. You said when you met me, you were bored. You said when you met me, you were bored.

I do like the repetition of you were bored. It almost gives you the feeling of exhaustion. And yet, the line that she lands it with is very swiftly and maybe a different way. You were in a band when I was born. Ooh. Great use of another slant rhyme, bored to born, but revealing some very key details. This is about an uncouth relationship. Yeah.

This is about a kind of predatory-ish older guy with a younger girl. We've heard many of those narratives in Taylor Swift songs. We haven't discussed it yet, but this is well known. Oftentimes fans are looking for who is that song about? And in this case, there is a specific person who was too old to be in an appropriate relationship with her. Yeah. And that's a big part of the lore of this song, just like in Taylor Swift songs. Well, yeah, and I think of a specific Taylor Swift song like Dear John, which,

is also about being in a relationship with someone older and kind of trying to come to terms with whether that was actually appropriate or not. In that song, John Mayer Ryan Adams. She sings, you know, don't you think 19s too young to be played by your dark twisted games? And then we get like a John Mayer-esque guitar solo. Yeah. Savage. But maybe an unexpected connection between these two artists. So Phoebe Bridgers, not quite as Swiftian in her work, but perhaps we can find messages of that influence as well. Okay, this has been enormously enlightening, Charlie. Thank you for taking this journey with me to try and understand the ways in which Taylor Swift has shaped a whole generation of singer-songwriters. And I don't want to just

sit here with you and opine on how these young artists might have been affected by the work of Swift, I want to go directly to the source and hear from one of them. So after a quick break, I sit down with the brilliant singer-songwriter, Jensen McCrae. Jensen has already had a ton of success, has a new album coming off that's going to be fantastic, and Jensen was one of the first students that I ever taught in my journey as a professor. So I'm really excited to reconnect with her. And then, Charlie, at the very end, we've got a couple of voice notes from your students about Taylor Swift. So this is going to be our Taylor Swift power hour when we come back.

Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No. No.

We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Can we start by you introducing yourself?

Hi, I'm Jensen McCrae, and I am a singer-songwriter from L.A., and I'm one of Nate Sloan's former students, star student. Yes. Kiss ass, I would even say. What does that meme? You were a pleasure to have in class. That's what I say about all my fans. No, recently one of my fans was a pleasure to have in class. Jensen, since our fateful encounter at USC, you have gone on to.

a wonderful career, like you said, as a singer-songwriter. You've got an album coming out. Tell us the name of it. It's got a great title. It's called I Don't Know How, but They Found Me. Very nice. Very fetch the ball cutters of you. I try. Before that, you had another fantastic album. Tell us the name of that. I was called Are You Happy Now? And we could have so many different conversations about your work, which is so dense and hyperliterate and incredibly moving and sometimes very political. But the conversation that I want to have with you is about an artist named Taylor Allison Swift. Exactly. Tell us a little bit about your relationship to Taylor Swift and her music.

I've been a fan of Taylor Swift. I guess since I was, like, in middle school, I think like many girls in my age group, like the elder Gen Z, like we had kind of a, it was a very push and pull kind of thing, where you fall in love with Taylor Swift when you hear her, and then you feel like there's some sort of social pressure to not love Taylor Swift because everyone loves Taylor Swift. And then she gets you back because she always. gets you back. And for me, she got me back with Red, because the album came out when I was 15, and I was like, holy cow, like, this woman is, she's not country anymore. She's, like,

there was the whisperings of like, is she going to stop being country? She did it. And then 1989 came out when I was 17, and that, that I was like, this is the best pop album ever. Like, this is so good. And then she lost me again with reputation. I'll admit, I didn't get reputation when it came out. I was 20. I was like, I don't know about this. And then she got me back. with Lover. Like it was, there's always been the push-pull. And at the end of the day, I have just like immense respect for her, the volume of her output, like more than anything. Like, she just creates at a clip that I admire and that I try to emulate, if not with releases, at least with composition. And her ability to shape shift and her ability to still always sound like herself, even as her sound

over the years. Like, to me, I talk about this with my friends a lot. Like, to me, Taylor Swift is a genre. Like, she's no longer a genre artist. Like, she is the genre. Red comes out when you're 17. That seems like a super impressionable age. If you could cast back to that time, what do you think it was about Swift's music and lyrics that resonated with you? I think it was a really interesting time for me specifically in that it was also when I rediscovered literature, because I was always a reader. I discovered John Green, and I read The Fault and Our Stars and looking for Alaska, and I started watching his YouTube videos where he was like, hey, the Great Gatsby's really cool. And I was like, what's this Great Gatsby? I keep hearing so much about. And I started

to read that. I read Frianoit 4-51. I read Slaughterhouse 5. Those were my favorite books for a very long time. And Taylor Swift felt like the same thing. Like, she felt like a gateway drug into the kind of music that I was probably always destined to listen to, but it felt inaccessible to me as a child. And so it was like, I listened to Taylor Swift and I was like, these lyrics are really something. And it was like, what else is there? What else can I get with this kind of vibe to it? And so that was when I started listening to, around that time, I started listening to Boni there. Around that time I started listening to John Mayer. Like, I started listening to other music that I had like, I'd heard stirrings of and knew existed. But it was like Taylor Swift, I felt like had

permission through her to access this kind of music that I had never discovered on my own before. Is there a particular song on Red that you were drawn to at that time? I loved Begin Again. I think I really like the line where she says, you said you've never met one girl who had as many James Taylor records as you. I love that she did the direct James Taylor reference. I was like, you can say another artist's name and a song. I loved that.

And oh yeah, the line, which says you throw your head back laughing like a little kid, I thought that was a really brilliant image. And again, it was like me figuring out, like, what do I like about songwriting and what works and what's good? And it was like, she was doing all of this before. But I had missed it, I think. Like, I think in the previous albums, I hadn't been paying as close attention. And I was finally the age where I could study lyrics and be like, what does this mean and why do I like it? I haven't thought about this in about a decade.

But I just remembered that the one time I've ever done, like, a stand-up set in my life, I had like a few Taylor Swift jokes, and one of them was that I actually was able to get my hands on the original draft of the song Red from the album Red. And I thought it would be really interesting insight into the songwriting process because it turns out the original lyric to the chorus of that song was, Loving him was pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews, pews. Thank you so much for laughing at that chance. That was incredibly validating. Clearly, she figured out the prosody of red worked better for that course. Exactly, exactly.

Let's drill a little deeper. Taylor is a genre. Taylor is a gateway drug. How did that relationship with her music seep into your own songwriting, do you think? The songs that I was writing at that age, I was trying to figure out how to do what she was doing in terms of listing off specific observations and hoping that added. up to a good song, which of course is not how songwriting works. But when you're 15 and you're figuring out what songwriting is, you're like, well, Taylor Swift lists all the stuff that happened

on her date and begin again. So if I just list stuff that happened to me or stuff that I made up, then that's a good song because it's going to be specific and it'll be chronological and it'll tell a story. And so it was these early exercises and just like trying to create a narrative, which is ultimately in the country tradition more than anything, even more than it's in the pop tradition. But yeah, it was very much like me being like trying to cram specific details and observation. And in a way, it was the beginning of me enacting my role as an observer, which is how I still see myself now, of like paying really close attention to things people say and do and the way the world looks and feels around me so that I can translate it back into a song later.

I definitely hear that in Taylor's work. I hear that in your work. Not to put you on the spot, but is there a lyric of yours that comes to mind that you think like, oh, this is particularly Swiftian. My whole song, Massachusetts, like, is very much, like, the, from, I wrote that song, partly as an exercise of, like, how many personal details about this person can I cram into this? When someone tells me there for Massachusetts, now I always ask what part. I wonder if you kept the Pilgrim Ash Trey, but still propped up on your bar cart. Like, here's a bunch of artful arrangement of details. But me just being like, what are, what's all the stuff I remember? And, like, How can I configure that into a narrative verse in some way?

When someone tells me they're from Massachusetts, now I always ask what part. I wonder if you kept the pilgrim ashtray if it's still propped on your bar cart. And then even in the chorus, like the look on your face when you turn 26 and your dad got too stone, that one's going to stick. Like, I don't know if Taylor Swift would write about someone's dad getting. don't, but like writing about like just like the most niche thing that you feel like maybe only you've seen or you've experienced and being like, but maybe there's a universality to this, nonetheless. That's such a different approach, I think, than a lot of capital P pop songwriting, which is

really trying to avoid specificity, I think, to a high degree. Is it still? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, maybe that's changing as, uh, Taylor's and other songwriter's influence extends deeper into the Hot 100. The one thing that I think of in that case is like, so because I wrote the song, Massachusetts, people keep sending me other songs about Massachusetts, like online. And someone posted a screenshot of my song, and then there's a Tate McCray song where she goes,

I still think about that night out in Boston. And then Renee Rapp has a song that goes, You Made Me Hate Boston. And it's like, to me, like all these callouts to that state slash city, Like maybe there's some artists who are still in the Katie Perry school of like we're going as universal and generic as possible in the lyrics to deliver like a teenage dream of sorts. But there's also now, I feel like in this era spearheaded by Lord and Taylor to a degree, like we are going to dig in there and get really specific with it. And it's going to still be pop music. I could see there being a sort of sea change underfoot. I'm thinking about how that might be a gender development in the sense that all these artists you've mentioned are women.

And in this wonderful essay you wrote back in 2023 called Taylor Swift and the persistence of memory, I'll paraphrase, but you have a line that describes women as like the keepers of memory, the caretakers, like that responsibility often falls on them. And in Taylor's music, you point out, you know, the importance of memory, sometimes even the weaponization of memory is such a key aspect. Does that apply to your work as well? I think definitely. I mean, I'm a journaler, first of all, have been since I was 18, and my journals are a huge source of archival material in my writing. And something that I've thought about a lot in the journaling process is that it has become sort of like socially feminized, like to keep a journal.

But also like when we look back at history, like there's all these great man journals that get quoted and get seen as like high art. Yeah. But that's how it always goes. Like something is seen as high art when it's men. And then as soon as women start to do it, people are like, oh, that's dead. in the same way that, like, once women get access to something, it becomes, therefore, a feminine activity and therefore less worthy. I don't care, obviously, because I'm still going to keep my journals and keep using them. But, yeah, I think my songwriting and my journaling very much go hand in hand.

It's very much an auroboros. Like, it's just a powering itself. I'm thinking that women, journal, and men podcasts. I fear. That might be, that might be, I fear, I do. And I do both, which is, you know, I'm everyone's worst nightmare. So let's go back to begin again for a sec, because I love that you shouted out the James Taylor reference in the lyrics and how that made you realize like, oh, this is something I can do too. I can like call out people and figures that, you know, matter to me.

And there's a song where you do that with Taylor Swift, actually. And that's immune. First of all, this song is such an interesting backstory. Can you tell us the genesis of immune and then we can talk about this Taylor reference in it? Traffic from the east side got me aggravated. Harder than the day my brother graduated. Wait for hours in the sun and line at Dodger Stadium. I'm not scared of dogs are getting vaccinated.

So it was January 2021 and it was like the height of lockdown. and I had an idea for a tweet. I think the exact wording of it was, in 2023, Phoebe Bridgers was going to write a song about hooking up in the car while waiting to get vaccinated at Dodger Stadium, and it's going to make me cry. And so I had that idea for a tweet,

and I sent it to our dear friend, Jesse Mason, aka Mason. Oh, Jesse, yeah. And I was like, hey, this is funny, but I think I said it to her, and I said sometimes tweets are just thoughts. And she was like, no, it's funny, you should post it. So I did.

and it started to get a little bit of traction. And so I was like, well, what if I just write the song? Because who knows when Phoebe's putting out new music again? And she'd just put out her second album. And so I sat for 20 minutes and I was like, what would Phoebe Bridgers? Let me do a Phoebe Bridgers impression in my room. So I wrote a verse. I filmed myself singing it, posted it on Twitter, went to sleep.

And then the next day it started to get traction. And then the day after that, I got a text from singer-songwriter Kevin Garrett. I don't know if you know his work. But I was like a huge fan of him at the time. and we had just started talking about maybe writing together. And he texted me and said, I think you broke the internet. And I was like, what do you mean?

And I went on Twitter and I saw that I was trending. It was very overwhelming. Eventually, Phoebe saw it. She reposted it and followed me and we message. And I was like, thanks for being cool about this. She's like, no, it's great. It's really sweet. And at the time, like, nothing had ever happened in my career meaningfully.

And of course, we were like, well, we have to capitalize on this. So I finished the song that night. And 10 days later, it came out. It's called Immune. And I played it. As soon as show started back up again, played it for a very long time. And I played it like nine months later opening for Jake Wesley Rogers, the troubadour. And it was the first time I ever heard an audience sing my words back to me.

Wow. Wow. So it's very, very important to me. Incredible tale and a song that really speaks to me because I also was vaccinated at Doctor's Stadium. So it's like the image it conjures up is so palpable. And then there's this line. Radio is static through the Taylor song. I think that's the first line. It's like radio is static through the Taylor song, think a college football game is coming on. Radio is static through the Taylor song. The college football game is coming on. So I'm so curious, like, is this just another observational detail

and that was actually what was happening? Or was this a conscious choice? You're like, I'm going to get Taylor Swift into this song. This song is so fictional. Like, most of my songs are very autobiographical. I have to stress this song is very fictional. None of the events in the song happened. Right. You were never vaccinated.

Yeah. We can't even have it as a bit. It can't even be a bit. You're right. You're right. That's too loaded. I love vaccines. No, I was, but I didn't get vaccinated at Dodger Stadium, but so many people told me that they listened to the song while getting vaccinated at Dodger Stadium. But yeah, I mean, I'd written the first verse of the song. The chorus was a real bear for me. It was very hard for me to crack. And so I wrote the second verse before I wrote the chorus. And I was like, okay, I just need more details because the first verse is traffic from the east side

got me aggravated hotter than the day my brother graduated. It's like, we're setting up the scene. And I was like, how else do I set up this scene? And I was like, well, they're in the car. What's funny is that people ask me about that lyric a lot. And they're like, are you talking about Taylor Swift or James Taylor? And I was like, dealer's choice. I say dealer's choice.

Yeah, never even occurred to me. Yeah. Taylor Swift allegedly was named after James Taylor, I think. And so the next part of the line is, God, you hate Top 40 shit. But as the sports preempted it, your mouth in my ear, you hummed along. God, you ate top 40 shit. But as the sports preempted in your mouth in my ear you honed along So it's like I'm talking about top 40 music

So like the implication is it's probably Taylor Swift Could be James Taylor too But yeah, I really wanted to have that I thought it was fun. I'm like I'm doing a Phoebe Bridgers parody And I'm name-checking Taylor Swift That to me felt like I was checking a lot of boxes I think it just makes it more relatable too

Because that is such a common phenomenon I think to hear Taylor blasting out of someone's static radio. I'm not sure. I was trying to look through your catalog. I'm not sure if there are any other explicit lyrical references to Taylor Swift. No, to other artists. Yeah. Who else has made it into the McCray catalog? Well, funnily enough, in my song, my ego dies at the end, the first pre-chorus is leave my body and the party early cry on the train playing Justin Vernon, who is Boni Verre. Oh, yeah, who is Boni Berry, right? I caught that, yeah. So I'm like, I manifested at his friendship, I guess, by name-checking him in the songs. Maybe Taylor's hot on his heels,

who knows? Yeah, who you're going to put next? No, Frank Ocean, maybe. There we go. Something that I think is really interesting about Taylor Swift's influence is you are not the only person, I think, to cite Taylor Swift as being like some kind of foundational influence. And this is something I've noticed as a teacher. A lot of my students really have, grown up sort of at the feet of Taylor, so to speak. I guess we probably had our equivalence when I was younger and developing my voice as an artist, but I almost want to describe it as a generation of Taylor Swift-inspired songwriters. I think of Gracie Abrams, who opened for Taylor on the Eres tour.

I think of Phoebe Bridgers, who's maybe a little more surprising because I think her music is, in a lot of ways, a lot different than Taylor's, but she's definitely cited Taylor as an influence. Masey Peters, who also opened for Taylor on the Erez tour, and who I noticed commented on your Instagram posts, I think maybe announcing your album. So I was like, oh, so there's maybe some connections between these artists. You wrote this tribute to Phoebe Bridgers that we just heard. You're connected to Macy. I want to hear your thoughts on what Taylor Swift means, not just to you, but more collectively to your generation of songwriters. Well, I mean, yeah, Masey and I are great for and I feel like Taylor Swift was definitely a source of bonding for us.

Yeah. And I think for the collective, one of my favorite things about Taylor Swift is like the sweaty effort that goes in to Taylor Swift. I think there's so much pressure on artists and any public-facing person to be effortless, especially women. The whole point is like, you're supposed to be an effortless beauty and effortless talent. You're not supposed to want anything that much and it's just supposed to have fallen into your lap.

Like, there's this taboo of, like, really nakedly working towards something that you really want and claiming that you want it. And Taylor Swift from the beginning has been, like, this transparent tryhard. And I think that there's something very refreshing about that. Like, she's not trying to come off as effortless in any way. It's like she is laboring intensely to do everything and to be the best. And, like, sometimes she comes across as a little maniacal in her pursuit of the things that she wants and the records that she wants to break. the award she wants to win. But it's like, you have to hand it to her that, like, she is not trying to conceal that effort at all. Like, no one looks at Taylor Swift and goes, she's not trying.

And to me, that as a tryhard, as a very, as an incurable tryhard, that to me is a huge relief. Like, Beyonce is sort of similar in that to me. It's not exactly the same. But I think about Beyonce and Rihanna being on, like, an axis of effort. And I think part of the reason Taylor and Beyonce are friends, seemingly, at least like friendly colleagues, is because they both do that, like, very transparent, like, planning and effort and, like, type A focused work. And I think that Taylor is a, she's an encouraging example. And so I think anyone who ever has put in a lot of effort into something sees themselves in Taylor Swift. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's a good thing. It's good that I am, like, putting myself into this degree. Jensen, this has been such

a delight to talk with you. I remember, it must have been the, the, the, the, April of my first year and your last year, so seven years ago, I guess, your senior recital. And, you know, one of the funny things about my particular position at the USC Thorne School of Music is that I work with you in class all semester. But we're talking about history. We're talking about ideas. We're talking critical listening and music theory and things like this. I don't get to hear you play. I don't get to hear you perform until the very end of the semester, like literally as the class is ending. And I remember going into Carson Television Center and sitting down, and I didn't really know what you were going to do because I'd never actually heard any of your music. And the next, I guess, like hour of you singing solo, it was just one of, to this day, one of the most arresting and intimate musical experiences I've ever had. And it's really stayed with me.

And I'm so glad that other people get to experience that now as well, get to experience your artistry and the care and detail that you bring to your work. So thank you for sharing some of that with us today. Thank you for having. That's so kind. It was really like your class was one of my favorite classes, truly. And I'm so glad there's programs for kids to be able to study pop music academically because I think it's worth the study. I think it's really cool to think about it intellectually and deeply and over the course of many months, as opposed to just. having, giving it a fleeting listen. So I'm really glad that that stuff exists. Nate, thank you for bringing this interview with Jensen, because I feel like it taught me how much Taylor Swift validates these younger songwriters. Like it says, my goodness, like what you have to say matters. Yeah. Write it down and then sing it like you say it. Yeah. As you said at the top at the episode, I think Taylor Swift's influence in many ways is just revealing itself. And I think we're going to hear even more Taylor Swiftisms in the next generation of songwriters. Many

them are coming from my classroom. And so I wanted to share a couple of voice notes that I got from my students. And maybe we can go out on those about how Taylor Swift has infused herself in their music. I think that what stands out the most in Taylor Swift's music are her bridges and their ability to completely shift the mood of a song into another direction. I think that sometimes in songs, the chorus has to sacrifice some level of emotion in order to make sure that it's catchy and memorable. So I treat the bridge as a place where I can basically dump all the things that I wasn't able to. to say within the verses and chorus. In her song Back to December, which is one of my favorites, I think the bridge is just so beautiful, not because the lyrics are symbolic, but because they're just

so simple and raw. That's why for me at least, writing the bridge is the most difficult and thoughtful part of the songwriting process, because in many cases, it's the most powerful, and that's something that I learned by listening to Taylor's Social Music. And I'm Tully Miyamoto, and I'm at NYU. Thank you. Hi, I'm Miranda Tonsetic and I'm a freshman in songwriting. And I think Taylor's songwriting has really affected me because her melodies are just incredible. And a lot of them, we talked about this in Charlie's class are stepwise, which I think is really cool and simple and it's easy for people to sing along to, which I definitely want people to sing to my songs. So I try to employ that. I also think just her way of turning a concept into an entire song,

she uses metaphors in a way that is just so powerful and she can completely build a concept out of it, which is definitely something that I try to do. Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. Our theme music is by Zach Tenario and Jossi Adams of Ark Iris. Remember of the Vox Media Podcast Network, production of Vulture, which is part of Newark Magazine.

You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. Find more episodes of Switchdown Pop anywhere you get podcasts. Reach out to us on social media at Switched on Pop. Go to our website, switchonpop.com. Sign up for our newsletter. Only comes once a week, not too much. And if you do reach out to us, tell us what you're hearing in terms of the influence of Taylor Swift.

Like, is there a songwriter that you respect and you think, I feel like Taylor Swift influenced them? We want to hear more. We'll be back again next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening. Attention, Spotify. Has arrived on the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera, a fragrance with character gourmet and addicive.

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