Switched on Pop - Has Taylor Swift jumped the shark?

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

One year after the release of her twelfth studio album The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift is back with an encore. Specifically, The Encore, four tracks that have polarized critics and Swifties alike, from the country-esque number one hit “Patient Zero” to her ode to married Ohioan bliss, “Cleveland!” For some, the new songs lean into Swift’s worst writing impulses. But for others, including our hosts (and resident Swiftologists) Charlie and Nate, the tracks call back to earlier eras of Swift’s songwriting, and perhaps evoke more nuanced discussion about what it means to release music as the biggest artist in the world. The question is: are we ready for it?  CREDITS  Reanna Cruz: Producer  Iris Gottlieb: Illustrator  Charlie Harding: Host, Executive Producer  Dion Lee: Art Director  Brandon McFarland: Audio Engineer  Nick Ripps: Video Editor  Nate Sloan: Host  Lissa Soep: Editor  Zach Tenorio & Jocie Adams: Theme Composers  Switched On Pop is a co-production of Vox Media Podcast Network, Vulture, and Rock Ridge Productions. Links: ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠  Songs discussed: Taylor Swift, “Patient Zero” Taylor Swift, “Cleveland!” Taylor Swift, “Pink Clouding”  Taylor Swift, “Babylon” Taylor Swift, “Red” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The biggest pop star on the planet just released new music and the internet is in an uproar. Not happy. Taylor Swift has just dropped four new songs to follow up last year's release Life of a Showgirl. It's called Life of a Showgirl, the Encore. And it has people asking, has Taylor Swift jumped the shark? Has Taylor Swift lost the plot? Charlie, I'm asking, is Taylor Swift in her Osamandias era? Osamethamist?

Osamandias. Osamandius? The Persebis Shelley poem from the 19th century, you know. Of course. Look on my works ye mighty and despair. We will answer all of the above. And in the process, we're going to take you to songwriting school. Welcome to Switchdown Pop.

I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, you'll recall that it was a year and three days ago that we were discussing the release of Life of a Showgirl. It was Taylor Swift's return to form, supposedly, her album full of the bangers that we had been missing thanks to co-production from her longtime collaborators, Max Martin and Shelbeck. You know that I count my days as a music journalist in between Taylor Swift releases. Here we are. They come fast and furious these days, Charlie. Not a lot of downtime. And you'll of course remember how you described that release, right?

Yes, but, you know, maybe some other people could use a refresher. Okay, well play, Charlie. Yes, I'll quote to you, it's polyphonic auto fiction, you said. That's right. One of the things that Taylor does for us is that she makes us think that we know what's happening through all the clues, the Easter eggs that she leaves. We're trying to map out what song is about who. And yet she's also known for writing songs that are entirely fictional.

And so she's interweaving reality and fiction and that we ought to perhaps be in a greater space of suspended disbelief when we're listening to a Taylor Swift song. Right. And you're polyamorous auto erotic. No, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry. I mean polyphonic auto fiction. There we go. Was one of many reactions to this album, which was somewhat polarizing. I would think is a fair way to describe it. Now a year later, we have four new songs. This is Life of a Showgirl encore. These are tracks that Taylor created as a sort of celebration of the success of Life of a Showgirl, which did indeed

debut at number one and produced radio hits such as The Fate of Ophelia. She went back to Stockholm and she celebrated, I guess, the only way she knows how, which is by writing more songs with Max Martin and Shelback. Does it hurt that releasing four new songs might also bump awareness of Taylor Swift as we move into a crucial Grammy voting season? Perhaps. Sure. Yeah.

She's nothing, if not, canny. But if the reaction to Life of a Showgirl was, let's say, polarized, I feel like the reaction to these four new songs has been a little more unanimously. let's see, we're recording this, what, like four or five days after those songs were released. I have not listened to them. I was taking care of my nephew and niece over the weekend. I have been working diligently. And yet, I have seen the discourse everywhere. Like, I feel like I've been told that I'm not supposed to enjoy these songs. So I'm curious about how you might lead me through them to maybe listen with a,

a fresh set of yours. Well, here's what I propose, Charlie, because you can find no shortage of hot takes on the internet from Reddit pages with titles like, I'm a Swifty, and even I don't like these new songs, to Guardian reviewers who use profanity in their description of these songs, which is not something I think I've encountered in the pages of that August British publication before. But that's not what we want to do here on Switch Jump Pop. And I'm so glad you haven't listened to these songs. You haven't been poisoned by the internet discourse. And you haven't had time to develop your own reaction.

So we can listen to these songs with your fresh ears. And we can answer a question that I think is more interesting ultimately than whether these songs are good or bad. We can approach these songs, maybe like you would approach one of your songwriting classes, Charlie. I mean, it makes me think about, you know, every week I get like a couple dozen songs that I need to listen to quickly and provide feedback on. Perhaps we could use the methods that I do in my graduate classes.

What would you say, Charlie, if a student came into your class, hit play on their latest recording, and you heard this? his shoulder under his halo When the toxins take their hold you by the dick of him I got you I was patient zero I actually think this is a really compelling introduction. The bowing on that violin is very loose. It feels almost a little bit amateurish. Like you're not

pressing the bow hard enough. It's creating that like screechy sound on the violin. making it feel creepy, eerie. There's something foreboding, which then is appropriate, given the next set of piled-on metaphors about disease and, you know, this unhealthy relationship. Patient Zero does make me kind of uncomfortably draw me back to the area of the pandemic. And I'm like, yeah, Taylor Swift, are you the patient Zero?

What happened here? We have really strong hook writing. The melody is strong. The rhythm is exactly the same across each line or like close enough that it's very memorable. This song is Patient Zero. It's the first of the four as part of this encore release. And yeah, I think you're on to something, Charlie. Patient Zero may make you think of the dark days of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.

But here it's a metaphor for surviving a toxic X. and trying to share your immunity, so to speak, with his current victim. This is a love lab leak, if you will. A love lab leak. Yes, let's go with that. All right. And I also want to say something before we get too far here, which is Taylor Swift doesn't need a songwriting lesson from us or anyone else.

We have huge respect for her, and we've learned a lot. lot from her about songwriting. I wrote a whole article, an academic journal article in contemporary music review called Taylor Swift in the work of songwriting. I more want to take these pieces and hear how you would listen as someone giving a songwriting critique. And maybe by the end of this process, we'll have a better understanding of why people are having the reactions they're having to these tracks. Well, I feel like the first thing that I do when I'm listening to songs in the classroom is I'm always just trying to first understand what is the song trying to do because then once I have a feeling of like what I know what the song is trying to say,

what the concept is. I feel like I'm better equipped to then give feedback. And that feedback for me is always what are the pluses? What's working well to communicate that idea? And then what are the deltas? What are the things that need to change in order to communicate that main idea better? Yeah. So maybe we can listen a little further because I feel like I have an idea of the concept,

this patient zero, this shared immunity between the shared partners of a lover, something like that. Let's keep listening and we're actually going to move into the verse because patient zero, like a lot of songs in the 2020s, begins with a chorus. And now let's kind of settle into verse one. I've got to be honest, I've been expecting you call. No, it's not a bad time at all. I heard somebody saying there's trouble in Paris. And my lips are sealed tight now.

I've got to be honest, I've been expecting your call. No, it's not a bad time at all. So this is in the long tradition of songs that are giving us one end of a phone call. You know, right off the bat, though, there is something that I'm hearing that tugs at my ear, which is when the emphasis is on the wrong syllable. And I feel like I heard I've been expecting, your call rather than I've been expecting your call. Am I right?

I've got to be honest. I've been expecting your call. Been expecting your call. It's, I mean, I guess it creates a sense of suspension, but it's an unusual way of saying expecting. I also felt like the way that she sings trouble and pair of dice, it feels a little bit like maybe some of the Swedish influence of like writing the rhythms and the melody first

are taking precedent over getting the natural flow of speech. That pause between para and dice. Yeah. I mean, I guess the generous interpretation is that signals a kind of trouble that the word itself has been splintered in this way. She then

pairs it with a nice rhyme. My lips are sealed tight. This sort of slant rhyme, para dice sealed tight. We don't quite expect it. And then she gives us a now. And so that now does a lot to propel us further into the pre-chorus. I heard somebody saying there's trouble in Paris. And my lips are sealed tight now. It's not what to do.

So we have the slant rhyme between paradise and tight. And then that extra word that doesn't rhyme, now you're saying kind of carries us into this new section of the pre-chorus. Yeah. I like that. I mean, the melody is catchy here. I think I need to know more. Let's keep listening.

what to do. This is one of these things where it's like, you've got a shoulder to cry on, or you've got someone you can call to share in your woes about this same person who we've both experienced, and this person is toxic,

they're the devil, they're the worst. It's definitely a lyrical conceit that I haven't often encountered, you know, to women connecting over this toxic X that they, have in common. It's a cool approach and it kind of slowly unfolds like you said. It doesn't give you all the information at once. The chorus kind of jumps right into the middle of the story and then you

have to rewind in the verse and then it gradually unspools. So there's a nice sense of drama here. What do you make of this line? It's not for me to tell and every syllable is like really dragged out. I mean, that's that like classic Swedish pop method of writing where, you know, she's got sort of faster rhythm in the verse. The chorus is going to pick up. You need a break in between those two things in order to create a little bit of suspense. I think another reason why this feels like vintage, swift in a lot of ways is that she's playing a character. Yeah. It's not ripped from the headlines of her own life, like, supposed to be.

I think some of the other songs on this showgirl addendum will be. This feels kind of this playful fiction in a way that I think makes it a fun listen. Yeah, I don't know if you heard of the news, but she was recently married at a small venue in the middle of New York City, a Madison Square Garden. We understand her to be in marital bliss. And so this, although, you know, there could be a situation, certainly, of being happily married. but saying, hey, you, you're dating this other person who I formerly dated and know something about them, let's commiserate. That's still very possible. So I'm sure there are all kinds of Swifties who would love to go very deep into figuring out who is this about. I think for me I'm a little bit more interested in like how does it potentially operate as a song for other people to see their own lives within.

Well, Marital Bliss is coming, but before we get there, I think we need to listen to the bridge of Patient Zero. So let's get into it. I know he charmed your family and friends, and you thought it's because he loves you, but it's because he loves how everybody else loves him. Uh-huh. I know, it seems like he shines so bright, but he's bathing in your reflected light

on a free solo social client. Uh-huh. To get from somebody who lost his games but won the race, to get from someone who said all of this to his face, Someone who knows she's more than just to chase. Someone who has. I like that lyric on a free solo social climb. That's clever, you know,

Swiftian songwriting. I agree. We've got alliteration. We've got assonance. It's a phrase you've never heard before. This bridge is probably one of the more controversial points in the release with many listeners online comparing it to an AI-generated song. about say how to load

steel cables onto a flatbed truck I've been curious why steel coils it seems dumb but it's for two main reasons first of all wait a minute hold on I got to look at these lyrics more time so let's get into it I know he charmed her family and friends and you thought it's because he loves you I don't know

that's fine it's like very conversational sure but it's kind he loves how everybody else loves him uh-uh i know it seems like he shines so bright but he's bathing in your reflected light okay i guess that's a somewhat cliche metaphor but no i don't know i don't have an issue with it i don't either to be clear and i'm a little mystified at why this particular section has been so focused on by by critics but more generally i my sense is we're feeling like this song has a lot going for it from a songwriting perspective. It's got a clear idea.

It's got a nice dramatic build. It has some surprising turns of phrase. It has a haunting Celtic fiddle, which kind of comes out of nowhere and maybe is sort of playing on certain deep musical residences we might have between the devil and the fiddle. You know, the devil, the devil went down. to Georgia, for instance. The devil went down to Georgia. He was looking for a soul to steam. We all know the devil loves to play the fiddle.

Let's just not beat around the bush here. That's just a classic trope. Yeah. And so maybe that's why we hear that sort of spookily performed fiddle at the very beginning of the song. And then again, in the chorus that you noted at the top. There's a lot of confidence in its performance.

The track is quite minimalist. We have a sort of like 808 beat. It almost sounds. like one of those demo beats on one of the early rolling drum machines that you would hit the like play pattern in fact a lot of people use those patterns

on old drum machines to create song starters So there's something very plain about the backing track and then her vocal is very dry, it's very quiet it doesn't have that bombast of 1989 when she's, you know, really first engaged deeply in the Swedish pop world, though she had worked with some Swedes earlier.

I think that this shows restraint, confidence of a senior songwriter. Who am I to say that, you know, you can't play with emphasis if you choose to. Seems like some other folks are taking issue with this song. Taylor is extremely exposed at this moment. We have just gotten so much Taylor for so many. years. Perhaps people don't like the metaphor for comparing yourself to patient zero. I don't, I don't know. But I kind of feel like there's a sleeper hit here. I feel like I could hear this one many, many, many, many more times and kind of happily bought my head along.

You wanted marital bliss, as you said, Taylor recently married in a small community garden in New York City, Kansas City Chief's tight end, Travis Kelsey, host of our competition, you know, the podcast, New Heights, which is important to note for reasons that will become clear momentarily. Let's listen to the song Cleveland, exclamation point. Okay, I saw so many memes about Cleveland over this past week, and I think they might be overblown, at least from what I'm hearing so far from this chorus. Clearly, she is celebrating the fact that She's in love with a football player who takes her across the entire United States of football games. I mean, she did reference the New Heights podcast on Life of a Showgirl as well.

So perhaps people are like, okay, you know, ease up on the podcast plugs. I mean, would it be different if there was like a switch on pop reference here? Perhaps, you know, I might be more. I wouldn't complain. I wouldn't complain. I do think that there is a, some musical ingenuity happening in this. chorus that ties us back to these showgirl themes. The backing music reminds me of like almost like 50s film score. We've got maybe like vibes or some other kind of mallet instrument that

feels very cinematic. It feels playful. It's not taking itself seriously. And kind of like the violin that we heard earlier, it's an orchestral element that we don't hear commonly in popular music. So I was drawn to that. You know, again, I'm only listening to so much, but I also hear that the chorus sounds like it's probably a double time. Paca, paca, dappa, dappa, da. And that feels very sort of 1950s rock and roll pop kind of style like we heard on other tracks from the album.

It reminds me of Opelite, which was, you know, drawing on the renettes. And that feels like it's part of this showgirl musical. universe. That was one of my favorite insights from your showgirl analysis that this is a sound dipping into a maximalist lush, vagus-like orchestral palette that is very deliberately chosen. Now, will you have such goodwill when I play you some of the verse of this song? She's not as hot as she was, but she was only a four. She was never a girl's girl. She was just a And with all of that money, why is she dressed like trash? When she smiles, it's annoying.

And have you seen her? Stumbling, clumsily, would you even call that dancing? Okay, okay. I feel like this is another real throwback, swift-in style of writing. This reminds me a lot of mean, the song where the critics talk about how she can't really sing and they're all mean, right? Yes, yes. And so this does feel like, you know, you have Taylor Swift at the height of her career, talking about all of what the haters have to say.

The haters are going to hate, hate, hate, hate. These are themes we've heard before. And I can understand that for some people, maybe these themes feel tired. I think it is a nice way of sort of returning to some of those roots. I don't quite see yet how this verse is going to connect to Cleveland. I guess, again, it's like, does not matter. how much people say bad stuff about me because I'm on high in Cleveland with this person of who I love. That's fine. Yeah. Sounds nice. I love your do-eyed innocence in your approach

to this song, Charlie. It is so refreshing. I can tell you, having just spent the last four days diving deep into the darkest corners of online Taylor Swift criticism, Can you sustain that goodwill as we move into the bridge? Let's see. He likes what he likes what he likes and he likes me. He likes what he likes what he likes and he likes me. You only need to find one person in this entire world who doesn't find you completely insufferable. Have an important announcement to make.

Why are people mad? This is like a show tune about it. about how love am I? Yeah, it's very silly, it's playful, it's fun, it's like overly sincere, you know, generally critics don't like really sincere, sentimental music. This is just all of that on its sleeve. To begin with, hey, the whole public is saying, I look worse and before I was just a four, although I will say I don't love the sort of goofy setup for the line that she does not rhyme immediately afterwards. It's a, it's opening your song with a joke.

But then she's just going on to say like, I'm having a great time. I'm in love. Deal with it. I don't know. Like, that's vulnerable. Hearing your reaction, it makes me realize how much of our response to these songs is contextual within the larger Taylor Swift narrative.

And maybe part of the negative reaction to these songs is a product of this feeling of like, enough. Like, we know, I've, I've heard this story before. I've heard this idea before. You just released an album. Why do I need more songs? Why do you need to rub your happiness in my face? Yeah, I mean, I talked about, you know, I have sort of pluses and deltas for, for my

feedback. And I think there's a lot of pluses that are actually working here. You know, putting a song in an actual geography. We've seen songs about places. The song, Boston, however controversial, has been writing. the top of the charts for a long time. Cleveland has yet another hit about it, whether or not the people are going to embrace it. But, you know, if I were looking at some, some deltas, deltas are not always things that are bad. They're just, right. Would you want to change that?

And I probably upon first listen, would say, do you want to open your song with this joke, this sort of off-color joke? That's going to inform how we listen to the rest of it. But maybe, yeah, it's working because it's sort of the straw man argument to open the song, and we're going to take a a big turn from there. The only other thing that I noted is I sometimes find certain vowels to be unpleasant to sing. I think really bright vowels and really dark vowels. So like dark vowels would be like the song like bowl. If you had to sing the bowl, it doesn't sing well.

The other vowel that I think is often unpleasant is the vowel e. Me. You know, it's just like it's really bright. She previously had a song called me, one that had to be. edited of which like Cleveland also ended in an exclamation point. I wonder if, uh, you know, that's something she should avoid in the future. Like, and don't, don't put exclamation points at the end of your songs. Uh, there's a danger then.

So, so, so it's so Cleveland is, is less desirable perhaps than, um, you know, uh, what's, what's, what's, what's the better city? Mobile. No, no, no, no. Mobile has, no, mobile has the bowl problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, I'm going to come up with a good one. New York sings well.

New York. It's just, it's a nice thing. I'm going to Austin. Austin sings nicely. Austin's good. Sacramento. He's got some nice days and O's. Sacramento.

He took me to Sacramento. Okay. I'll even take a Denver. I don't know. Why not? Okay, food for thought, Taylor. So we're halfway. through, let's listen to the next release from Life of Showgirl, The Encore. It's Pink Clouding.

Let the magenta sunrise. If you should forever intertwite through the rosewood on the neither of us knew at the time. Okay. I don't know what the song is about yet. Fair. I do like the Magenta Sunrise. It ties me into lavender haze, another one of her songs, Fuchsia Forever. That's a nice line. Sunrise to intertwine is a nice sort of slant rhyme. Through the rosewood on the fire. Now, there's a couple things going on here. Rosewood is a rare hardwood, which I believe maybe even protected. So throw rosewood on the fire, that's very, very bold, very bold. Is it an allusion to her song, Wood? I don't think. So we can't talk about that. From the start, I don't know where we're going yet. I'll play the course, but it might not clear things up because the whole idea of this song is about being lost. Okay, I will say that there is a place for songs which are intending to confuse the listener

if the desired emotion of that song is to induce the same confusion that the singer is experiencing. Ah. Okay, so we have a song riddled with colors. We know Taylor loves colors, red, one of our best albums, one of our best songs. Instead, here we have pink, we have gray. We also have an allusion to another song, which is what gray, rocking where the arrow hit. She has a song called The Archer. So I can see that we maybe are building into a larger universe.

It's yet another song that is quite sparse, really naked in its production. Her voice, again, quite present. She's singing in a very subdued kind of vocal. and that's got to be all deliberate. I may have shared this on the podcast before, but the one time I did a stand-up set, I said I had the original draft of Taylor Swift's Red, and in the first version, when it gets to the chorus,

she actually sung, Loving him was Puse, and then for maybe obvious reason, she decided red would be a more effective color. This song almost feels like a version of that joke. There are just so many random colors. magenta fuchsia crimson pink gray but i mean like what's what's the song called pink clouding like she she's naming all the colors of that sort of like dusk colored sky okay it's one of my favorite

times of night where you just get all those shades of pink purple you know and there's gray on the horizon as well we have the extended metaphor skydiving uh with your arms around me or my body into this pink cloud. Like, isn't that where we all want to go? Isn't that like writing off into the sunset? I am realizing that this song is effective in the way that you said at the very beginning of this conversation. It tells you what it's going to set out to do and then it does it.

Yeah. It's like this extended metaphor of color as a reflection of emotion. It's this narrative of a relationship. that puts someone on a pedestal and then loses them and the colors tell the story. And she set that out as her goal and she does it. So I can see how from one perspective you just have to say like, yeah, you did it. Well, okay, now I'm reading through some of the lyrics because I realize just from what we've listened to, there's kind of another side to that, you know, the opening actually does make a whole lot more sense right now where it's like, she starts with met the magenta

sunrise. This is like, oh, sorry, we're not. We're not. sunset. We're not at dusk. We're early morning. So getting sort of lost in the clouds is literally what's happening. Being lost in the clouds of a relationship. That's a really strong extent of metaphor. I don't know where we're putting Rosewood on the fire. I haven't figured that one out. I'm still stuck on that metaphor. But she ends here that you knew at the time that I was a liar. So there's some sort of like underlying issue that's been set up in this morning sunrise. And then as things go on, we get making promises, but the promises are stuttered, but promises, which belies the actual promise,

suggests that maybe we aren't being truthful, and then the relationship falls apart. And she's now sort of reflecting back on this relationship at the end. I hope you landed safely on the ground. I hope you're happy now on a pink cloud. And so I think we sort of have this multiple approaches to this metaphor. It has many meanings. Okay, pink clouding.

Once again, I find that talking through with you makes me enjoy and appreciate the song maybe more than I initially did. Yeah, I don't know how people are going to feel about me as a professor after the fact, because some people seem to so not enjoy these songs, but I don't know, upon first listen with fresh ears, I think this is working right now for me. In general, I'm not typically a fan of bonus releases. I really like, you know, succinct. This is the statement that I made to.

to, I intended to make, I think oftentimes bonus material is the stuff that didn't make the cut. But in this case, we're hearing things that she intentionally wanted to add to that project. And these all feel consistent with the sound of that album. It's a little lighter. It's pop forward. And they have that little bit of extra soundtracking, that cinematic soundscape that we had seen and heard in Life of a Showgirl. I'm curious where the final song is going to go. The final song is Babylon.

Oh, well, this is not going to end well. Okay, so when we were discussing life of a show, but you wake up on the train with your headphones gone. Then that melody is all you want. You never knew that it was Babylon until it was gone. Okay, so when we were discussing Life of a Show Girl, you and I pointed out that we could not find a single T-drop. Da-da-da. There was one hidden in one of the songs that we missed. I can't even recall what it was at this moment,

but I did catch that this song is delivering what you and I coined a decade ago, the melody that she loves to repeat over and over again. And so for that reason, this is a nice throwback to early material once again, while I think fitting within the showgirl theme. Charlie, I feel like she wrote this song for us. We're finally getting our shout-out. We didn't get, you know, she went to New Heights for the reference in Cleveland, but now this is clearly an Easter egg for you and me specifically.

We get our classic T-drop, the kind that you might hear say at the end of the chorus of, You belong with me. You belong with me. This is like a super T-drop. The first one goes, all you want. And the second one is Babylon. That's like a big jump.

Bobba boom. That's jumping down a full major seventh. It's T-drop on steroids. Yeah, this is classic Swift right here, at least melodically speaking. What about everything else? I haven't heard anything else yet. I do want to check out this chorus because I feel like it has a pretty clever concept, right? And you hate this song.

Once again, you think I can't sing. And you wake up on the tree. train with your headphones gone. Simple rhyme scheme. I generally don't like when people talk about trains in a song because it's going to, if you're on a train, then it's going to rain and it's going to happen all again. But this is a sort of modern train. This is like someone who's riding the subway.

I don't anticipate Taylor rides a lot of the subway. So you wake up with your headphones gone. Then the melody is all you want. It's like, I just can't get you out of my head in another way of saying it. You never knew that it was Babylon until it was gone. she's using her own songwriting as a metaphor for lost love. I think it's a cool conceit. I mean, and let's maybe rewind or zoom out for a second.

Babylon. This song is about someone in her life who is kind of trying to escape a small town, trying to make their way in the world. In the very beginning, she describes them as a stallion fleeing the stable. Those electric fences boys, a stallion flees the stable. And that small town's even smaller now in your rear view.

That's one of her other melodic tropes. She loves that. Yeah, it's a little. That would be called a mordant if we were analyzed. Baroque opera, but it's something else in the hands of Taylor Swift. Yeah. And check out what happens in the final chorus, Charles. But your love is train and you're all alone.

Then that memory is all you want. You never knew that it was bad. This is just love story all over again. It really is. And maybe getaway car, our song, other Taylor Swift's pieces that use what, the scholar Jocelyn Neal once called the time shift paradigm when something changes over the course of the song. The chorus evolves.

Typically the chorus is the same lyrics every time. Right, right. In a lot of Taylor Swift's, I mean, frankly, some of my favorite songs of hers, the chorus changes. And this is a classic example. In the beginning, it was, you hate the song, now it's you love this song, and that memory is all you want.

And that memory is all you want. You never knew that it was Bible. The chorus is maybe reflecting on this person was always trying to find something more. And then by the end, they've realized that the life that they were trying to flee was actually what they needed all along. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I kind of assumed just having heard the chorus first, this must be about a relationship. But it's not about a romantic relationship as much as it's about a relationship to place. Yes. the feeling of home.

What a throwback. This is, I'm a teenager. I hate where I'm from. I'm going to throw away everything. I'm going to get on the train. I'm going to leave. And yet,

the melody of my earlier life is something I thought I didn't like and yet it's haunting me. And by the end of it, you've learned to love that melody. I don't know. I mean, that's a cool song. It's a good country song.

It is. It is. And it's actually even a little heavier than that, Charlie. This person isn't a teenager. They're like a, they're grown up. They're married. They have kids. Check out this passage. You end up hurting every, I'm never being where you are. It's bedtime, but you're sitting in your car. You're missing all the best parts. It is a very country song now that you mention it. Sonically, it doesn't really sound that way. It sounds like a Max Martin Shelbach production.

There's no twang. I don't hear. I don't think there's banjo in there, but they'd like to hide things. in the mix, I don't know. I found this very moving, actually. In some ways, maybe more moving than a lot of the stuff on showgirl. I thought this was like a really deep song that explored some very complicated emotions.

And it's a good place to end because I feel like it might point toward where Taylor Swift can go next. Because what I'm taking away from this conversation is, so what think people want to hear from Taylor? And perhaps the answer lies for me, at least, in some of the

material in this song. It's music that explores messy, grown-up feelings. It's music that tells a story using some of the tropes of country music, but not necessarily the sonic palette. And at the same time, it's music that contains some of the stuff that we know and love from Taylor. The T-drops, the extended metaphors, the surprising turns of phrase. If she can coalesce all of that into a new sound, maybe with some new collaborators, I feel like that's the recipe that's going to re-ignite her critical success and bring new fans into the mix. Yeah, I think that there are mostly pluses here. And these collaborators, I think, have written good melody.

I think that the real challenge is that like she is addressed in the criticism within these songs, there's a lot of people that simply don't want to hear from her. This is just the nature of being at the very, very top. And yet we live in a moment where the media ecosystem is so radically different

than, I don't know, say back when she started her career in the 2000s. Yeah. That now in order to stay at the top, you can't really go away and recede back too far before people forget and move on to the next thing. I think this strategy seems to have worked so far, and yet I'm curious about the intensity of this backlash and

how much it relates to the music itself versus the sort of perception of Taylor Swift. What I want more of, give me more of marital bliss, give me more of some of these honest stories, give me more of the tension in relationships that are maybe not just those boyfriend-style relationships we've heard in the past. I want more adult songs. I think country is a great place for her to return to because country is where she started as a young person, and it is a middle-aged person's game. I think she's going to kill it with a country album. That's what I want to hear next.

All right, Nate, there's a problem. For a while, you know, we've been making video. And in making video, which has been a lot of fun, you can watch us on Netflix, or you can listen to us on your podcast. And one of the challenges is that for the video, we made a beautiful graphic. Our friend Dionne Lee made just gorgeous graphics for the credit sequence, because typically in film you don't read the credits.

That's right. And then we got all these comments that were like, why have you dropped the credits? So is this maybe time that we just continue to shout out the names of the people that we love who make the show? Who knew I would have such an emotional attachment to the credits? And yet I do. It feels like so abrupt when I'm listening to the audio version of our podcast and just suddenly stops. I need that tail end to like emotionally process everything I've just.

heard. So yeah, let's rock some credits, Charles, just like in the good old days. Switch on Pop was produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Lissa Soap, video by Nick Rips, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustration Iris Gottlieb. Our theme music is by Zach Tenario and Jossi Adams of Arc Iris. Remember the Vox Media Podcast Network and production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe to that at NYMag.com slash pod. I think I still got it. So I leave anyone out? No, it just rolled off the tongue. That was a masterclass. have more thoughts about this. Not about Taylor Swift specifically, but we're approaching our 500th episode. Next week. Crazy sentence to utter. And we were actually interested in this idea of what

makes someone think music is good or bad. Like, it's like a fundamental question, Charlie, one that we've been grappling with for 499 episodes, including the one that you just heard about Taylor Swift. So next week, we're going deep into the world of bad music. Yeah, is there bad music. That is the question we will definitively answer for once and for all. Aristotle couldn't do it. Kant couldn't do it. Finally, Switched on Pop is here to save the day. There's one more reason why I love reading the credits with you. After doing this for over a decade, I realized that the whole purpose of this show is the thing that we always, ended the credits with something that sounded like a trite send-off we didn't know what to say

and from the very beginning we're just like all right thanks for listening thanks for listening