So lowering my Punk credibility a bit, I adore Taylor Swift as a musical entity.
She produces regular, high-quality nuggets of pop fluff.
There may not be any greater substance to them.
They might not change the world
but you can dance and sing along with reckless abandon.
Perfect pop music.
It's fun and nothing more.
As a personality, Taylor is divisive.
Despite the idea of separating the artist from the art,
Taylor songs have an inbuilt self-referential nature.
As such, both fans and press alike scour through her lyrics for details about her latest romantic missteps.
This has been framed as attention-seeking
and she has been accused of serial dating as inspiration for her hit songs.
In reality is more a case of diary-style confessions as a way to express herself
and relate with her core fan base
Just like what every other artist has done since the dawn of pop music.
But due to this press-induced over-interest in her life,
some people have very negative opinions on Ms. Swift.
In this video though I will be exploring her music, specifically her rather out-there middle eights.
So before we deep dive in: what is a middle eight?
So it's neither a verse or a chorus and it appears only once in a song,
often between the penultimate and last chorus.
One famous example is Elvis Presley's 'Suspicious Minds'.
The slower pace and more intimate lyricism introduce an added dimension to the song.
No longer just mourning the loss of love
but Elvis proclaiming his innocence and begging for her not to go.
A subtle twist on the subject matter.
Another one would be the "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" breakdown from Outkast's Hey Ya!
With this Outkast are doubling down on that "Just want to dance" aside at the end of the previous verse.
Andre 3000 preferring to lead everyone in a dance party than dwell on his fractured marriage,
therefore hammering home the song's intent.
Taylor's middle eights are many things: memorable, theatrical, a little goofy
but one thing they are not is subtle.
Each of the lead singles from her last three albums include a frankly weird middle eight.
But what do they add to her songs aside from artisanal flair?
First there was "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"
The song, most likely about Jake Gyllenhaal, has the following interlude:
This gives the chance for the rhyming triarch has been tempting her since the title,
by adding the word "forever" to the "never ever" coupling.
But the real meat of this section is in the final four bars.
Perhaps a direct outreach to a teenage fan base with her halting almost Valley speak
made up to seem like an one-sided phone conversation.
As is always the issue with Swift: Is this her or is this Taylor's parody of teenage conversation?
Personally it always reminds me of another pop princess and her defining spoken word section.
It's campy, it's ridiculous
but it's arguably one of the most iconic post-millennial pop moments.
Taylor knows her pop history.
She's taking the pop hits of the past and incorporating them into her future hits.
Two years after the success of Red was 1989 and its introductory single "Shake It Off".
Like "...Together" it was a world consuming hit,
had an insistent chorus which was also the title
and then outlandish spoken word middle eight.
The first part is the real killer couplet, so much so that Taylor thought she needed to copyright "this sick beat".
The second part is where he gets so memorably goofy.
The latter part when twinned with the breakbeat recalls the inspired cheerleading gibberish of "Hollaback Girl".
Again harvesting pop of the past for her needs.
The final of the three is her most recent comeback single "Look What You Made Me Do".
If we were to rank the absurdity of these middle eights "... Made Me Do" wins out right.
In the first part Taylor paints herself as the actress in the absurdist play
that is the press-conceived vision of her life in the public eye.
It's a pointed parody of her themes from the other two songs:
the heartbreaks supposedly orchestrated for songwriting fodder.
This is the high point.
Not only is it extremely theatrical and consciously tying to the press' version of who Taylor is,
this skit creates intrigue: namely who is on the other end of the call?
Katy Perry, Kim and Kanye, Calvin Harris any of the other suspected targets of her bile?
If we look at all three middle eights, these spoken word parts are Taylor looking back at the situation
that inspired these respective songs and going "I'm so over that".
Whether it's '...Together''s "this is exhausting" admission
or 'Shake It Off''s "I'm not heartbroken, I'm dancing and moving on' sentiment.
'...Made Me Do' is this idea to the nth degree.
Not only is she over it but the her that was under it is dead. Taylor killed her.
The media have criticized the song for taking these beefs all too seriously
and have taken the lyrics at face value.
They have a point but the accompanying music video shows Taylor is very aware
of how extremely silly this whole obsessed over narrative is.
"I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative" - "Shut up!"
But why do they have to be so silly?
What is the logic behind giving your reintroduction to the music buying public such weird middle eights?
The Needle Drop recently noted that memes are the future of music promotion.
You can get people talking and pumped about a song before they've even heard it.
Good funny memes multiply and spread organically.
That's why the Taylor Swift is a Snake meme grew so big.
But the most successful music memes are the ones that take a stupid lyric and run with it.
The spoken word format means that no one can miss hear these out-there ramblings
and therefore they stick with the listener.
In spite of the ultra repetitive choruses, these middle eights are most iconic moments in these songs
And that's the thing, there were infinite best pop songs than 'Look What You Made Me Do' last year
and it is mid-tier Swift at best.
And yet 'Look What You Made Me Do' was the fifth most googled song in 2017
and it's earned the record for music video with the most views in its first 24 hours.
There were bigger songs sure, but few as talked about.
The pop culture infiltration was absolute.
Taylor knows how to generate hype about her music, she knows her pop history
and she knows how to make a statement using that oft-maligned songwriting tool, the middle eight.