nancyknowsthings-blog

[nancyknowsthings-blog]

Taylor Swift’s Kansas City Shuffle.

Guys, guys, we've got it all wrong. If there is one thing we know about Taylor Swift it’s that we don’t know everything. Taylor is not an open book. She is perhaps the most followed celebrity globally and yet she stated in her September 8, 2014 interview with Josh Eells of Rolling Stones: “Swift says that's sort of her point. “People think they know the whole narrative of my life," she says. "I think maybe that line is there to remind people that there are really big things they don't know about." (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/taylor-swift-1989-cover-story-20140908)

Hear me out. Like actually hear me and don’t make me sound crazy. First, I am not a swiftie. I actually think Taylor is brilliant in the same way I think Beyoncé is brilliant, business savvy, in a boss kind of way. I would say I am a fan of them as an artist and as someone who has direction in their life. The kind that takes control and presents exactly what she wants and in the way that she intends it to be. I wish I had that kind of discipline in my own life.

I enjoy their music, sure, but to say I have the level of dedication that either of their biggest fans have would be a lie. I am a writer and I think I have an eye for detail. All of that to say I have no actual clue or idea of what Taylor is going through or what she means by most of her songs and or her image. All of this is conjecture and from the things that I wish to present in such a way that show my own opinion as a viable opinion in the face of all of the media coverage that surrounds Taylor Swift.

I think that Taylor has had a hidden, secret relationship with someone that we know nothing about. That is by design. This is who “Look what you made me do” is about. She even points out exactly who she is referring to. “I've got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!” I metaphorically bet you if I were to get a copy of her album Red and looked closely enough I would find somehow, someway, a name that is underlined.

Guys she is a talented songwriter, singer, and artist, she is so dedicated to her craft that she leaves clues and I don’t think they are just for fans, I think they are for this hidden relationship person. Think about it, again she is one of the most talked about, photographed people in the world and she can’t just communicate the way we would. She was a teenager when she began her career and she has probably learned to keep a lot of things concealed.

Of course there are direct jabs at Kayne and Kim, Katie and other people. Maybe part of it is an angry call out. She got pissed and it was more of a: well I’m gonna go out and break all the records, “look what you made me do!” You're nothing to me. This is nothing to me. This isn’t gonna phase me because none of anything that is media hyped has ever phased me. I will rise up, I have every single time before this and I will, again, “I do it all the time.” It’s an anthem almost.

This is surface level though. She even states: “The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma” She is so used to the drama and the crap that is thrown at her and she is not scared to handle it, like a boss.

Except that, there is something deeper here, she hasn’t gotten over. It seems to me that she is directing this at a hidden someone while casually confronting all the obvious haters, because that part is not challenging at all, because, hey she is used to that drama. She can certainly have multiple meanings to her words and songs. She certainly has before. That is the beauty of talent.

This article shows her album Red in a light that has helped me to develop my theory. It was written of course on August 28, 2017 the day after the release of her video for Look What You Made Me Do:   http://www.npr.org/2017/08/28/546359653/shocking-omissions-taylor-swift-s-red-a-canonical-coming-of-age-album.

In it the author describes how the album Red was such a turning point for Taylor. Read it, it’s a great review of the album. Then go listen to the album itself. There is so much there. Themes and subjects that she still explores in her 1989 album, maybe because she hasn’t let go of it all. She is still in the middle of it or maybe in 1989 she is beginning to let it go, beginning to come to terms with it. That is after all what art does, it allows the person to work through their deepest emotions in a way that expresses them to the world; right, wrong, or indifferent, anything and everything all at once.

All of Red is more than. More than casual, more than superficial relationships. There are deeper feelings to all of these songs than, I dated this celebrity guy and this song came about. Again I could be completely off base because I DON’T KNOW. I don’t know these people or where they were at in these relationships. I have no real insight into any of this, other than as a person that has been through a lot of deep life lessons.

It seems like there is someone that has been her anchor from way before Red. This is someone who she keeps going back to. They are more than what anyone thought, what they themselves thought, they are very near to her, so much so that she holds them so intensely tight and won’t let anyone see this one. This one is hers, this is not ours. I have my own ideas of who it could be but that is not for me to tell.

Flash forward two albums and we see the result of something that happened. There is a disconnect, a divide; time and whatever it is that we don’t know happened and the old Taylor is dead and she is coming at this person in a new way. I think it’s as a women scorned because as the saying goes, hell hath no fury like one.

You don’t get to where Taylor is by showing your whole hand. Maybe that is what she means by her being a snake, here we all are, looking this way and that for all the answers and in the end we are the ones being fooled because none of it is actually what is happening, yet again she slips out of our grasps. That my friends is a Kansas City shuffle. ;)