#(my bday isnt till next weekend the concert dates just fell very close to it)

[synthaphone]

went to see tmbg yesterday and there was someone in front of us wearing a taylor swift tour tshirt; so me and gill are having fun with the hypothetical question of: if Taylor Swift were to cover a They Might Be Giants song, which one would she pick?

so far we have considered:

Twisting- Gill suggested this one on account of it being a bitter break up song; my argument against it was that it feels too rockin’

Narrow Your Eyes- briefly considered for the same reasoning as Twisting, then vetoed because it’d be a lot of work for her to switch the pronouns to be from the perspective of a woman, and we didnt think she’d be up for not switching them

Another First Kiss- this is a pretty saccharine one that doesnt seem hard to change the pronouns on; its biggest problem is being kind of a deep cut on account of Mink Car being a less popular album. Maybe she’d end up there if she told her assistants or producer or whoever helps her make her music to pick a song for her. Around this point was when we started working under the assumption that she is being forced to cover a They Might Be Giants song- her “okay, english major” comment to someone asking her about potential literary allusions in her lyrics makes me pretty sure TMBG would be too nerdy for her tastes. Also im just now realizing that if you switch the pronouns, the song now has a line about the boy walking around wearing all of the girl’s clothes. Taylor feels like more of a “im very heterosexual but i support LGBT people, love is love!!” type ally than a “im comfortable enough in my sexuality to sing a song with a line about appreciating my partner crossdressing”. she cares too much about what other people say about her online to take that kind of risk

Birdhouse In Your Soul - just cover their most famous, poppiest song. easy peasy. i feel like this is the true answer

anyway feel free to contribute to this thought experiment. i know a lot about TMBG and very little about Taylor, so there’s only so much i can really speculate