FEATURE:
Groovelines
Taylor Swift – Blank Space
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I wanted to focus on this Taylor Swift song…
PHOTO CREDIT: Mario Testino for British Vogue
for Groovelines - as the album it is from, 1989, turns ten later in the year. Following Shake It Off, Blank Space was the second single from the album. Swift’s most acclaimed album to that point, Blank Space remains one of her most popular and accomplished moments. Written with producers Max Martin and Shelback, it was inspired by the media scrutiny and obsession with her love life. At that point, as I guess now, there is this girl-next-door image of Taylor Swift. The way she was being portrayed back in 2014 was as someone who different to that. He way she was being talked about by some in the media was quite awful. Released to U.S. radio on 10th November, 2014, Blank Space became one of the biggest-selling singles of 2015. It topped the charts in many countries. It spent seven weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In terms of its acclaim and legacy. Blank Space received three GRAMMY nomination (including Song of the Year). It is considered one of the greatest songs of the past twenty years. Rolling Stone recently placed it inside their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time feature. One of the defining songs of the 2010s, it was a huge moment for Taylor Swift. I want to start out with an article from Billboard. They provided essays on the hundred songs they felt defined the 2010s. It is interesting learning more about the wonderful Blank Space:
“I had more fun writing ‘Blank Space’ than any song I’d written before,” Swift tells Billboard over email. “I had, over time, compiled lists of lyrics, zingers, and potential Twitter comebacks to criticisms and jokes people had made at my expense. When I finally came up with the chorus and hook for the song, I just went through that list on my phone and one by one slotted them into the song. It was the first time I had ever used songwriting as a humorous coping mechanism for an overly harsh depiction of me in the media, but it wouldn’t be the last.”
You know the one-liners she’s talking about: “You look like my next mistake.” “Love’s a game, wanna play?” “I can make the bad guys good for the weekend.” “Darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.” They’re all T-shirts and memes waiting to happen — oh, and speaking of memes, there’s one lyric from Swift’s list that took on a life of its own. The line in the chorus “Got a long list of ex-lovers” was widely misheard as “All the lonely Starbucks lovers,” leading Swift to write the Feb. 14, 2015, tweet “Sending my love to all the lonely Starbucks lovers out there this Valentine’s Day…..even though that is not the correct lyric,” with the coffee chain cheekily responding, “Wait, it’s not?”
So what made this song stand out from Swift’s already-remarkable catalog? For starters, “Blank Space” — which Swift co-wrote with pop superproducers Max Martin and Shellback — seemed to fully cement her transition from core country to pure pop. Where “Shake It Off” announced Swift’s pop-star reintroduction, “Blank Space” just naturally fit right in on top 40 radio without any explanation. On top of that, the song utterly dismantled and then re-engineered the media’s perception of the singer/songwriter as a serial dater with a musical track record of kissing-and-telling.
She leaned into this concocted character in an over-the-top Joseph Kahn-directed music video, which begins with a picturesque love story set on a palatial estate complete with horseback riding and champagne picnics only to end with Swift throwing flaming clothes off a balcony and swinging a golf club at her ex’s priceless sports car. Oh, and just as her jilted lover peels out of the driveway, a beautiful new boy drives up to start the whole cycle anew. The video clearly resonated with fans and critics alike, racking up north of 2.5 billion views on YouTube to date.
While a lot of coverage of the song and video at the time referred to Swift being “in on the joke,” in hindsight, it feels like “Blank Space” rewrote the joke entirely, making clear how ludicrous the pop star’s public persona was and re-routing the focus back to her music. Just as Swift had made a name for herself with very specific, autobiographical musical storytelling, she continued that trend with “Blank Space” — but this time, she was commenting on her own public narrative by consciously framing it in real time through song, setting the standard for a new, self-aware pop star in the 21st century.
“In reality, I was a 24-year-old young woman who was meeting people and dating the way everyone should be allowed to,” Swift tells Billboard, “but because I’m also a songwriter and in the public eye (and because this was five years ago when the conversation around double standards against women was less of a mainstream argument), people were allowed to shame me, joke about me, and make me feel like I was doing something wrong. I used ‘Blank Space’ as a way to show people that I knew what they were saying, and that the way they were portraying me (a serial man eater, volatile, dramatic, petulant, immature) wasn’t breaking me…it was actually an inspiring character they had drawn up”.
If Swift’s 1989 didn’t much sound like the music of 1989 – instead, Taylor Swift was born in 1989; the album came out shortly before her twenty-fifth birthday – it was this remarkably varied and strong album that changed her from this Country artist to a fully-fledged Pop icon. Someone who was here for the long run. Appropriately, there are comparisons with Madonna. She released Like a Prayer in the year 1989. That was an album that was seen as confirmation of her status as the Queen of Pop. Taylor Swift, in some ways, is very similar to Madonna. With the acclaim and celebration came increased media attention and intrusion. In December 2014, Slate wrote why Blank Space was number one:
“Blank Space,” Swift’s current electropop smash and the new No. 1 single on Billboard’s authoritative Hot 100 chart, is a case in point. Built atop airy, chilly synths and a heart-pulse beat, it would have sounded right at home on the radio of mid-to-late ’85, sandwiched between hits from Tears for Fears and Icehouse. Swift’s chirping vocal slots into this same frosty pocket, her staccato syllables percolating like a metronome. If lyrics websites were truly faithful to her delivery, they would print the song’s words at just one or two per line: “Nice to/ Meet you/ Where you/ Been? … Magic/ Madness/ Heaven/ Sin … New/ Money/ Suit and/ Tie … Ain’t it/ Funny/ Rumors/ Fly … ”
Swift is well served by her co-writer–producers, the Swedish pop masterminds Max Martin and Karl Johan “Shellback” Schuster. Those guys know a thing or two about the value of open space punctuating sharp hooks and lockstep vocals driving the rhythm. So expertly do Martin and Shellback employ that bag of tricks on “Blank Space” that the song is almost avant-garde in its parceling of morsels of pop pleasure. It’s rare that a chart-topping hit’s title actually alludes to what the song itself sounds like—imagine if “When Doves Cry” were titled “Bass-less Confessional” or “Faith” called “Stuttering Rockabilly.” But “Blank Space” is in fact all about its blank spaces, a glorious echo chamber of romantic deconstruction.
Speaking of romance, have I mentioned? The song is funny. The lyrics to “Blank Space” chronicle the boom-and-bust cycle of an obsessive love affair, churning through the dizzy-infatuation, jealous-recrimination, and rapid-devolution phases in under four minutes: “So it’s gonna be forever/ Or it’s gonna go down in flames/ You can tell me when it’s over/ If the high was worth the pain.” However lovelorn these words sound when sung, the song is clearly sardonic, poking fun at starry-eyed romanticism with the wryness of a Tinder veteran. The titular “blank space” in the song is where the man-eating singer will “write your name.” It’s satire for the age of Conscious Uncoupling—baking in the end of a relationship before it’s even begun.
Beyond its merits as a wry and unconventional pop hit, by reaching No. 1, “Blank Space” is also something of a chart milestone for Swift, Martin, and Shellback—as if they haven’t set enough records lately. As I did a couple of weeks ago when Swift’s album dropped and obliterated everything in its path, I’ll run down these achievements in increasing order of remarkableness. First, “Blank” is this trio’s third No. 1 hit together. Swift’s numerous Country No. 1s were mostly coproduced by Tennesseean Nathan Chapman and written by her alone, but since she’s crossed over to the big pop chart Swift has only reached the top with her Martin/Shellback collaborations, starting with 2012’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” For Max Martin, “Blank” is his 19th U.S. No. 1 hit as a writer, solidifying his third-place rank behind Paul McCartney and John Lennon. For Swift, who’s coming off the early-fall smash “Shake It Off,” “Blank” is her second straight No. 1 hit from 1989—the first time she’s scored back-to-back pop chart-toppers.
But the last feat is the most impressive: Swift didn’t just score two straight No. 1s, she actually replaced herself in the top slot. “Blank Space” ejects “Shake It Off” from No. 1 after the latter spent four total weeks on top. This is some serious diva shit. Knocking yourself out of the penthouse is the perfect game of Billboard pop chart achievements. Only a handful of acts have done it, starting with the two biggest of the Rock Era: Elvis Presley (1956’s “Hound Dog”/”Don’t Be Cruel” and “Love Me Tender”) and the Beatles (the still-unequaled 1964 trifecta of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You”and “Can’t Buy Me Love”). In the SoundScan Era, when songs began to linger at No. 1 longer, the feat has gotten somewhat easier, but it’s still rare enough to be special. In the last two decades, a small circle of hip-hop and R&B acts have pulled it off at their peak moments of pop crossover: Boyz II Men in 1994, Nelly in 2002, Usher in 2004, T.I. in 2008 and the Black Eyed Peas in 2009; if you include featured credits, two more rappers did it—Sean Combs (then Puff Daddy) in 1997 and Ja Rule in 2002. Notice anything about all these acts? No solo women (only Fergie in the Peas). Swift is the first woman to replace herself at No. 1 in the history of the pop charts.
One other, subtler achievement for “Blank Space” is that it’s the second straight Swift chart-topper to poke fun at her own persona. As I noted back in August when it went to No. 1, the lyrics to “Shake It Off” read as broadly populist, but were at least half about Swift herself: chewing out her “haters” who were “gonna hate” the way she goes “on too many dates.” “Blank,” too, is very much about the public profile of Taylor. She’s said so herself: Even before the song was chosen as 1989’s second radio single, Swift offered that the whole point of the song was to write a parody of her serial-monogamist, obsessive-crush, boyfriends-as-expendable-songwriting-fodder persona”.
I want to end with the entirety of an article from The Guardian. They highlighted the amazing video for Blank Space. Perhaps Taylor Swift’s moist striking video to that point. Maybe one fans had been waiting for. Now, there is still so much focus on Swift’s love life. She is dating NFL star Travis Kelce at the moment. Still unable to have a private life, there was all this sort of obsession nearly a decade ago. The Blank Space video is a poke at and a reaction against that:
“Taylor Swift has been called a prodigy, a “feminist’s nightmare,” and – most annoyingly and most often – boy-crazy. People are so obsessed with Swift’s supposedly too-active dating life that there’s an entire wiki dedicated to her ex-boyfriends. Timelines of her relationships have been published by Billboard, Business Insider and Glamour magazine. Any song that Swift releases immediately sparks speculation about which famous ex is featured therein – her creative output always somehow ends up tied to a list of men.
It can’t be fun for a young, talented, wildly-successful woman to constantly have her music bonafides attached to her love life. So when a Vanity Fair reporter asked the singer-songwriter last year if she was “boy-crazy”, Swift called her out:
For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that’s taking something that potentially should be celebrated – a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way – that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist.
And now, in her new Blank Space video, Swift performs the very unflattering image that the public has foisted upon her, as if to say: You want boy-crazy? I’ll give you boy-crazy!
This is the Taylor Swift we’ve been waiting for: the Taylor Swift who smiles while she offers up a hearty “fuck you”.
The video for Blank Space is a sort of dystopian feminist fairy tale: Swift is surrounded by woodland creatures and dressed in gorgeous gowns. She has picnics of champagne and sweets, all while in the company of a generically handsome, if unremarkable, man. (Blank Space, indeed!)
But things swiftly go awry in fantasy land with her Ken-doll boyfriend – he texts someone else, the bastard. Swift goes full-on Fatal Attraction: she screams and cries with a mascara-streaked face, throws a plant at him, cuts up his shirts, tries to chop down a rather large tree upon which she had carved their names, bashes his expensive car with a golf club and wields one very large knife in a crime against pastry.
“Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane,” Swift sings in the middle of her meltdown. Finally, when her prince is passed out in the driveway – we don’t see why – she doesn’t wake him up with a kiss but with a firm bite to the lip. He then drives off in a rush ... and another generically handsome man drives up to take his place.
Swift has made no secret that Blank Space is about the media depictions of her relationships with men. “There’s been sort of a sensational fictionalization of my personal life”, Swift said in an interview about the song.
They’ve drawn up this profile of a girl who is a serial dater, jetsetting around with all her boyfriends and she get them but she can’t keep them because she’s too emotional and she’s needy. Then she gets her heart broken because they leave and she’s jilted, so she goes to her evil lair and writes songs about it for revenge.
Swift sings in Blank Space that she’s “a nightmare dressed like a daydream”, and indeed, this video – where the men are interchangeable, the girlfriend is crazy (and crazy hot), and the joke is on anyone who takes her image too seriously – is a certain kind of feminist daydream. It’s a world where the narrow and sexist caricatures attached to women are acted out for our amusement, their full ridiculousness on display. And for those who would try to pigeonhole Swift as little more than the sum of her dating life, the real nightmare is the woman behind the character: a woman who has full creative control over her image and isn’t afraid to use it to mock your efforts to stereotype her”.
On 10th November, Blank Space turns ten. On 27th October, 1989 is ten. I am sure the album will get a reissue and a lot of new words written about it. A song celebrated for its lyrical maturity and experimental in terms of new musical styles, it also won Song of the Year at the 2015 American Music Awards. At the 2016 BMI Awards, the song was one of the Award-Winning Songs that helped Swift earn the honour Songwriter of the Year. It truly was…
A pivotal moment for her.