{"id":86905,"date":"2015-06-22T15:03:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T19:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=86905"},"modified":"2015-06-26T15:35:01","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T19:35:01","slug":"revenge-of-the-nerds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/22\/revenge-of-the-nerds\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge of the Nerds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taylor Swift\u2019s passive-aggressive lyrics are \u201cthe realization of every writer\u2019s narrowest dream.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"taylorswiftbadblood\"<\/a>

From the \u201cBad Blood\u201d promotional poster, 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon,\u201d Taylor Swift said with a straight face to an interviewer from Vanity Fair <\/em>while the magazine was profiling her in 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No, not Taylor Swift. Not the author of songs like \u201cForever and Always<\/a>,\u201d written in the wake of her relationship with former boyfriend Joe Jonas, the better-looking Jonas brother, and featuring this lyric: \u201cDid I say something way too honest, made you run and hide like a scared little boy?\u201d Not her, who wrote\/sang about her relationship with the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, \u201c<\/em>Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword\/and realizing there\u2019s no right answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not Taylor, who leaves the impossible-to-crack clues in her liner notes for each song by capitalizing a variety of letters that spell out the subjects in a very essential way: \u201cTAY\u201d for a song about ex-boyfriend Taylor Lautner; \u201cSAG\u201d for the Gyllenhaal one (as in Swift And Gyllenhaal, or that they\u2019re both Sagittarius. I don\u2019t know).<\/p>\n

For Taylor Swift to pretend that her entire music career is not a tool of passive aggression toward those who had wronged her is like me pretending I\u2019m not carbon-based: too easy to disprove, laughable at its very suggestion.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014I say all this with utter admiration. Taylor\u2019s career is, in fact, the perfected realization of every writer\u2019s narrowest dream: To get back at those who had wronged us, sharply and loudly, and then to be able to cry innocent that our intentions were anything other than poetic and pure. Most of us can only achieve this with small asides. Taylor not only publicly dates and publicly breaks up, but she then releases an achingly specific song about the relationship\u2014and that song has an unforgettable hook\u2014all the while swearing she won\u2019t talk about relationships that are over. Yes, date Taylor Swift, and not only will she shit on you on her album, but the song will become a single, then a hit, and then you will hear yourself shat upon by an army of young women at Staples Center. And then she\u2019ll deny that she was ever doing anything other than righteously manifesting her art. It\u2019s diabolical, and for a lifelong passive-aggressive like me, it\u2019s made her my hero. <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Like a good passive-aggressive, Taylor never owns up to this behavior. In that Vanity Fair <\/em>profile, she repeats her vow to never kiss and tell, but then refers the journalist to an anonymous friend who does have permission to tell. And tell she does: About Taylor\u2019s romance with Harry Styles from One Direction, about Jonas, about Lautner. Like a next-generation digital-age retaliator, Taylor has found a way to tell her story without telling it herself. First her friend tells Vanity Fair, <\/em>now Vanity Fair <\/em>tells us like it\u2019s news. Now it\u2019s not just rumor; it\u2019s from an actual news source. Don\u2019t look at me, she says. I didn\u2019t say anything. And, well, she\u2019s kind of not lying. Kind of.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I knew something was going on in someone\u2019s personal life and they didn\u2019t address it in their music, I was always very confused by that,\u201d Taylor told The New York Times<\/a>. <\/em>\u201cI owe it to people from letting them in from Day 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

The songs are, after all, her art! And art isn\u2019t about anything specific. It\u2019s about human experience, and it\u2019s subject to interpretation. In fact, this song isn\u2019t about me at all, she seems to say. It\u2019s about you.<\/em><\/p>\n

Consider the initial remark\u2014\u201cI\u2019ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon\u201d\u2014itself a statement of roundabout, unimpeachable genius.<\/p>\n

In fact, you can find everything you need to know about the multifaceted genius of Swift\u2019s passive-aggression\u2014her gift for words, her understanding of exactly what she was put on this earth to do\u2014in that sentence. Never thinking about something is not the same as not having done it. And weapon, <\/em>a literally loaded word, is something bad. She\u2019s not being bad, or mean. She\u2019s just letting it out. She\u2019s just processing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When The New York Times <\/em>asked her about her relationship with Joe Jonas, the answer was: \u201cHe\u2019s not in my life anymore, and I have absolutely nothing to say about or to him.\u201d Except that song she wrote about him, of course. Oh, and her song \u201cBetter Than Revenge<\/a>,\u201d which was aimed at Camilla Belle, the actress who ostensibly \u201cstole\u201d Jonas away (sample lyric: \u201cShe\u2019s an actress, whoa; She\u2019s better known for the things that she does on the mattress, whoa\u201d). For his part, Jonas wrote his own song indicting Taylor that was heard by whomever listens to his music, but, well, lyrics just ain\u2019t his thing: \u201cNow I\u2019m done with superstars and all the tears on her guitar\u201d\u2014\u201cTeardrops on My Guitar<\/a>\u201d was an early hit of Taylor\u2019s. This was the equivalent of the urban myth dance-off that may or may not (probably not, but let me dream!<\/em>) have taken place between Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake following their breakup. It was a fan\u2019s dream. A real brawl. Actual tween idol drama.<\/p>\n

But still, Taylor would not own up to her song subjects. Either because she just loves getting off on a technicality, or she thinks we\u2019re idiots. I believe it\u2019s the former. Because between the liner notes and the timelines, there\u2019s really no way to doubt it: if you just broke up with Taylor Swift, that there song is most certainly about you.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The masterstroke of all of this passive-aggression is, of course, \u201cDear John<\/a>,\u201d a single on her album Speak Now<\/em>. It is the accumulation of her feints with little Disney boy Joe Jonas or Twilight <\/em>hunk Taylor Lautner. This time, a man about twice her age came around, stole her heart, and then broke it. This is what she\u2019d been preparing for her whole life.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the lyrics to \u201cDear John,\u201d printed without permission, in full detail, since no excerpt can adequately portray what a writhing takedown the song is:<\/p>\n

\n

Well, maybe it\u2019s me and my blind optimism to blame
Or maybe it\u2019s you and your sick need to give love then take it away
And you\u2019ll add my name to your long list of traitors who don\u2019t understand
And I\u2019ll look back and regret how I ignored when they said run as fast as you can<\/p>\n

Dear John, I see it all now that you\u2019re gone
Don\u2019t you think I was too young to be messed with?
The girl in the dress cried the whole way home<\/p>\n

Dear John, I see it all now it was wrong
Don\u2019t you think nineteen\u2019s too young to be played by
Your dark twisted games when I loved you so
I should\u2019ve known<\/p>\n

You are an expert at sorry and keeping lines blurry
Never impressed by me acing your tests
All the girls that you\u2019ve run dry have tired, lifeless eyes
\u2019Cause you\u2019ve burned them out<\/p>\n

But I took your matches before fire could catch me
So don\u2019t look now
I\u2019m shining like fireworks over
Your sad, empty town<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Taylor wrote this in the aftermath of her relationship with renowned rake John Mayer, a man who committed the sin of breaking the heart of a post-Pitt Jennifer Aniston, among others (Vanessa Carlton, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus\u2014and those are just the musical ones; by the time this is published, surely his near- engagement to Katy Perry, much spoken about on the radio now, will be a thing of the past). He is a man of little variety. His type is unsuspecting, pretty, petty, and also white.<\/p>\n

Did John Mayer deserve this? He\u2019s guilty of his own snide songwriting crimes: It was an open secret that he had written \u201cYour Body Is a Wonderland<\/a>\u201d to honor the fleshy coil of that other J. Lo., Jennifer Love Hewitt, whom he dated circa 2002. And he did write a pretty scorching post-breakup song about Taylor called \u201cPaper Doll<\/a>,\u201d which is a basically a patronizing work of little art that sounds as loungey and un-new as his other music. The song talks about a girl who changes dresses a lot, which is not a crime as far as I know, and something about cutting cords\u2014perhaps he felt like she was too young or too tied to the music industry trappings. Not like him. Nobody tells him what to wear or who to write soft- rock songs about!<\/p>\n

However you feel about revenge songs, we can agree that Taylor\u2019s \u201cDear John\u201d is a master class in passive-aggression. First, consider Taylor\u2019s use of the generic \u201cDear John\u201d letter for this specific John\u2014there\u2019s that plausible deniability again!<\/em>\u2014as if to make it sound like a goodbye letter to anyone, <\/em>when really it\u2019s a goodbye letter to someone.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the viciousness. \u201cDear John\u201d lays bare all that we suspected of Mayer\u2019s psyche that it\u2019s actually uncomfortable to listen to. Not since Alanis Morissette wrote the scathing \u201cYou Oughta Know,\u201d allegedly about former Full House <\/em>star Dave Coulier (an unlikely lothario, true, but hey, Canada has its own rules), has a song about an ex been so cringe-worthy.<\/p>\n

Of \u201cDear John,\u201d Taylor said: \u201cThere are things that were little nuances of the relationship, little hints. Everyone will know, so I don\u2019t really have to send out emails on this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

And like she wished for, John Mayer was humiliated, and he told Rolling Stone <\/em>as much. Mayer also takes issue with \u201cDear John\u201d as a musician. \u201cI will say as a songwriter that I think it\u2019s kind of cheap songwriting<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cI know she\u2019s the biggest thing in the world, and I\u2019m not trying to sink anybody\u2019s ship, but I think it\u2019s abusing your talent to rub your hands together and go, \u2018Wait till he gets a load of this!\u2019 That\u2019s bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Taylor maintains that she\u2019s innocent, having told The Times, <\/em>\u201cI can say things I wouldn\u2019t say in real life. I couldn\u2019t put the sentence together the way I could put the song together.\u201d It\u2019s not that she didn\u2019t want to say this to your face, John. It\u2019s just that she couldn\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n

But John maintained she crossed some line that he didn\u2019t cross when he wrote \u201cPaper Doll,\u201d or that Joni Mitchell didn\u2019t cross when she wrote \u201cFree Man in Paris<\/a>\u201d about David Geffen, or Neil Diamond when he wrote \u201cSweet Caroline<\/a>\u201d about Caroline Kennedy (though I\u2019m still not one hundred percent sure that\u2019s true). Using his name was not fair in love\u2019s war, but really, the objection must be to spilling details of such intimate abuse. And that\u2019s where Taylor excels.<\/p>\n

See, Taylor was, according to lore, a chubby geek in middle school. She was abandoned by her peers in sixth grade, just when her songwriting powers were coming to fruition, and so just as her gift began to sprout, so did her ability to articulate them and, just a couple of years later, publicize them. The metabolism of this follows that of the digital age into which Taylor was born: Have a thought, post it. None of this rigorous checking with legal, followed by second thoughts, followed by self-doubt, followed by yielding to decency like a puppy dog. But more on that later.<\/p>\n

It was a dream come true for a rejected-feeling girl who was coming into her own as a tall, dazzling blonde with a microphone and a following. Is there any one of us who kept a diary without wishing deep down that someone would find it and understand us fully, down to the ugliest detail? Is there anyone among us who didn\u2019t hope that the world would learn from that diary exactly how the world had wronged us?<\/p>\n

She was no match for a soft-rock singer who has been getting laid his whole life on the strength of his guitar and his pillowy lips.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"9781940207735\"<\/a>That\u2019s how Taylor Swift became the hero to of all of us losers, of anyone humiliated in middle school, the publicly dumped in high school, or anyone who ever realized during the car ride home the perfect comeback that would now go unsaid. We don\u2019t all have the wherewithal to process what has happened to us and synthesize it into a pop song that will be broadcast to a bajillion fans. And we certainly, for the most part, lack the platform. Today\u2019s teenager can craft the perfect Tweet or Facebook update, toy with it, post it, modify it, delete it. Taylor puts it out there, and out there it stays.<\/p>\n

In a way, she was made for this. She was born with the face of an accusation. Her eyes, which see everything and narrow naturally; upturned, judgy nose to look down past; lips that tend toward pursing. Yet she was also born lovely, with a sweet, thin voice and an engaging smile. She\u2019s smart and tall, and she\u2019s thin now. Who would not love her? In fact, for those of us who were chubby youths, who had no friends, the invention of Taylor Swift is no less than the invention of a super-robot sent through time and space to lure the mean girls and mean boys into loving us, and then break their hearts and tell the world what scum they are. We couldn\u2019t have dreamed it better.<\/p>\n

Taylor\u2019s denials are another layer of performance art. Because has there ever been a more passive-aggressive profession than writing? Writing is first born of a need to explain oneself, and it is comorbid with the desperate loneliness of an ostracized, chubby middle-schooler, like she was and, well, like I was. The popular kids can explain themselves to each other. Only the lonely are left to their writing. It\u2019s through the tools of observation that we learn to hone an otherness\u2026we begin to define ourselves from the way we are different. And slowly, slowly, we spend so much time pretending that someone is listening that we often don\u2019t know how to change modes once people are.<\/p>\n

Taylor became an ambassador swan to all us ducklings who never got the opportunity to rise above our social circumstances or have relationships with men like actual Kennedys or One Direction band members. Her songs are her report back to us from the land of fantasy: here\u2019s what it\u2019s like when one of us becomes one of them. Living as Taylor Swift in her songs becomes the closest thing you\u2014I\u2014ever came to cool.<\/p>\n

Because I swear I\u2019ve moved on from all the heartache and all the rejection. I swear the memories of eating lunch alone don\u2019t hurt as much as they used to. I\u2019m thirty-eight! I\u2019m married! I have children! When I think of the phone pranks played on me, when I think of the names called out to me, when I think of the parties I wasn\u2019t invited to, the moments I realized he was cheating, or when the group of girls looked at me like I was disgusting, it doesn\u2019t sting me the way it did at the time. But something\u2019s still there, and I know it because I\u2019ve concocted the thing I should have said in my head in each of those situations.<\/p>\n

Eventually, what happens is this: things you write get published and\/or sung. And that\u2019s when the people you\u2019ve been writing about begin to hear what you\u2019ve been thinking of them this whole time. If you\u2019re a magazine writer like I am, you hedge your bets. You count on most people not being great readers, and then you hedge further by maybe not posting this particular essay on your Facebook page. You also build in some sort of plausible deniability: If it sounds like a particular person, make sure there\u2019s an added detail\u2014never untrue, remember I\u2019m a journalist\u2014that makes it so that this small story could actually apply to several people. I am always prepared with an \u201cOh! That\u2019s not you! I can\u2019t tell you who it is, but of course it\u2019s not you.<\/em>\u201d Writing has taught me that you can retain friendships while still harboring a bunch of anger toward someone. Anger is not the same as not liking someone, and it\u2019s certainly not incompatible with wanting to be liked.<\/p>\n

Alas, I\u2019ve actually never had to use it. Because after about two years of writing essays, I learned about something I will hereby in these pages name the Passive-Aggressive Writer\u2019s Conundrum: People, particularly non-writers, are an optimistic, delusional bunch. If you mention people in an unflattering way without naming them, they will never recognize themselves in your story\u2014 even if you name actual details of circumstances surrounding the stories. However, if you mention them in a flattering way without naming them\u2014say, talk about the time they gave you water in the desert\u2014they will immediately assume you\u2019re talking about them, even though they\u2019ve never been to the desert or traveled with you. (Taylor inherently knows about the Conundrum, and uses it to create her plausible deniability: Yeah? Prove it!)<\/p>\n

The thing is, no matter how often I build the perfect retort into the memory of the thing that happened\u2014and they would be \u201cDear John\u201d\u2013style retorts, designed for maximum, long-lasting psychic carnage\u2014it never changes the fact that I never articulated things. I was walked upon and insulted, teased, and, worst, ignored. And so I chose a different kind of life, a smaller one where I could think before I spoke and then my words would be loud enough to last on a printed page. See, I do have a platform. I\u2019m a writer. And there is so much revenge I\u2019d like to get, so many scores to settle, but I\u2019m older now and see so clearly the consequences of putting something in print.<\/p>\n

There is a part of me that doesn\u2019t want to show how petty I am by naming the names of those who wronged me\u2014years ago, I wrote an essay about how the mean girls from grade school were now my Facebook friends, and I lacked the nerve to post the essay to Facebook. Part of me doesn\u2019t want them to know that I still think about it. I should, by now, not even remember it, right? We are generally people who like to pretend that our childhoods happened to another version of us, that we don\u2019t carry the scars that we do. So I play it safe. I don\u2019t refer to people who have wronged me; I don\u2019t ever put in writing the thing I should have said, the thing I\u2019m still kicking myself for not saying. I don\u2019t know if that makes me dumber or smarter than Taylor, and I certainly don\u2019t know if my refusal to use my work as a tool of passive-aggression makes me braver or more afraid.<\/p>\n

I have become someone who is only perfectly vengeful in my head. The closest I\u2019ve gotten is writing an essay about a man who broke my heart and changing his name from Garry to Gary. (But there\u2019s hope, isn\u2019t there? Here I just admitted what I did! Suck it, Garry!)<\/p>\n

Taylor exists as our id. She alone posses the chutzpah to play innocent as she boldly winks at what she\u2019s done in a forum more public than even the most viral article. But it\u2019s also through her that we can continue to fantasize about a revenge most perfect, an aggression so passive that no one sees it coming, that no one can confirm it once they\u2019ve been hit. That day might be around the corner, and it\u2019s Taylor who allows us to dream of it: dream of a time when the stings of the past are made better through the public hanging of dirty laundry, a time when we say the perfect thing in the moment when it most counts, a moment when we finally get the last word. It\u2019s on that day that we, too, will have our most perfect aggression realized. It\u2019s on that day you will find us shining like fireworks over their sad empty towns.<\/p>\n

This essay appears in <\/em>Here She Comes Now: Women in Music Who Have Changed Our Lives<\/a>, edited by Jeff Gordinier and Marc Weingarten, out this summer from Barnacle Books. Reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a contributing writer at <\/em>GQ and <\/em>The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and two sons in New Jersey, where she bought Taylor Swift\u2019s new album at Starbucks as God and country intended.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taylor Swift\u2019s passive-aggressive lyrics are \u201cthe realization of every writer\u2019s narrowest dream.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon,\u201d Taylor Swift said with a straight face to an interviewer from Vanity Fair while the magazine was profiling her in 2013. No, not Taylor Swift. Not the author of songs like \u201cForever and Always,\u201d written […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1187],"tags":[18525,4064,18530,16589,18522,18528,18523,18524,10329,13106,18527,18529,52,14881,5178,6887,282,50],"class_list":["post-86905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-music","tag-dear-john","tag-adolescence","tag-bad-blood","tag-breakup-songs","tag-harry-styles","tag-here-she-comes","tag-jake-gyllenhaal","tag-joe-jonas","tag-john-mayer","tag-lyrics","tag-paper-doll","tag-passive-aggresion","tag-pop-music","tag-songwriting","tag-taylor-lautner","tag-taylor-swift","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-vanity-fair"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Taylor Swift\u2019s Passive-Aggressive Lyrics\u2014A Writer\u2019s Dream<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" 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