Reading Taylor Swift: biographical interpretation and social capital

Here, on Incidental Mythology, we see how mythology can exist in the least obvious of places. Myths are not just old books, but they live - live as things which don’t look like texts at all, like movies and television shows and video games. The trend continues today, because celebrities are also stories. And that’s what I want to talk about today: the mythology of Taylor Swift.

Because if we’re going to talk about how mythologies can swirl around a living breathing alive person, I think Taylor Swift is the best place to start. In fact, I’m in the middle of doing a long-form anthropological study of the Mythology of Taylor Swift. So, strap in for a second video essay on Taylor Swift.

Because, Taylor Swift is a mythology. Even if we think of only the more classic ideas of mythology - these books that we read, rather than the alive performed stories they are - celebrities still fit the bill. They function as texts - they are written on, composed, read, published and marketed. And the thing that makes Taylor Swift particularly interesting as a case study - well, one of the things because there are many - is that the mythology is extensive. Part of the reason why Taylor Swift is a mythology is because she writes mythologies. She has stories and is stories, and forces others to think about their stories in relation to her stories, and suddenly there are so many stories all happening all at once that they become so difficult to untangle.

And, again, some of these may be best reserved for a different day. But when it comes to the text of Taylor Swift, another element, alongside the writing, composing and reading of it, is that the star text of Taylor Swift is also interpreted.

For the mythology of Taylor Swift, there are three different but overlapping approaching: (1) the stories of the songs themselves; (2) the history behind the songs; and (3) the story of Taylor herself. But, like I said, these pieces and bits are overlapping. When a Swiftie begins with an interpretation of the first, it inevitably spirals out to include the others.

Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to the Taylor Swift eras. Each new album, form, genre, and style is a new era. When you hear a song out of its album context, you can typically know which era it inevitably comes from. These various lives of Taylor were lived out on stage at the Eras tour, with select songs from each being played and performed, with Taylor donning the costumes and the style of each.

One song represents one piece of an era, and people can often interpret the song in relation to the rest of the era. And one era explain an element of a whole, an entire story collected to explain an element or time in the life of Taylor.

Because the life of Taylor Swift is incredibly important. An era is an era in the life, representing a moment of time for her. Reputation represented when she was being cancelled following the feud with Kanye and Kim Kardashian. Folklore and Evermore were the pandemic albums. The most recent Life of a Showgirl is the post-Eras Tour and in the midst of a happy relationship with Travis Kelce.

You see, Taylor Swift is quite famous for her confessional style songwriting. She writes openly about her own experiences and emotions, directly referencing events and relationships she has experienced. Early in her career, these were less than vieled realsations, and she often even included notes of the actual names of the people she was singing about in the liner notes of her albums. But as both her music and she herself matured, so did her approach to this style of writing. By the time the Tortured Poets Department came out, the knowledge of the exact personality she was writing about became less and less obvious, unless she didn’t exactly hide it at all. One example of not exatly hiding it was thanK you aIMee, where the capitalisation made it pretty obvious she was talking about Kim Kardashian. But on the same album were songs the like the Black Dog, which she has said hasn’t been interpreted in the way she wrote it yet.

Which brings us to an interesting point for the interpretation and discussions around interpretations for the songs of Taylor Swift. Because many fans take her confessional songwriting as a form of their interpretation, all readings become biographical ones. Interpretation and analysis centre around Taylor’s life and experiences. Therefore, there becomes a “correct” interpretation of the songs - the exact person and experience which led to the song’s creation.

There has, therefore, created a “proper” way to read the star text of Taylor Swift. To intepret the first myth I mentioned, the song itself, we must look at the history behind the song which inevitably leads us to the story of Taylor Swift herself.

But this is not exactly unique to Taylor Swift. The insistence on finding and communicating what is determined to be the “correct” interpretation is something I’ve seen in other fandoms as well for other muscians like Pheobe Bridgers, Gracie Abrams and Noah Kahan. Noah Kahan’s recent album, The Great Divide, for instance, has created a lot of chatter about what songs are “actually” about. For example, I saw a fierce debate about the potential meaning behind the song “Orbiter”, where one person said they believed it to be about the relationship to fame, while another insisted this was absolutely wrong because Noah had said he wrote it after losing at the Grammys and his mother was there - so its clearly about his mother. Similarly, other songs on the album become pieced together by the friend or family member the song is about, with fans mining his documentary on Netflix in order to piece together the context for the album itself.

But, obviously, in these instances, what the fans are looking at is the context of the experience which led to the song being created, and are searching for the canon event which led to the songs formation to begin with.

If you spend any time on fan spaces online for Taylor Swift, or any of these other cotnemporary singer songwriters, you’ll see similar conversation. There is an insistance on finding the “correct” interpretation, the point where I have seen people being called incorrect for simply having a different interpretation. When it comes to Taylor, this has led to the community focusing on the question of which muse songs are associated with - essentailly which man she ddated the song is about. Several participants in my study told me you needed to know at least some base information about Taylor’s life in order to truly appreciate the songs - in other words, the biographical interpreation of her overshines any other, and a true fan would know this ifnromation.

Essentially, this intense focus on the interpration of the creation of a celebrity has become intrinsically linked to the celebrity themself. These memes and discussions fuel more memes and more discussions - of which, I’m aware this video essay may or may not be adding to - and this creates a feedback loop of meanings and interpretations being coded onto the star text.

Because, importantly, in most of these instances the interpreation given by the star themself is not really present - and even if it was, this doesn’t exactly mean that other interpretaitons cannot stand. But maybe a discussion of exactly what I mean by that may be reserved for a different video where I actually explain what death of the author actually means, and not how it has been used frequently online. Sorry I keep saying “that’s a video for another time” but… I can’t do everything here today.

Now, because interpretaitons and meanings and readings of the text of Taylor Swift are so linked to Taylor’s life, much of the insistence on finding and communicated this interpretation by fans ends up reading a bit parasocial. The fan feels they must know more about Taylor in order to properly understand and anlayse the songs and the albums as a whole. However, I think this needs to be unpacked just a little bit.

Parasocial interactions, as originally derived, is the idea that audiences form one sided, unrecipricoated relationships with a figure from media. For Taylor Swift, this would be if someone feels like they both know Taylor, and that Taylor could know them, even though this isn’t the case. What I have found, however, is that most fans I’ve spoken to do not assume to have a direct relationship with Taylor other than as an audience member or fan. Personal knowledge of a person’s life does not necessarily make something parasocial, though it can be a sign of it. In the case of people presuming simply having this information make something parasocial is oversimplifying a far more complicated experience - which I think I’ll, once again, reserve for another time. Because I have a thesis about the parasocial phenomonen, which I won’t get into here. For the time being for this, I simply want to say that I think fans insisting on correct interpretations based on reading Taylor’s life is not parasocial.

So what is it? because it’s definitely something. I think these interpretations being pressed and insisted, the need to untangle the realities of Taylor Swift’s life in order to provide the exact proper interpretation has very little to do with creating a relationship with Taylor Swift, and far more to do with the growth of social capital within the fanbase itself.

Social capital, as a whole concept, is primarily related to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and I’m not exactly going to get into the weeds of French sociology today. It’s just… no. But, I will explain some basics of social capital - very very basic approach here. So, for Bourdieu, capital is not only something which is economic, and social interactions can encompass capital and profit. The social is a place of power, and a reflection of one’s position and status. An individual’s social world reveals a lot about that person’s class, power and social status, and someone can wield this status to exert their power and influence in the same way money can.

While some aspects of social capital can be inherited, it can also be earned - much like financial capital. An individual can slowly climb social ladders of influence in order to garner social influence and social capital. However, Bourdieu reminds us that the social is also inherently rooted in economic and cultural structures which creat different stratas of power and status for some individuals and not others. Garnering social capital is far easier for people of a certain race, gender and economic class than it would be for someone else not from those backgrounds, for example.

But, we’re not talking about climbing ranks of the corporate world, or social arenas of money and old wealth. Rather, the social strata we are talking about here is one of a fan. And yes, this is still something which can happen. In fact, fandom social capital has become even more relevant in the rise of the social unification of the internet. As the discussions and communications of fans as well as the media companies and figureheads which produce the works the fans are interacting with become present on the same platform, there becomes more incentive for the social capital gaining fan to find footholds in the online sphere. In some instances, both celebrities as well as media groups themselves, have reached out to fans and hired them for working alongside them or for the media they were fans of.

So, Swifites and Swiftie interpretation. As interpretation and analysis of songs have grown more complicated, the need for the “correct” interpretation has also grown. And Taylor Swift herself has pushed for this, either purposely or inadvertantly, by demonstrating that she does have knowledge of the theorising of the fanbase. So fans pushing for demonstrating the “correct” interpretation of a piece is not necessarily to simply have the answer, but rather to demonstrate superior knowledge. This superior knoweldge can then be shared, cited, and circulated, increasing the fan’s social capital among the fanbase.

Interestingly, for the myth scholar, interpretation and analysis has become separated from retellings and reframings. In an interview with a participant, she spoke to me about how lines in particular songs really speak to her, though made sure I knew that the song was not necessarily about her own feelings about it. For example, she told me about how the line from the song “Bejeweled”, “And I miss you, but I miss sparklin’” spoke to her experience of grief. She had recently lost both her parents, and felt like she was at the point in her grief that she wanted to pull herself back to how she was before. She still misses them, but she also misses the person she was before her grief. However, she insisted that she knew that Bejeweled wasn’t written about grief and loss. This insistence is interesting to me, because often songs can be interpreted, read and personalised. However, this Swiftie, as well as others I have spoken to, directly put a separation between personal resonances and direct meaning interpretation. This is potentially because personal resonance is something to not be shared, and cannot garner social capital. Its for the personal individualised experience of the song, rather than the social group discussions of biographical readings.

In many ways, the stories are only what they are interpreted to be. Even as a scholar studying mythology, I only have interpretations and experiences of stories, whether they are stories from the Prose Edda or from the album Midnights. But the art of interpretation is itself a process of story writing and creation, and one which should also be given the same level of attention as the stories being interpreted. Anyway, there’s a lot that can be said, as you can see, about the mythology of Taylor Swift.

Strangely, so much of it can be about power - the power of the story. The story of Taylor Swift, the profound nature of her as a figure who is everywhere. The stories of the songs she writes create powerful stories for the fans to connect to, reframe, and interpret. But these interpretations also have a power to them, an ability to create powerful social connections and attention.

Mythology is inherently interpreted, and the mythology of Taylor Swift is no exception. But this can create more stories that exist within the same myth complex. A detailed and complicated mythos is born, one of songs, albums, performances, and, of course, interpretations.