An analysis of Taylor Swift’s love songs and their repercussion

Abstract

[eng] This paper analyses the recurrent pattern found in Taylor Swift’s love songs departing from Pamela Regis’ A Natural History of the Romance Novel (2003). The object of the analysis will be based on an extract of the ten-minute version of Swift’s song “All Too Well” (2021) to illustrate how Swift’s lyrics present a similar structure of steps (An Upstate Scape, The First Crack In The Glass, Are You Real?, The Breaking Point, The Reeling, The Remembering, Thirteen Years Gone) with the ones that Regis identifies in romance novels but simultaneously incorporate some innovations. This parallelism between romantic novels and Swift’s love songs shall be followed by a study of the effect that love has for both readers of the romance genre and the listeners of Swift’s music. The information about the romance novel’s impact on readers and Swift’s songs influence on their listeners’ will be obtained from different surveys provided by American magazines such as Forbes and British newspapers such as The Guardian. The paper shall then provide an analysis of Swift’s song “Clean” (2014), which serves as a representative example to reveal the empowering potential behind Swift lyrics about love. The purpose of this study, is thus, to prove how by reproducing some of the patterns that Regis ascribes to romance novels and contemplating some other stages and outcomes, Swift’s songs have a reparative potential. Swift’s lyrics about love have a positive effect on their fans as they provide guidance for the listener’s process of healing after a potential breakup and also empower their fans and encourage their audience to pursue their freedom and self-love.