Taylor Swift – Date Her if you Dare!

In the current economic climate you could be forgiven for thinking that people might be calling about money worries, concerns about their jobs or their businesses. But in fact the majority of callers are still calling about relationship problems. Perhaps it is not surprising that above all else we value having someone special in our lives and what bothers us most in life is when these relationships are not running smoothly – this is something that binds us together as a universe – our desire to be happy and in love!

So then you might ask why have I chosen to talk about relationships after all Taylor Swift is only the tender age of 22 what can she possibly know about love – well actually quite a lot!

For those of you that don’t know Taylor Swift, she is an American country pop singer, songwriter and actress. Her debut single titled ‘Tim McGraw came out in 2006, followed by an album of her own name (which in March 2011 had sold over 5.5 million copies). In 2008 she released her second album ‘Fearless’ as of Jan 2012 it has sold over 8.6 million copies. Her third album ‘Speak Now’ has also sold over 5 million copies.

 The 2012 Billboard Money Makers poll has her grossing $35,719,902 in the last year finishing ahead of perennial cash spinners U2.She made the cash after grossing $88m in the US alone, with her Speak Now tour making an impressive $29.8m.The pop country star’s money making spree was further aided by US album sales of 1.8 million, and digital single track sales of 7.8 million.And as the talented singer wrote all of the tune’s for her hit album herself, she made even more thanks to songwriting royalties. She has also won countless awards – Album of the Year, Grammy Awards, Artist of the Year and so on.

So what has this all got to do with love – well Country & Western Music has its roots in telling narratives about love. With characters, a plot and normally a twist. Normally the verse sets up a part of the story and the chorus is a summary of the experience. The story is sometimes told from a first person perspective and sometimes the story is told about another person be it a real or fictional character – the song overall reveals an important lesson about life and often about love.

It is this part where Taylor has excelled; many of her songs are autobiographical – a kind of song diary. Although she is quite shy about talking in interviews who the songs are about, she has left clues for her fans to figure it out. If you look at the lyric books for her albums she will randomly capitalise certain letters, fans will put these letters together to find a clue about who the song is about.

From July to October 2008 Taylor dated Joe Jonas, he famously ended their relationship in a 26 second phone call after he met an actress he was interested in – Camilla Belle. It is thought that her songs ‘Forever and Always’ and ‘Last Kiss’ and ‘Better than Revenge’ were inspired by her relationship with Jonas.

Then she casually dated Taylor Lautner late in 2009 and the song ‘Back to December’ is believed to be addressed to him.

This was followed by a relationship lasting until June 2010 with John Mayer; they had met in 2008 and in 2009 they recorded a duet together ‘Half of My Heart’. Following their break up she penned two songs – ‘Dear John’ (that people easily attributed to the relationship) and ‘The Story of Us’ – that took people longer to figure out.

Then for a few months at the end of 2010 she dated Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor has already indicated that her fourth album will be about that relationship. In a recent Vogue article she said, “There’s just been this earth-shattering, not recent, but absolute crash-and-burn heartbreak” she says, “and that will turn out to be what the next album is about. The only way that I can feel better about myself—pull myself out of that awful pain of losing someone—is writing songs about it to get some sort of clarity”.

The intensely personal nature of the songs has drawn her attention in the music industry. Swift once said, “I thought people might find them hard to relate to, but it turned out that the more personal my songs were, the more closely people could relate to them.” Again in Vogue she said, “I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid”. Something that I think we can all relate to!

 

      Tweet