So Long, London
Our final Summer School episode, "Cities" and "The Tortured Poets Department" out now!
In our final Summer School episode, we say so long to summer as we revisit Episode 39: Cities within “The Tortured Poets Department.” London, Destin, Manhattan, Los Angeles–we explore these cities' role in the album and why Taylor Swift may have chosen these specific cities to tell her stories.
Check out our conversation on cities below. To hear the other side of the story, read this week’s extra credit below by Jenn about how Taylor talks about small towns in her discography!
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🎒This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to You by Jenn
Ah, the small town vs. big city debate. According to this Taylor Swift lyrics database, Taylor seems to be pretty evenly split on singing about small towns or big cities. The word “town” appears in her discography 110 times, but the words “city,” “cities,” “London,” “New York,” or “Paris” appear 96 times. Interestingly enough, if I search for just “city” or “cities,” that number is much smaller. She tends to name the cities, but keep “towns” more generic. She almost exclusively treats towns as metaphors, whereas cities are used as a mix of reality and metaphor. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is what we are here to explore!
Are small towns good?
Earlier in her discography, Taylor tended to treat towns as the setting for true romance. For example, in the genuinely sweet lyrics of “Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)” from her debut album, the couple is from a small town where their love story plays out. You see that in lyrics such as “We were sitting at our favorite spot in town / And you looked at me, got down on one knee.” We also know it’s a small town because of the line “Take me back to when we walked down the aisle / Our whole town came and our mamas cried.” If the “whole town came,” that certainly limits the town size (or it’s a really big church?).
We also see towns as potentially a place of escape. In “The Best Day,” from Fearless, we see lyrics like “I come home crying and you hold me tight and grab the keys / And we drive and drive until we find a town far enough away.” In this case, the town is the place to get away from the pain and troubles of reality.
Are small towns a fantasy that can’t survive?
As we keep going, towns start to become a symbol of something to leave behind. In “Mine” from Speak Now, we see sentiments such as “Left a small town, never looked back.” Then, of course, in “All Too Well” from Red, we have the infamous line, “‘Cause there we are again on that little town street.” If we compare these two examples, they both place. the small town as a place to leave behind. In “Mine,” the relationship is held up as a good thing, so leaving the small town is the right move. In “All Too Well,” we know that the relationship doesn’t end well. She revisits the “little town street” multiple times in the song as if it is the embodiment of their relationship, a relationship that we know she should be moving on from, not holding onto.
Are small towns bad?
If we jump up a bit to The Tortured Poets Department (I know, I know - I skipped a lot. There’s only so many hours in a day, and we can’t all be as productive as Taylor!), we start to see small towns as definitely not good. In “I Hate It Here,” she sings “No mid-sized city hopes and small-town fears.” The mid-sized city at least has hopes, but the small town is defined by its fear. And we know that Taylor would prefer to be defined by things that she loves, not things that she hates or is afraid of. Then in “Clara Bow,” she tells us that “No one in my small town thought I’d meet these suits in LA.” And of course, the entire song “But Daddy I Love Him” paints the small town as “saboteurs” and “vipers.”
So really, what does Taylor think of small towns?
In this brief survey of Taylor’s lyrics, I noticed a few things. First, it’s worth noting that Taylor started as a country singer. Country music as a genre tends to be more favorable towards small towns, so starting with small towns in her lyrics makes total sense. Second, the further into her discography we get, small towns become more and more metaphorical. “But Daddy I Love Him” may be about a small town within the narrative itself, but it’s likely a metaphor for the parasocial relationships that anyone (not just the most famous pop star in the world) has to deal with in our hyper-connected world. Of course, the fact that she’s using a small town as a metaphor means she’s banking on most people being able to catch on to the negative connotations associated with small towns.
In comparing these lyrics as well, most of the time Taylor sings about small towns in a negative manner, she is actually singing about the people. Compare this to songs like “London Boy” and “Paris” where Taylor is still being incredibly metaphorical but is singing about one person or using a city as a representation of her state of mind. In “Welcome To New York,” she’s truly singing about the city. The people are a part of it, but not in a really personalized, individual manner. If you want to know more about these songs in particular, check out our original Cities episode where we covered all three of these songs.
My personal conclusion? Locations are great metaphors (that Master’s Degree in English really pays off sometimes…). But truly, the common thread between cities and small towns is how well Taylor pulls from the cultural stereotypes about those locations and uses them to her advantage to communicate whatever emotion she wants her listeners to feel. I think that’s why cities get names (London vs New York vs Paris all have totally different connotations) but a small town is just a small town. It’s also relevant that larger cities have more recognizable names, but there is often an assumption that most small towns are pretty much the same. Whether she wants to create a sense of romance, despair, escapism, or an array of other emotions, Taylor will use whatever metaphor works best, and often that’s a location.
At the end of the day, I’m sure that the folks working on the tourism board of Destin, Florida are the most grateful of all the swifties out there. And now to make it easy for you to go straight into listening to “Florida!!!” I will link the song right here.