She fell through the ice, and came out alive
New AP Taylor Swift Podcast episode, Satire + "The Tortured Poets Department" out now!
First, a warm welcome to our new subscribers coming from
! We’re AP Taylor Swift, the podcast for Swifties who love to overanalyze her lyrics. Every episode, we do a deep reading and literary analysis of Taylor Swift's lyrics. This week’s Summer School episode has us revisiting Episode 19: Satire (Spotify | Apple). We explore how Taylor uses different types of satire in The Tortured Poets Department as a way of adding exaggeration, emphasis, and impact to her storytelling.Sneak Peek of this week’s episode
Catch excerpts from the podcast and behind-the-scenes content on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram!
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🏫 This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to you by Maansi
On this week’s episode, we discuss examples of Taylor Swift using satire in The Tortured Poet’s Department. As the American political season spins into high gear, SNL will likely once again take center stage as one of the biggest platforms of satire that people regularly encounter.
Political Satire is a more fun way to hold a magnifying glass to a more serious topic that people get very passionate about. Using humor and exaggeration, political satire allows people to critique certain aspects of government, public figures, and policies in an intelligent, sometimes provocative way and start important conversations.
But our queen, Taylor Swift, has also been known to perform on SNL, so for this week’s extra credit, let’s go outside the lyrics a little bit to look at Taylor Swift’s SNL appearances. As Swifties, you’re probably all familiar with these fun SNL moments, but if we go deeper than the laughs, there’s always a message and a purpose behind the humor. Let’s examine, shall we?
The Monologue Song
Perhaps one of the most memorable Taylor SNL moments was her “Monologue Song” in 2009. This was a moment in Swiftie history when Taylor was starting to be accused of serial dating. It was also right after the VMA moment when Kanye West infamously interrupted her speech. With the media stirring with fresh gossip, Taylor decided to take on the haters by doing what she does best: writing a song. She used humor to directly acknowledge what the media was saying about her, things like how young she is, how she dresses, writing songs about exes, who she’s dating, and the Kanye moment.
A frequent lyric that she repeats in the “Monologue Song” is “But I’m not going to talk about that/ In my monologue.” We all know when she repeats something, it’s worth examining. This line is, of course, ironic, because by saying she’s not going to talk about certain things, she of course IS talking about them. In this week’s episode, we talk about how sometimes saying the opposite of what you want to say can draw attention to what you really want to say by contrast.
When I hear Taylor’s “Monologue Song,” I wish I could have been a fly on the way listening to her discuss what she planned to do with her team. There were so many ways in which she could have chosen to address the rumor mill and the one she went with works beautifully, effectively acknowledging what’s being said while saying nothing, which ultimately says all there is to say.
Three Sad Virgins
My other favorite Taylor x SNL collab is her feature on “Three Sad Virgins.” In this song, she plays herself. She’s got a reputation for beautifully singing hard-cutting lyrics capable of destroying the subjects of her songs, and with this feature, she puts on that persona and delivers. It’s another great example of her making fun of her own image to make light of the many criticisms she faces.
Honorable mention: All Too Well (Ken’s Version)
More recently, Ryan Gosling took to SNL to promote his movie. He chose to do so in the form of “All Too Well,” a hilarious choice because in doing so, he acknowledges that the best way to promote anything is to associate with Taylor Swift, especially during her Eras era.
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I’m sure we’ll be seeing many more hilarious SNL sketches in the months to come. In addition to laughing along, remember to look at them through the lens of satire to think of them in terms of our rhetorical triangle: who’s the speaker, who are they speaking to, and what’s the purpose. Try and identify what are they trying to say, and more importantly, why!