She’s testing the limits of the old line about bad publicity.
Taylor Swift, the pop music megastar who’s dominated headlines to an embarrassing degree so far this year, is making a different kind of news with the lyrics from the new album released on Friday.
And one line in particular has fans in an uproar.
In a song called “I Hate It Here” — a title that will bring a smile to anyone’s face — Swift describes what sounds like being the wet blanket at a high school party.
“My friends used to play a game where we would pick a decade we wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid,” she sings.
As USA Today reported, the song is from “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” — a “deluxe version” of her album.
It sounds like a joke — the 1830s don’t exactly jump out as one of the earth-shaking decades in American history (welcome to the Union, Arkansas and Michigan!), and the part about “without all the racists” borders on surreal considering it described an era where chattel slavery was the “peculiar institution” in half the country.
But joking or not, the line drew predictable social media backlash in a cultural moment that has made Swift an important figure for some reason.
“y’all .. there are so many wrong things about this,” one user wrote.
y’all.. there are so many wrong things about this pic.twitter.com/NW8hPDlDNP
— 𖤐 𝗖𝗛𝗥𝗜𝗦 𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗘 𖤐 (@ghostijn) April 19, 2024
a song called “I hate it here” and fantasizing a time that was much worse than “here” in the lyrics https://t.co/X6uGEV1beb
— michael (@SHREWT00TH) April 19, 2024
It’s an interesting commentary on how we sometimes idealize certain eras without fully considering the realities of living in them.
— Ash (@err_aticAF) April 19, 2024
Besides slavery and the brewing divisions that would lead to the Civil War in a generation, the 1830s had a good number of downsides from a modern perspective, like, say, the lack of indoor plumbing (it’s a good bet Swift’s fans are also fans of convenient toilet facilities).
There also wasn’t a mania sweeping that country that pretended there was no difference between men and women, that believed children could choose their sexuality as easy as they choose socks that don’t match.
Does she deserve the backlash?
There weren’t many platforms for charlatans like Swift to claim — as the singer has a history of doing — that anyone who stands up for logic, science and basic decency when it comes to the different sexes is a bigot.
Chances are, Swift knows that. As tempting as it might be to think she’s not all that bright, no one gets to the top the way she has without having it together upstairs. (Which just makes her abhorrent politics even worse.)
And the chances are just as good that she wouldn’t be caught dead in the 1830s if she had a choice in the matter — racists or no racists. Just being without an iPhone would probably be torture for the “Tortured Poets Department” songstress.
The line in the song is probably just what the lyrics imply, a buzz kill that made all the other girls “look down ’cause it wasn’t fun now.”
But it is bringing a new test to the old saying that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
And just in time, too. After a winter of Americans being inundated with the cultural and political implications of Swift’s romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, things had gotten too quiet lately.
And the country hasn’t had nearly enough Taylor Swift news in 2024.
