Taylor Swift Research Paper

Julie Leon
WRD 103
Long Live the Queen, Taylor Swift In the past years of the music industry, there has not been quite the artist like Taylor Swift. She is simply a young, brilliant, and stunning singer. Though she might not have as much experience as many other artists, she is making her way to become a huge success. At just the age of twenty, she has released 3 albums all of which have had hit singles. Though it was only a span of 4 years from her debut to her most recent album Speak Now, her music shows how much she has grown as a person and as a singer. Her most successful album, released in 2010 was a major success in the music industry; with each song written so beautifully, it is amazing to believe it was written by a twenty
year old. Speak Now was a much bigger hit than her previous album Fearless, and even that was much bigger than her debut release of “Tear Drops on My Guitar”. Though some just simply see her as the typical southern girl country singer trying to make it huge, she is much more than that. She put so much emotion and personal experiences in her songs that make the album simply pure genius. Taylor Swift is simply best known for writing about love and broken hearts. At such a young age, it is simply expected that any girl would be going through heartbreaks, lust, and lost in fairy tales. She did what she could do best and pulled out an entire album to express how she felt. The number one hit single on it was “Mine”. The song has so much meaning. It is amazing to believe how she could come up with words such as “Flash forward and we'd been taking on the world together and there is a drawer of my things and your place… you said we’d never made my parents’ mistakes.” Though it is quite odd to hear her singing about living with someone else and even more odd to be divorcing, it is the fact that she was able to create a wonderful masterpiece in the perspective of someone older. She has grown so much in her music; her work is not just a “random love song” she put way more thought into her songs for it to be considered that. Alongside with “Mine” there is the song “Back to December”, which is best considered your classic breakup song, Taylor’s specialty.
You can tell just by her emotional tone and lyrics that she has been through a lot in relationships. It is like the more you listen to her music, the more any young woman could relate to. The song is about a breakup which ended horribly, she eventually runs into him later on in life and they both share how they felt about what they once had. With words like, “So this is me swallowing my pride standing in front of you saying I’m sorry for that night, and I go back to December all the time,” Taylor is proving how much of a strong woman she really is. She is simply giving it all she has and is willing to apologize for how things ended. Apologizing is not the easiest thing for anyone. No one likes to admit they are wrong. Clearly for Taylor Swift as she had to go “back to December” she has had quite enough time to think about what she did, find the urge to apologize, and then write an amazing hit single for the world to
enjoy. Though she is best known for her romantic and heartbreaking love songs, she also manages to write about her family.
She had a song completely dedicated to her mother called “Never Grow Up”. She just reminisces about her experience growing up with her mother. The song has so much meaning, that really anyone could relate to. She proves how we all grow as people, and how our feelings towards our parents change as we grow. When we’re young, we just want to be with them and think that they are so amazing. As we grow into young adults, we begin to get embarrassed by them, and the little things they do. Such as when she wrote, “You're in the car on the way to the movies and you're mortified your mom's dropping you off…but don't make her drop you off around the block,” she is talking about her personal experience with her mother, and she is at the stage where she is embarrassed by her. Though at the time it might have seemed like her mother was the worst person ever, she learned to realize that the more she grew up the more she wanted to stay young. Everything her mother had ever taught her and her words of advice eventually hit in, and made her realize that her mom only meant the best for her; just as any other parent
would. Overall her album could be summed up to the best advice about family, success and most importantly boys. It has so much variety in music style; she does not only write “hill-billy” songs. She has songs on the album that are fast tempo, and you can’t help yourself but sing and dance to them. Then she has slow, peaceful songs with ballads that remind you of how beautiful life really is. Then of course, she brings out her pure country side is some songs such as “Mean” and of course “Speak Now”. Songs like this are more like the songs in her older album, with more country rather than pop. Her variety of songs and styles bring her the huge number of fans she has gotten over the years. Everyone from little girls to even some college boys have sung along to at least one of her songs, then again they are played endlessly in the radio. Who could possibly resist, especially if they are sung by Taylor Swift.