Recently I’ve been working my way through “And So It Goes,” the HBO Billy Joel retrospective. Joel is an American institution: my mother and I both saw him in concert as college students, roughly 25 years apart.
In a siloed entertainment field, Joel is among the last of pop culture’s generation-spanning household names. It’s a pantheon with only a few luminaries like Tom Cruise, LeBron James, and Taylor Swift, now in the back half of her fourth decade.
The latter has an album out this weekend, “The Life of a Showgirl.” The glitter and leotards notwithstanding, I’d argue she actually has quite a bit in common with Joel as a fellow singer-songwriter.
They each have distinct career eras: where Swift had her wholesome country debut and bad girl “Reputation” eras, Joel had his iconic 1980s doowop era and whatever he thought he was doing in the Nineties with “River of Dreams.” Like him, she’s an accomplished musician masquerading as a crowd-pleasing tunesmith. Both his Madison Square Garden residency performances and her Eras Tour concerts were massive intergenerational affairs, with parents and children in attendance together singing along word for word.
But while there aren’t a lot of Joel songs I’m embarrassed to sing along to with my mom, there were some songs I was embarrassed to hear while seated next to my young daughters at the Eras Tour theatrical release.
As a Catholic, a mom, and someone who likes a good sing-a-long, I have to ask: What’s with all the swearing, Tay?
Swift began introducing naughty words in her songwriting with her 2017 album “Reputation.” Swift had grown up in the public eye, her every relationship and public feuds with other pop singers relentlessly scrutinized. The album, released when she was 27 years old, felt like it was supposed to signal a more mature version of the pop phenom.
Last year, her album “The Tortured Poets Department” featured seven explicit songs. Eight of its 12 tracks on her newest album have an “E” after the title.
I can’t help but feel this is gratuitous. Having spent most of her early adulthood as a celebrity when the rest of us were getting jobs and contributing to our Roth IRAs so as not to inconvenience our loved ones in our dotage, a 35-year-old billionaire putting out an album where three-fourths of the songs are marked “explicit” smacks of a kind of arrested development. Swearing is an 11-year-old’s idea of maturity.
I know I’m only three years older than Swift, but I am going to put on my mom hat, here. Does someone who thinks of herself as our English teacher have such a limited vocabulary that she has to use so much profanity?
You’re Taylor ****ing Swift! You’re a phenomenal financial and creative success. You’re engaged to an NFL player with three Super Bowl rings. You’re beautiful. Granted, you have the occasional stalker, tangential involvement in Blake Lively’s legal problems, and the hate from Chiefs fans who think you’re Yoko Ono. Any one of these might merit an occasional profane slip of the tongue.
But eight out of twelve songs? That is like me trying to shock my parents after 16 years of marriage and three kids by announcing that I’m sexually active. We get it, Taylor. You’re all grown up now!
My real issue with Swift’s pivot to grittiness is its inauthenticity. Look at her demure betrothal photos. She might be one in private (though I doubt it), but “wizened foul-mouthed broad” is just not her vibe.
A 2020 post at Book Riot about sweary self-help book titles explains why her explicit musical offerings strike me as cringe: Noting that one of the authors describes herself as “unapologetically rich,” the post goes on to say that “using swear words is a great way to convince your audience that you’re ‘just like them!’ In reality, these people often have little in common with the millions of people who lap up their books. They’re hungry for a solution to their problems, but leave feeling worse about themselves.”
That’s a good question to ask ourselves when we engage with anyone’s work. Does it leave us feeling worse about ourselves? By that I don’t mean does it make us want to repent of our sins. Do we feel less able to see ourselves and others as beloved children of God?
When she peppers her music with profanity, Swift is not only letting down the legions of little girls who love her beautiful, shiny costumes. It’s condescension. We can only conclude that she is debasing herself because whether she realizes it or not, that’s how she sees the average Jane.
Joel actually had some claim to hardscrabble authenticity, at least at the outset. But you have to admit a sea shanty about the plight of the working man feels a little silly coming from the former Mr. Christie Brinkley. I can, however, sing along to “Downeaster Alexa” with my whole family.
Art doesn’t only have to portray wholesomeness to be good. It does have to be true. I’ll listen to “The Life of a Showgirl.” If I let my girls listen, it will be the clean version. But actually, I don’t know if they’ll be interested. My middle-schooler said her friends are kind of over Swift. Kids are good at identifying phoniness. Are grown-ups?
