060: meet me at midnight

We’re making a zine! (I hope)

I forgot how obsessed I was with this cover when it came out! Vogue was always reinventing Taylor, weren’t they?

When I first conceived of making another zine about Miss Taylor Alison Swift, I was looking for an outlet to talk about “dorothea,” from Swift’s (underappreciated) album, evermore, which I could not stop listening to. At the time, I started putting together a Google doc about potential topics that people could talk about or that I thought were interesting about Taylor. Since I broached the topic, so much has happened. Taylor announced The Eras Tour. I gave up on the possibility of ever getting tickets to The Eras Tour. And then, of course, the apocalyptic event: this past weekend, Entertainment Tonight announced that Taylor and her longtime bf, Joe Handsomer-in-Person Alwyn had broken up. The announcement sent waves through the Swifitie community (I let out an earth-shattering gasp when I found out), has led to so so many “thinkpieces” (I love ET asking what Joe is going to do next following the breakup; I am curious what will he do without his nepo spouse privileges) and has led to some pretty outlandish behavior from fans (what’s new!). Two things about the conversation around the breakup that I found particularly interesting was a rep’s declaration that the relationship had just “run its course.” RUN ITS COURSE? The relationship that produced dramatic songs like “Delicate” and “Cornelia Street”, as well soapy songs like “peace” and “Sweet Nothing”. RUN ITS COURSE? A set of words have never felt so incongruent with Taylor Swift’s visions of love.

The other thing was People reporting that the relationship ended because “Joe always struggled with Taylor’s fame”. And sure, all of this may be hearsay or rumor but I think these two narratives around the (alleged) breakup are really interestingly read against Taylor’s music and how her narratives about love have changed over time. Maybe there were hints of it in 1989 but it feels like it wasn’t until reputation that we started getting songs about Taylor dealing with this question that love might not work out, not because of villainous boyfriends but because her life, and (especially) her success might not be capable of sustaining love. Listening to “Delicate” last night, I couldn’t help but feel a little emotional (sue me!) about the line, “My reputation’s never been worse, so / You must like me for me”. (See also the lyric in “I Did Something Bad”: “But if he drops my name, then I owe him nothin’ / And if he spends my change, then he had it comin’”)

SO, all this is to say that (maybe unfortunately) the breakup is ripe ground for writing, if you’re interested in submitting to the zine. In honor of the tour, the theme is “eras”. I mentioned in my earlier post that I was interested in thinking about Taylor’s later career, and that’s still the case. In that context though, I think there’s a lot of space to think about how certain themes in her music have transformed throughout her various albums (like, this woman loves to write about high school but that image is somewhat different on “betty” than it is in “You Belong With Me”; very different on “Long Live” than “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince”). The idea is that we look at Taylor’s career in its totality and contextualize earlier works with where her career and music has gone so far.

There’s room for you to go anywhere with this. I feel like this long introduction and the things I’m picking up have made things seem really serious but this is also meant to be fun! Like, if you really want to talk about how much the song “Tim Mcgraw” changed your life, I won’t stop you! Some of the things you might be interested in writing and contributing:

• A Taylor Swift Reading List (she loves her literary allusions; also this TikTok)

• What those literary allusions are doing in her music

• Rankings: song rankings, lyric rankings, outfit rankings, tour rankings, etc. (I am still waiting for a ranking of all the different times she says midnights on Midnights) 

• Love letters (to her music, to old crushes who made you feel like writing a TS song, to the girliefriends who have made loving (or hating) TS so much more special, etc.)

• Deep dives (I need to hear more about Tree Paine, I won’t lie)

• Song annotations (my favorite thing to do in the summer of 2021 was reading genius annotations of champagne problems); see also: Tavi Gevinson’s annotations of Taylor’s songs (also Tavi color coding Fleetwood Mac lyrics in her journal! If anyone can find those, please send to me!)

• The exhilarating thing about being a Taylor swift fan / The exhilarating thing about being a Taylor Swift hater

• An artwork (collage, drawing, map) of an album’s work (like evermore is giving college town you know)

Or anything else that sparks something for you. Being a fan is not necessary to contribute, but being earnest and curious and fair is!

THE NITTY GRITTY

• All submissions should be in by June 9th, 2023. Submissions should be sent to akosuatadasi (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject line: “TS Eras Zine”

• No length restrictions per se but let’s be reasonable

• If you’re interested in contributing something but want to talk it out with me, feel free to respond to this email or reach out by any other form of communication.

• Again, I would love someone to help me lay this out into a proper formatted thing so if you’re a whiz at InDesign or Canva, want to help out, and will accept gifts of gratitude, please reach out!

That’s all folks! Didn’t think I’d have this much to say but can’t say I’m surprised.

COMING SOON: an “essay” about photographic representation, Stuart Hall, and Fred Moten for paid subscribers, and a rundown on the tv I’ve been watching recently for everyone (I just started Ugly Betty, which is sooo good).