Day 3: Clean

I'm gonna be honest. 1989 is, in my opinion, Taylor Swift's best work. Sure, it has the occasional dud, but for the most part I think the songs on this album are more cohesive and impactful than her other works. It also gives a much broader look at Taylor's style, with some songs containing well-trodden Taylor Swift troupes and others hinting at what's still to come.

Stranger Things have happened

So today I'm going to be talking about just one song on 1989 that I genuinely like, Clean. The more I listen to and think about it, the more things about this song I find myself enjoying. The aspect I like most is how this is very clearly a breakup song, but is so different from Taylor's other songs of the same subject. Most of her breakup songs are immediately post break and have a tone that reads distressed, longing, or angry but Clean goes for something totally different: peace. I'm not saying those other songs are bad, just that there's a lot of them and it's nice to have a fresh breath of air.

Or I suppose I should say a fresh lung full of water. If you haven't listened to the song but for some reason are still reading this blog (hi mom!), I say that because this song is all about dat dank water.

"The rain came pouring down

When I was drowning that's when I could finally breathe

And by morning gone was any trace of you

I think I am finally clean"

Behold, the chorus! It takes the two most cliched uses of water (drowning and rain) and flips them on their heads, saying that these things are what give us our lives back after the worst of times.

"The drought was the very worst

when the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst"

Maybe you're not as impressed by this blatant symbolism as I am. And maybe that's fair, after all it's not like Taylor invented the idea of water being desirable, an abstract concept also knows as "thirst".

That said, originality and quality aren't the same thing. In my opinion, one of the things a song can do that makes it exceptional is take well known elements (breakups, tranquility, water imagery) and combine them in a way that seems completely natural to the audience, but may have been non-obvious to come up with.

"There was nothing left to do

When the butterflies turned to dust that covered my whole room

So I punched a hole in the roof

Let the flood carry away all my pictures of you

The water filled my lungs I screamed so loud

but no one heard a thing"

This section is hilarious me to because it's so well written except when Taylor decides to punch the roof for some reason. Other than that, it works really well. That lingering post-breakup feeling is so hard to describe in an original way, but saying it's butterfly dust captures the feeling of sparks in a new relationship as well as what happens when those sparks die out. Saying they cover her room is actually pretty genius; the bedroom is both where you can be the most alone, but also the biggest reminder of where the most intimate moments with one's ex happened. Her solution? Flush that shit.

I have plenty more to say, but I'm going to cut myself off here. Before I go, I want to give a quick disclaimer; there is plenty about this song that I don't like. The aforementioned ceiling-punch came out of nowhere, and at the end Taylor falls back on the tired troupe of comparing a breakup to withdrawal from drugs. Nice! At least it fits in the with the idea of being clean. Anyways, that's all. I plan on talking about a song that's not as good tomorrow.

See you tomorrow,

-C