Day 5: Does Taylor Swift write her own songs?

I think the title of this post speaks for itself. I wasn't planning on addressing this topic so early in the project, but the fact is that it's very difficult to evaluate Taylor Swift's music without knowing where the words coming from her mouth originate.

You might argue that it doesn't matter who writes the music; all the matters is the song as it exists on the album. I would actually be inclined to agree with that line of thought, after all music is a highly collaborative art form. There are two reasons that I'm choosing to address this issue head on with Taylor.

First, she claims to be very involved in the writing process. If a singer never claims to write the songs they preform then it's pretty difficult to claim wrongdoing. Taylor has credited herself as either the sole writer or as a co-writer on every song, so it's worth at least looking into.

Secondly, honesty, mistrust, and reputation have all been recurring themes in Taylor's most recent works. Her newest album is called Reputation after all, and if you need more evidence of how she feels about her public image you don't have to look very hard. Just look at the Reputation track, I Did Something Bad.

"They're burning all the witches, even if you aren't one,
They got their pitchforks and proof
Their receipts and reasons
They're burning all the witches, even if you aren't one."

For someone who claims to write their own music, singing this would be some seriously bad faith. Luckily, it seems like Taylor Swift actually does write her own songs.

My mindset while I looked into this topic was hopeful, yet extremely skeptical. I think that's fair, after all the public perception around mega pop stars is that their whole lives, especially the details surrounding their careers, are highly manufactured. But for all my attempts I couldn't find any allegations that Taylor Swift has ever used a ghost writer, even in the slightest. She has collaborated plenty, but by all accounts she seems to be the overachiever in the group who happily does the whole project three weeks before it's due. What a goddamn nerd.

I kid. This has actually given me a lot more respect for Taylor as an artist as whole. You can imagine that it was somewhat of a letdown when I found out that a song I had previously praised, Clean, was co-written by English singer/songwriter Imogen Heap. You can also imagine how I was even happier do discover a blog post by Imogen where she details the writing experience with Swift, saying how she also assumed she didn't actually write much, and how surprised she was by Taylor's songwriting zeal.

Obviously collaboration doesn't discredit a writer; I just don't want to give undue credit. In the same manner, I think it's only right to give proper recognition where it's due. Is it possible that Taylor has been paying off everyone she has ever worked with so she can maintain a standard that no one really cares about? Or maybe she has an auditory transmitting chip implanted in her skull that allows her to communicate with her literal ghost writers, who she killed and ate just to absorb their songwriting powers.

Or maybe she's genuinely a hardworking and talented songwriter with well over a decade of experience in her belt. I guess we'll never know.

There's not really a good spot in this post for a funny picture so here's one of someone's Halloween costume where they dressed as Edgar Allen Po that I found on reddit.

nice

That's all for today. Thanks for reading.

See you tomorrow,

-C