Day 45: How Taylor Swift Writes a Song

As much as things change, they also stay the same. Taylor's style has changed a lot over the years, but there are certain paths she takes with her writing that have stayed almost hilariously the same. She changes this formula from time to time, but some songs are so similar once you start dissecting them that it becomes hard not to notice. The song I want to talk about today, How You Get the Girl from 1989, isn't the platonic ideal of this process but it certainly has some of the most important elements.

"Stand there like a ghost
Shaking from the rain
She'll open up the door
And say, are you insane?

Say it's been a long six months
And you were too afraid to tell her what you want"

Right off the bat it's easy to see that this is "good writing" Taylor. She gives us the details we need to figure out what's going on without too much hand-holding. From these short lines we can deduce that this is a guy that used to be in a relationship with Taylor, but they broke up in the last six months. Obviously he wants her back, otherwise he wouldn't be standing out in the rain, but there are also some less obvious messages we can take from the words here.

It's hard to tell exactly what Taylor is thinking just from these lines, but we can gleam some important information. Taylor has some concern for this guy's well-being, otherwise she never would have opened up the door in the first place. We can also deduce that this guy is a huge weenie, otherwise he wouldn't be shaking from the rain.

Come on bro, be a real man. Err, dog?

It goes deeper though. Judging by the music, I would bet that this story has a happy ending. Taylor loves herself a swictheroo, but she rarely gives a happy song a sad ending, it's typically only the other way around. Also just think about the setting. A guy standing out in the rain begging to get back together with the girl he loves? Come on, does it get any more romcom than that? And by invoking romcom imagery, she's basically giving away that the story ends well.

Okay, I guess it could get a little more romcom

Speaking of the ending, that's the most Typically part of this song. To begin, here's the chorus.

"And that's how it works
It's how you get the girl"

Okay, now here's the last line.

"And that's how it works
That's how you got the girl"

Ah! See what she did there? She took a line she had previously repeated and made you think about it in a new way by slightly rephrasing it! In this case, Taylor basically assures us that it does, in fact, end happily by changing a single key word. I'm not trying to make this seem super impressive, because it really isn't revolutionary. What's important, though, is that it works. And because it works, Taylor loves doing it. Seriously, she can't get enough of this shit. The subtle, yet totally predictable plot twist is a decades old Taylor Swift trick and this is yet another example of her pulling it off successfully.

It might seem like I'm railing on her for telegraphing her writing, but I'm really not. If she did it the exact same way every time then yes it would become super boring. But remember those details I mentioned at the very beginning of the post? Well, including details like those lets her make a million unique stories that are still interesting with a few well practiced tools in her belt. It's really just mastery of a style, which is one of the reasons I think 1989 shines. So next time you are going to complain about how predictable Taylor songs are, maybe consider that she knows it and try to notice the little things that keep it fresh.

See you tomorrow,

-C