Day 64: She's Gone Too Far This Time

If you could choose just one song to represent Taylor Swift's 2017 album Reputation, which one would it be? Maybe one of the lead singles like ...Ready For It? or Look What You Made Me Do? After all those were the first songs that Taylor revealed to the public. Or maybe you should go with the critically acclaimed Delicate? All good choices, but out of all the songs on the album that are emblematic of the whole I would probably go with Don't Blame Me.

I said just a few days ago that Reputation is one of my favorite Taylor Swift albums, and now I'm following that up by claiming that Don't Blame Me is one of the best few songs off the album. There's a lot going for this song, but my favorite aspect is how this song just works on every level. Let me explain what I mean.

At it's simplest, Don't Blame Me is a very catchy song. It's just the kind of song that's so easy to sing along with in the intense chorus without thinking about at all. It also does a great job of introducing huge amounts of variability to the intensity of the music without sounding unnatural at all. The tension that builds during the bridge makes the beat drop at the start of the chorus actually feel earned, which just adds to how satisfying it already is. The first 30 seconds of the song is so quiet and reserved compared to the last 30 seconds that it's hard to imagine getting there in a way that makes sense but somehow Taylor pulls it off.

When you dig a little deeper and look at what the song is trying to say, it's also a very nuanced look at a relationship. There are some songs that it borrows certain thematic elements from like I Knew You Were Trouble, Blank Space, and The Way I Loved You, but make no mistake: Don't Blame Me has as much unique flavor as any of Taylor's other work.

But doesn't that contradict what I said at the very beginning of this post? If this song is nuanced and unique then doesn't that disqualify it from being the platonic ideal of a Reputation song? Haha, you stupid idiot, of course it doesn't! What, have you been listening to Red again? One of the ways that Reputation distinguishes it from other albums is how each song perfectly evokes a specific emotion without being so specific as to make it unrelatable. Each song on the album has it's own unique personality, so the way that Don't Blame Me represents the whole is not through theme, but tone.

So what even is the tone of this song? That's a surprisingly difficult question that I won't be fully able to answer today. But we can get close! First, it's important to recognize how this song is, in some regards, as abstraction of a common relationship trope. Taylor is living her life being a regular fella killer when she meets a beautiful husbando and falls mad in love. It's a story as old as time; the player being subdued by some pure new love interest. But we see a different telling of this story here. Instead of being purified by this new love, Taylor is corrupted.

"And baby, for you, I would fall from grace
Just to touch your face
If you walk away
I'd beg you on my knees to stay"

This song is so tonally cohesive that you could literally pick and line and it would support this point. So that's exactly what I did! This new love isn't making Taylor's life any better, it's making her fall from grace. The imagery she evoked doesn't make her sound infatuated, it makes her sound absolutely obsessed. She's completely losing her mind! And don't make my word for it; here's Taylor.

"For you, I would cross the line
I would waste my time
I would lose my mind
They say she's gone too far this time"

And then there's the lines making her sound like an addict.

"Don't blame me, love made me crazy
If it doesn't, you ain't doin' it right
Oh, Lord, save me, my drug is my baby
I'd be usin' for the rest of my life"

I've dissed on comparing love to drugs in the past because of how cliched it is, and I completely stand by that. That said, people do it because it resonates with listeners when done right, and this is a perfect example of how to earn a comparison like this. This relationship is completely eating away at Taylor's psyche and she just can't tear herself away. I don't even know if she wants to leave or can truly recognize how it's affecting her. Now that sounds like actual addict behavior! Well, at least that's true for the version of herself that Taylor is presenting in this song. In reality of course she was aware of this going in, otherwise it would be pretty tricky to write this song. 

So I hope you can see now why I like this song so much. It works on every level and you can tell there was a lot of care put into every part of it. Crazy thing is, I still think this is like the 5th best song on the album or so. This is exactly what I'm talking about when praise Reputation's consistency. But more on that later.

See you tomorrow,
-C