Day 78: The Blood Isn't All That's Bad

Lots of the critiques against Taylor Swift's music is completely unwarranted. Critiquing songs based on their creators character is really only valid when the creator has gone way past the line to the point of warranted legal intervention. Discrediting all of Taylor's works because of one song you don't like is also less than deserved, but at least it's critique based on the art itself. This feels especially true for Taylor Swift; many people say they don't like her music because of one or two songs, and more often or not Bad Blood is on that list. Like I said, it's unfair to say all of Taylor's songs are bad because of one song. It is, however, completely fair to say you don't like Bad Blood itself.

I can't embed the original so this is what you get. You deserve it.

This is one of the few Taylor Swift songs that I would actually describe as "bad". It's fine if you like it, and I really enjoyed the mashup between this song and Should've Said No that Taylor performed on tour last year. The Kendrick Lamar version is also much better than the original, but since it isn't on the album I won't be discussing it past this sentence.

"Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes
You say sorry just for show
You live like that, you live with ghosts"

Bad Blood isn't all bad; this line is a very powerful metaphor that I think resonates will with the themes present in the song. In fact, the entirety of the song past the initial instance of this line is pretty good. The issue is that it doesn't occur until two thirds of the way through the song and by then you already have a sour taste in your mouth from the rest of the song.

The music in the song is somewhat less inspired than the rest of 1989, but that's not my biggest problem with it. The lyrics for the majority of the song are completely uninspired and that's what ruins it for me.

"Cause, baby, now we got bad blood
You know it used to be mad love
So take a look what you've done
'Cause, baby, now we got bad blood
Now we got problems
And I don't think we can solve them
You made a really deep cut
And, baby, now we got bad blood"

So what even makes a lyric good anyways? That's a super complicated question that I'm not qualified to answer at all; I'm just some dude on the internet. That said, I have listened to a lot of Taylor Swift's music and through my months of research I have come across a lot of lyrics I like and a lot I don't. Inevitably, the lyrics I find compelling share certain things in common, as do the ones I don't. The one thing that all great lyrics do, in my humble opinion, is present a familiar subject matter in a non-obvious way, and Taylor is (usually) a master at this.

Now look again at the lyrics I pasted above. Try to pretend for a moment that you had never heard of Taylor Swift. It's hard, I know and you can stop soon. But first, what would your reaction be if I told you that a fifth grader had written those lyrics? I honestly think that I would believe it with no question. Now look at the lyrics about the band-aids at the top of the post, just below the Kidz-Bop Kids. If I learned that a fifth grader wrote those lyrics I would be incredibly surprised! I see exactly what each of them is trying to say, but the good lyrics present their ideas in a way that's difficult to put into words. The chorus just isn't.

If you like this song, that's totally fine. My best guess is that it was designed to be easy to shout along to, which is why it works so well in concert. A funny thing I noticed after a while was that the way the lyrics are presented somewhat reminds me of a cheerleader chant. And what's the point of those chants? To get people amped up and sing along. This song does a great job of that, better than almost all of Taylor's other songs. Her previous album, Red, has very well written lyrics and a lot of songs I like. But it's no coincidence that it's a lot harder to sing along to those songs; the complicated lyrics make them more of a puzzle to decode. So you may just look at Bad Blood as filling a niche that Taylor hasn't explored much in the past. I still don't like it, but I can respect what it does well.

See you tomorrow,

-C