Dear Taylor Swift, I’m Sorry

Dear Taylor Swift,

I’m sorry.

This letter is long overdue, and it comes while I’m sitting by a lit winter candle and singing “dorotheeeeeea” under my breath. I am now twenty-four years old, sitting in an apartment I pay (too much) rent for each month, and it feels like your albums of 2020 have met me right where I am – nostalgic for my past but ready to move on, feeling old wounds fully but letting them go, and, as a writer, diving into kooky characters and places I may have initially shrugged of as “stupid.”

It’s not like the awkward 12-year-old sputtering “Our Song” through braces-covered teeth is gone. She’s just comfortably resting beneath years of healing, inner work, and a newfound love for yoga and aromatherapy.

Your album, folklore, arrived at a time of rebirth for me. It was the rustic, fairy-tale aqueduct that bridged my big-city, wide-eyed, fast-paced dreams with stillness, and breath, and closure. It was really that album that made me say, “Okay. Look. I really love your music.” Last year, you were my Spotify Artist of the Decade, and I still was kinda like… “Eh. You’re okay.” I just wasn’t there.

There is still a lot of work that I have to do to become my best self. And part of that work is apologizing to you.

I’m sorry that I said you were probably “crazy.” I always flinch a little at “mad woman,” because I hear the words tumbling out of my mouth directed at other women who maybe got a little too emotional, or shared a little too much, or were just a tad “bossy.” Sometimes, I feel them on the tip of my tongue when I’m looking in the mirror. I’m sorry I said you probably drive men away. Maybe at some points in your life, you did. I don’t know – because I don’t know you. What I do know is that you are a real person – not just a cardboard cutout of a smiley, curly haired blonde in a Hot Topic. Like any real person, you are flawed, you’ve made mistakes, and you weren’t perfect at 16 (or 18, or 20, or 22, or…ever).

I’m sorry that I couldn’t forgive you for your internal misogyny. It was easy for me to say that “Better than Revenge” discredited you as a feminist. It was harder to address the fact that I have also harbored my own “Better than Revenge” feelings, that I have blamed women for beauty, that I have demonized female sexuality, that I bought the pretty picture of “virgin vs whore” in a patriarchal gift box and stored it on my shelf for years and years. Ugly feelings are ugly feelings – we all have them. The choice is whether to keep them harbored or release them and grow. Like me, you looked within yourself to repair the damage of fractured sisterhood. Unlike me, you wore the ugly feelings of your past on your sleeve, and they’ll linger forever on Spotify playlists.

I’m sorry that I belittled your writing. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t believe in my own writing. I didn’t believe in women nourishing and expressing feelings with unbridled honesty. After all, teen girls just write dumb songs. Good songs don’t spill from the mouths of feminine women. I thought about this when I met the first boy I ever loved and spun around to “Enchanted” and reveled in my feelings for him. I thought about it again when we had a fight and broke up, and I cried in his jersey on the floor to “Last Kiss.” I thought, these are dumb. I am dumb for liking them. I’m dumb for feeling this way over a person. When teen girls cry over their lovers, we call them hysterical. Or we say they’re not feminists. For me, being strong and being present in my pain were mutually exclusive. Now I know you cannot have one without the other.

And for the record - we say a lot of shitty, unfair things when men cry over their lovers too, which may be why so many men direct so much hatred to you.  But I can’t speak for them. That’s their apology letter to write.

That being said, I’m not sorry that some people don’t like your music. Not everybody has to like your music. You know that. I’m also not sorry that I will continue to call you out whenever you do something problematic. I will hold you accountable because you’re not infallible.

But I know you are different than the girl who sang, “Tim McGraw.” I’m different too. If I had heard your current music when I was a kid, if I had heard you sing, “This pain wouldn’t be for evermore,” I don’t think I would have believed you. I wasn’t ready to hear that yet. And I don’t think you were ready to write it either. It takes all of the messy, the emotional, and the wrong to get there. I wanted to hold onto it for a little while longer. And I’m sorry that while you stood by me through that, I couldn’t hold that space for you.

So here’s to you, Taylor Swift. I know you’re sick of laying on the ground, picking rose petals, and singing about “riding shotgun with [your] hair undone.” That’s valid, but don’t forget to show respect and love for that girl too. She’s still inside of you, just like that dorky 12-year-old is still inside of me. She started it all. There’d be no folklore or evermore without her. And she deserves my apology most of all.

Love,

Shannon

PS: I think we need a break from new music. There’s just a LOT to unpack here. Please take a break to have some tea and spend time with your cats. You deserve it.