Why Everyone Joking About Taylor Swift's Next Breakup Song Needs to Stop It Right Now


Getty Images

Since the news broke last night that Calvin Harris and Taylor Swift had split up, social media users have been making the same predictable, sarcastic joke over and over again: "Oh, can't wait for the next album!" People who I guess fancy themselves relationship experts have been following up with the same mean-spirited psycho-babble: "Well, maybe if she didn't write songs about all of her relationships, she could actually keep a man." 

First of all, you're damn right she's going to write an album about this, and it's going to earn her a bajillion dollars and get her so many awards that she's going to need a new walk-in closet for them because she's Taylor effing Swift and that's who she is and that's what she does. But, secondly, did it ever occur to anyone that maybe, just maybe, the song is more important than the guy? 

I've been taking these comments very personally because as a (single) writer who publishes very raw essays on her relationships, I get the same advice. "Maybe you should keep things to yourself more so you don't scare guys off?" people my mother says. It's like, are wittle babies frightened of a wittle emotional honesty? Maybe instead of telling me to tone it down, we should be telling the guys to grow a pair. Writing about my relationships is how I take ownership of them. I can't control what happens in a relationship; I can't control how another person feels or acts. But I can, to some extent, control how I feel about it, which is the most liberating realization in the world. By writing the story, I take back control of the narrative. I define its legacy. 


I don't know Taylor Swift personally, and as far as I know, she could be smashing all of the pots in her house right now in a fit of despair (been there). But that's not important. What's important is that her breakup songs are not sad little ballads about waifish, wide-eyed girls curled up crying in the corner, or kitschy pop hits about going out to the club with your friends which always ring with false bravado. They are about a woman using a song to take back ownership of her relationship, and that's what makes them so endlessly empowering. 

Take "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," for example. The story that her lyrics tell is so honest and relatable: She admits that she got sucked into reuniting with a bad boy over and over again thanks to his honeyed words, as many of us have. But now she's a stronger woman who knows better. When she looks directly at me and says, "We are never ever getting back together," I believe her. 

"Shake it Off" is another great hit that addresses the way she's portrayed as someone who just can't keep a man ("I go on too many dates, but I can't make them stay, at least that's what people say"). I listen to it every time I go through some minor emotional infraction, like bumping into an ex with his new girlfriend, or getting rejected by a guy who's such a loser that it's not hurtful so much as humiliating. Because the best advice is often the simplest: Move the haters to the left, and just shake it off. 

By far, her magnum opus is "Blank Space." A lot has already been written about how the music video is brilliant because Taylor makes fun of her image as a psycho man-eater, and therefore takes ownership of her own stereotype. But what really resonates with me is that she knows from the very first verse that the relationship is going to end. "You look like my next mistake:""I'm dying to see how this one ends;" "You can tell me when it's over, if  the high was worth the pain," she sings. 


It's fitting that the guy in the video looks like a mannequin, too, because that's all he is: a dummy there to fill up a blank space. And when he's gone, another dummy will fill up his place. And that's a beautiful thing. 

I don't get bitter or angry when relationships end, because I don't date so that a relationship can last forever; I date for the experience of being in love, and because every person is unique, every experience is as well. When I write about the guys I've dated, it's to say, "This was important to me. This mattered. Thank you for that." When I watch "Blank Space," that's the message Tay seems to be sending out as well. 

And there's another important message wedged in there: This happens to everyone. There's a comfort to the universality of breakups, and when I write these essays or listen to Tay's songs, I immediately feel surrounded by an invisible support group consisting of millions of people around the world who have felt the exact same way I feel.  And as soon as I'm done writing the piece, I feel like I've performed an exorcism, releasing the ghost of my past forever. 

Writing a song, or a story, is the ultimate way of letting go and "shaking it off." It's the ultimate way of taking ownership of your past experiences. Because when it's all over, it doesn't matter what happened, it doesn't matter how he feels, and its doesn't matter what the world thinks. All that matters is what it means to you. 

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below