In the early years of her career, Taylor Swift stepped lightly, transforming from a precocious country musician into a global pop star. She shifted her sound and her image gradually, a strategy that seemed less about allegiance to a particular genre than about personal traditionalism. (She did not start cursing in her music until she was in her late twenties.) Swift has always been a rule-follower—a diligent songwriter with a wholesome image—which made her a kind of renegade in a brash, hypersexualized pop landscape. On “Red,” her fourth album, from 2012, she began dipping a toe into modernity. In the song “I Knew You Were Trouble,” she nodded to the aggressive and trendy sounds of E.D.M., adding a light dubstep drop before the chorus. By most pop standards, it was a subtle flourish, but for Swift it was like an earthquake. In “Treacherous,” she incorporated sexuality into her lyrics for the first time: “I’ll do anything you say / If you say it with your hands.”

On “Red,” Swift also experimented with grander sounds that translated better in arenas, which she had begun to sell out. The album’s opening track, “State of Grace,” is more U2 than Emmylou Harris—a dramatic number with huge drums and echoey electric guitars. Her voice, too, soars above her preferred conversational register. At the end of the song, she offers a bit of doctrine: “Love is a ruthless game / Unless you play it good and right.” As with much of Swift’s music, it seemed like an innocent declaration, but it also carried a threat: play by the rules, she implied, or else. Swift was a moralist in matters of the heart, and once someone broke her trust all bets were off. Anyone who dared to injure her—as many of her romantic interests seemed to do—would be subjected to retaliation in the form of withering lyrics.

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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/29/taylor-swifts-quest-for-justice

Illustration by Laura Lannes; Source photograph from Getty