My, my, my, my. We get deep into our feelings on this deep dive today with “Death By a Thousand Cuts,” from Lover. With a title referencing an imperial form of torture, what is this Taylor Swift song really about? As always, our hosts look at the lyrics from very different perspectives based on our own personal experiences, from moving out of a childhood home (“chandelier still flickering here”) to a breakup (“You said it was a great love”) to Spiderman (“I see you everywhere”). We talk about...

Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year. Taylor Swift loves to make direct and indirect references to the classic American novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. So we decided to dive into those connections and see what all the fuss is about. In this week’s episode, we each picked a song that we wanted to relate to The Great Gatsby. Join us as Maansi brings the party with “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Jenn explores Gatsby’s motivations with “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” and...

Enchanted to (re)meet you. Revisit one of our favorite early episodes with us! As a holiday treat, we are giving our Deep Dive into “Enchanted” its own time to shine. In our first deep dive episode, we did a deep reading of Taylor Swift’s song “Enchanted” from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). We’re wonderstruck as we learn how to analyze a text using the rhetorical triangle to better understand who is speaking, who they are speaking to, and the purpose of the text. We find connections to “Pride...

Messy as the mud on your truck tires. We couldn’t let a holiday season go by without THE song about THE damn season, could we? Continuing the conversation from our Show and Tell episode on holidays, this week we deep dive “tis the damn season,” from evermore (2020). We start by diving into Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” to get a better understanding of the song. Then our hosts spend a lot of time trying to figure out who the characters are, what their relationship is to one another, and...

Soon they’ll have the nerve to deck the halls. On this week’s episode we attempted to lean right into the festivities of the season with a Holidays themed episode. But…did we actually pick holiday songs? We start by defining what the “holiday season” even means in an attempt to answer the question. Jodi discusses “New Year’s Day,” with the thesis that it’s a song about the everyday, not necessarily the holidays. Jenn brings on the holiday melancholy with “champagne problems,” sparking a hot...

“It was the best of times, the worst of crimes.” In this episode, we do a deep dive into “Getaway Car” to explore why this particular metaphor is so powerful. We first explore the historical context by discussing the true story of Bonnie and Clyde, and then we dive into the lyrics to discuss the themes of agency, deception, and the shifting dynamics of relationships. Come along for the ride as we figure out what Don Draper has to do with this song, the layered meaning of “poisoning the well,”...

"Some things you just can’t speak about." Taylor Swift’s superpower is being able to convey very specific emotions to millions who may or may not have ever experienced those emotions before. The way she uses metaphors is one of the ways she makes these songs universally relatable. But not only does she use metaphors in her lyrics, sometimes the songs are metaphors. In this show & tell episode, we each bring a song in which the whole song seems to be a metaphor for something else. Tune in...

"I had a marvelous time..." Take a step back in time with us as we deep dive into “The Last Great American Dynasty,” from folklore. Our hosts expand on what we learned in our Marxist Criticism episode to take an even closer look at Rebekah Harkness, who she was, and why Taylor Swift wrote a song about her. What do Taylor and Rebekah Harkness have in common, besides owning the same home?Is Rebekah Harkness really “middle class”? How does Taylor build empathy for someone called “mad” and...

What does a 19th century philosopher and economist have to do with Taylor Swift? In this week’s episode we put on our Marxist Theory glasses to consider how the ideas of ownership, value, and class differences help us understand Taylor’s music in a whole new way. Maansi teaches us what it means to belong to someone in “Mine.” Jenn digs into the political metaphors in “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince.” And Jodi teaches us about social class differences with the incredible true story...

Loving him was like…what? You may know all the words to this old favorite song, but do you know what they mean? In today’s deep dive, we’re unpacking “Red” from Red (Taylor’s Version). After our previous episode on Fall where we talked about why this is an autumn-coded song, our hosts spend more time trying to understand the many (many) metaphors (or is it similes? Analogies?) Taylor Swift uses to describe this relationship. We’ll get a High School English lesson, references to some...

It’s fall, y’all! From chai cookies to a whole new color palette, we have officially entered into the season of fall, and we want to celebrate it with some of our favorite Taylor songs! Join us as Jenn talks about why “You Belong With Me” is forever a fall song in her midwestern mind; Jodi gives us an overview of the fall-themed marketing that came with the release of Red; and Maansi shocks us all by proving that “Cornelia Street” is 100% a Fall song even though it’s on a summer album. Make...

"Take me on vacation, take me to anywhere, take me to the lakes!" After our Show & Tell on Ecocriticism, we’re ready to Deep Dive head-first into “the lakes,” bonus track 17 on “folklore (deluxe version).” Join us as we walk through Taylor Swift’s nature imagery and consider the lyrics in some historical context. We'll also unpack the speaker’s relationship with nature as we consider what the speaker is escaping from, where she is going, and why she is running away. And, we introduce a...

“But the monsters turned out to be just trees.” Are trees good? Are trees bad? Why the tree imagery? In this episode of AP Taylor Swift, your hosts dive into the world of ecocriticism to explore and analyze how Taylor uses nature in her lyrics to create powerful metaphors that resonate with her listeners. Join us as Jodi discusses the dichotomy of the domestic vs the wild in “Out of the Woods,” Jenn shares some surprising history about William Wordsworth that may change the way you listen to...

It’s been a long time coming! To celebrate the release of the Eras Tour Movie, we’re releasing our first special episode: our Eras Tour Reactions! Back in July, our hosts sat down to relive the magic of our own Eras Tour concert experiences. Learn who went in blind, and who had a playlist of the entire set before they went to the show. Hear from Maansi as she reflects on hearing “Long Live” and “All of the Girls You Loved Before” at the Santa Clara show less than 24 hours after seeing Taylor...

GTFO. After our last Show and Tell on Toxic Relationships, on this episode we do a deep dive into “it’s time to go,” Track 17 from "evermore" (2020). We explore how Taylor Swift uses universal experiences like infidelity and betrayal to help us empathize with her own (very unique) experience of losing her masters. It wouldn’t be an AP class without some literary devices, so we learn about internal rhymes and Taylor’s use of anaphora. What do “Cheetah Girls,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The...

To stay, tolerate it, or go? Today’s assignment was to bring in a Taylor Swift song that represents toxic relationships. Toxic relationships exist in real life, and therefore show up frequently in art and literature – and Taylor’s music is no exception. Jenn walks us through “Stay Stay Stay” and discusses how these lyrics can carry a very different meaning depending on the age and context of the speaker; Maansi brings in “tolerate it” which sparks some conversations on feminism; and Jodi...

Going Down the Rabbit Hole. Today we’re doing a deep dive on Taylor Swift’s song, “Wonderland,” from the album 1989. This episode builds on Episode 3 focused on Taylor Swift’s lyrical influences from the book “Alice in Wonderland.” In this episode, we explore whether the Cheshire Cat is calming or creepy; if New York City really is “Wonderland”; How Taylor Swift’s music, lyrics, and album branding are often at odds with one another; and how this song seems to reference “A Tale of Two Cities”...

In this Show & Tell episode, your professors of Taylor Swift came prepared with songs connected to or inspired by the story of “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll.

In our first deep dive episode, we do a deep reading of Taylor Swift’s song “Enchanted” from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).

In this first episode of AP Taylor Swift, we have a “Show and Tell” episode where you’ll get to know your hosts Jenn, Maansi, and Jodi, through the Taylor Swift songs that made us Swifties.