Here are some pictures of Taylor Swift dressed like a tiger for a friends birthday party.
What has this to do with rock nyc, you ask?
I think it has something to do with what you might do if you were 21 years old and had the world at your feet. I think it is beyond power, the ability to retreat to a different age and different priorities. It is a state of grace and hidden barely beneath that grace is a rabid fear. Swift has to repeat and repeat and repeat and the pressure is an immense soul sucking hole, a whirlpool of fear that you can't actually perform it any more.
So you can retreat into drugs, alcohol, whatever, or you can retreat into a past that passed you by. Taylor is back in High School -even Junior High, where music saved her from her Ugly Duckling friendlessness. Now she is the cool girl and the sweet girl the way girls weren't sweet and cool to her. Now, she can go back in time and relive the past.
And that is what she is doing with her success. She has made herself Peter Pan. She is retreating to an imagined childhood and she is writing about it. That was the problem with her song "Dear John". Reading between the lines Mayer made a very physical move on her and she is too flowers and white bread: she was shocked. But what did she expect?
And here is the secret of her ultra sincere songs for puppy love.: they are sincere because she sincerely refuses to deal with the reality of her childhood, instead, she makes a last stand cusp of adulthood and uses her power and wealth to shield her from the past and the future…