amanda

Longtime Taylor Swift writer Rob Sheffield argues that boys are not the main characters in many of her songs, but instead "blank spaces for the girls to find their own identity in": "She doesn’t have a lot of interest in making these boys the characters of the songs. It’s always the girls in the songs who are the characters. Really, the boy is just there to get her from one end of the song to the other — just there to get a song started. Even from the very first one I heard, the one that made me a fan, my origin story as a fan: 'Our Song.' The song ends with her actually writing 'Our Song,' and then we know we’re never gonna hear about this boy again. He’s served his purpose! He’s helped her become a songwriter, and she’s got the song and she’s moving on. We see that all through these things that the boys are just there for the girls to have this kind of self-discovery process, that the boys are really just blank spaces for the girls to find their own identity in. When people used to say 'Taylor writes songs about boys,' I would sometimes say — to be a bit flippant a bit — she never writes any songs about boys. It’s always about the girl in the song and whatever project for her the boy represents. She just doesn’t have that much interest in male characters at all." Read more here: variety.com/2024/music/news/…