Anti-Hero and Autobiography

Why T.S. Eliot would love that Taylor always writes about herself

Taylor Swift recently released her newest album, Midnights, and tragically no one has compared the album to the works of 20th century poets/literary critics yet. So, I figured I would have to restart this (And if you do not want to be reading this, there should be an unsubscribe button). 

The premise of Midnights is to describe 13 (or 20, if you’re looking at the 3am version) sleepless nights in Taylor’s life – with songs detailing the highs and lows of romance, the incessant whispers of self-doubt that plague her, or Taylor’s thirst for revenge – while delivering the synthetic pop style that characterized Swift’s work from 2014 - 2019. So far, the album has achieved unparalleled success: Midnights’ tracks claimed the top ten spots on the Billboard Hot 100 last week, and the album broke records for most Spotify and Amazon music streams, as well as vinyl sales, in a week.

Swift has described Midnight’s as a “directly autobiographical album.” This isn’t a surprise, since Taylor is (in)famous for writing songs about her own romances, break-ups, and celebrity feuds. However, Midnights’ emphasis on the autobiographical — particularly on Taylor’s internal struggles — proves to be both the album’s biggest strength and weakness. Taylor has to walk a fine line when writing about her life. As the NYT noted, “Since Swift is one of the most famous people on the planet, it’s hard to consider much of anything about her life ‘relatable’ — which poses an artistic challenge for a singer-songwriter who prizes connection with her audience… ‘Midnights’ is still largely about Being Taylor Swift, but the attention she brings to her own sense of inertia and discomfort allow her to tap into something larger than herself.” Since Taylor herself has become almost more like a brand than a human, it’s easy for music about her life and her struggles to seem out of touch, but somehow the vulnerability she brings to her songs consistently resonates with her fanbase. The autobiographical nature of her music also contributes to her perception that “my life has become unmanageably sized… And I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person,” by conflating her life and her music, which further exacerbates the struggle to be relatable.

Perhaps nowhere is this tension more evident than in the album’s biggest song, “Anti-Hero.” An upbeat track that explores Taylor’s deep-seated self-loathing, “Anti-Hero” voices Swift’s concern that she is the villain in her own life and therefore that everyone (including her fans, boyfriend, and fictional offspring) will abandon and betray her. Swift tells us, “I’m the problem, it’s me” as she worries what tragedy will befall her once other people realize that: “I wake up screaming from dreaming/ One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving/ And life will lose all its meaning.” While these may be fairly universal concerns, Taylor makes the song explicitly about Taylor Swift. Despite the universality of insecurity, Taylor links her doubts to her sense that “I'm a monster on the hill/ Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city/ Pierced through the heart, but never killed.” A global pop star, she’s often vocalized how she sometimes feels like an overwhelming entity instead of a person because she’s so famous and successful. Writing autobiographical songs further conflates her brand and music with herself. It makes sense then that, as someone whose entire career– and therefore sense of self– depends upon creating a likable persona and putting out songs about herself that other people will like, Taylor agonizes in “Anti-Hero” about what life will be like when people find her (and therefore her music) unlikeable. 

A relevant anecdote: When I played “Anti-Hero” for a colleague, he turned it off within 30 seconds. His complaint? That Taylor Swift doesn’t have anything to be insecure about; She’s just manufacturing fears and self-doubts to get attention. Regardless of the song’s catchy rhythm, clever internal rhymes, and memorable chorus, he dismissed “Anti-Hero” because he thought it made Taylor unlikable. Because her music is so autobiographical, people conflate her music and her personality, and so instead of criticizing the song, they criticize her. 

As much as T.S. Eliot might roll his eyes at the idea of “autobiographical” art (According to Eliot,“Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality”), he would contend that the conflation of Taylor’s music and self ultimately is a sign of her strength as an artist. Eliot’s theory of the “process of depersonalization” argues that “the poet has, not a ‘personality’ to express”  but instead that an artist must “surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” in order to turn his mind into “a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.” In Eliot’s mind, an artist subsumes his “personality,” or sense of self, in cultivating the skills to interpret the world around him in a way that creates great art.

Inevitably, this blurs the lines between an artist and his work, making it hard to separate Taylor from her music and explaining Taylor's perception that being a global superstar makes her less of a “person.” She’s subsumed her personality for her art. Thus, the fears Taylor expresses in “Anti-Hero” indicate that she’s a great artist, according to T.S. Eliot, and so he’d be a huge Midnights fan.