The Red (Taylor’s Version) Queen

Novelty in "Nothing New" and "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

Next up on this very weird ongoing conversation between Taylor Swift and T.S. Eliot are the Red (From the Vault) tracks, or the songs that had initially been cut from the 2012 Red album but made it onto the rerecorded version last year. The best place to begin thinking about the nature of these songs is “Nothing New,” a discourse on the role of novelty and youth on women’s place in pop culture. The song– which Swift wrote at age 22, when she was no longer a “new” star– questions, “Lord what will become of me/ Once I’ve lost my novelty” in a pop ecosystem that chases the new and discards anything that seems remotely stale. Swift worries about becoming old and disappearing from the spotlight, writing “Are we only biding time ‘til I lose your attention?/ And someone else lights up the rooms?/ People love an ingenue.”

This concern about seeming old and outdated shaped Swift’s career. She’s pointed out how “We do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35. Everyone’s a shiny new toy for like two years.” After all, the lifespan of a pop star’s career is shockingly short –  how many artists who are famous one year will still be making music in 30? And among female artists, who face additional expectations about looking young and attractive, seeming innocent (and therefore non-threatening), and appearing likable (which is often contingent on not being successful for too long, at risk of coming across as “out-of-touch”) the pressure to seem “new” is even stronger. This is why Swift asserts that “The female artists that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists,” a strategy Swift embraced as she reinvented her image with each new album she recorded in an effort to seem “new.”

As Swift sees it, the drive to constantly seem new is a race with the Red Queen. A concept first articulated by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass – when, while running, Alice notes that “however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything” and is later told “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you  can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that”-- the idea of the Red Queen has also become an evolutionary hypothesis that argues that species must constantly adapt and evolve in order to keep up with the pace of evolution of the species around them. Likewise, in order to survive in a constantly evolving cultural landscape, pop stars must constantly evolve to seem fresh and new.

In “Nothing New,” Swift challenges the paradigm of a pop culture Red Queen. At 31, Swift included it as part of a decade-old album’s re-release, celebrating art and artists that are older than usual and rejecting the reign of novelty. The song’s chorus challenges listeners to appreciate the non-novel, asking them, “will you still want me when I’m nothing new?”

T.S. Eliot would agree with Swift’s perspective that pop culture over-emphasizes novelty. A century before “Nothing New” came out, Eliot highlighted “Our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles any one else… We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors.” Novelty, he argues, is not what characterizes good art, event though it might be easy to point out what’s new about a piece. Instead, “We shall often find that the not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.” The best pieces are nothing new, in Eliot’s mind. Rather than highlighting novelty and forcing pop artists to constantly invent personas and styles that keep them new in their race with the Red Queen, Eliot thinks a culture will see better art when it applauds works that clearly build on traditional great pieces. Prioritizing the “traditional”– like grappling with age-old questions and incorporating styles that have historically been aesthetically appealing– gives artists a framework to produce work that is more meaningful and enjoyable. 

While the TSes may agree that novelty is overrated, Swift would point out that dominant social norms make it easier for men to reject novelty and incorporate the traditional into their works and would emphasize that there is disproportionate pressure for women’s art and style to seem young and new. Naomi Wolf (former feminist icon who has not only lost her novelty, but has gotten really weird with age), articulates how the pressure of novelty disproportionately impacts women (who, if they embrace themes and styles that are “traditional” may face an additional layer of criticism about being too serious or too masculine): “Men grant themselves tradition to hand down through the generations; women are permitted only fashion which each season renders obsolete.” Aesthetically and stylistically, men are held to a different standard, she argues. As Wolf explains, traditional or historical styles are not available for female artists (in both physical appearance as well as artistic efforts). For standards about how women’s art should look, the traditional “Is rarely held up for admiration as history or heritage, but derided by fashion’s rigid rule as embarrassingly démode.”

Without examples of compelling traditional or historical work by former female artists to guide their style or content, stars like Swift are left racing the Red Queen. But Swift rejects this concept and embraces the old by rerecording her albums even though they may have lost their novelty, a decision T.S. Eliot would applaud for reducing the power of “newness” in pop culture.