Apple Podcast Subscribers can now listen ad free with a paid subscription!

Subscribe now

📜 This Week’s Extra Credit by Jenn

Now I know that it is November 1st, so technically spooky season is over. But if you’re not quite ready to let that vibe go, I’ve got some book recs for you! In this week’s episode, we dived into some Taylor songs that could be read as having some “horror” or “spooky” energy. I won’t repeat what we talked about there (because obviously you’ve already listened), but I thought pairing some spooky books with Taylor songs would be another interesting exercise to see what that revealed about Taylor’s music, the books I love, or maybe just what kind of vibes I like in books. So let’s dig in!

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me and Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

I mean, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me is easily one of Taylor’s spookiest songs. I think back to the imagery in the Era’s Tour (like….legit spooky), but it also is a great narrative foundation as well.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, on the other hand, was frankly much more spooky than I was expecting. For some reason I went in thinking it would be just a cozy fall read. But no, it’s got some real spook to it! Here’s the summary from Bookshop:

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, frightened, and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by the adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid . . . and it’s usually paid in blood.

Young women who people underestimate but should definitely be afraid of? Yeah, that covers both the song and the book!

mad woman and Weyward by Emilia Hart

I know these are two books in a row with some version of the word “weyward,” but they are definitely different books! But before we get into the book, let’s look at the son. In my opinion, mad woman is definitely a horror song. Both in it’s ominous-feeling music, but also in it’s lyrics. I mean… “They strike to kill and you know I will.” Not particularly chill!

Weyward by Emilia Hart is a story about multiple generations of women and their witchy ways. In case you weren’t aware, witches were not particularly popular for most of history, so these women get mad in all the definitions of the word.

Here’s the summary for this book from Bookshop:

I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great-aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she suspects that her great-aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. When Altha was a girl, her mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence of witchcraft is laid out against Altha, she knows it will take all her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family’s grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an astonishing debut, and an enthralling novel of female resilience.

Content warning: There is some ROUGH stuff in this book. It’s ultimately still such a beautiful story about these women, but there were definitely some scenes that were rough to read. Like I said… witches haven’t really been popular throughout history.

no body, no crime and The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

Is no body, no crime really a horror song? Eh, I will admit this one is more of a stretch. However, there are multiple murders in the song. Specifically pre-meditated murders. And this song is also about the past catching up to people and them getting what they deserve. Maybe this song is more of a “thriller” than “horror,” but I am in no mood to split hairs today, so here we are.

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley is absolutely about the past resurfacing and complicating the present. Here’s the summary from Bookshop:

It’s the opening night of The Manor, the newest and hottest luxury resort, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles. The “Manor Mule” cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And it’s not too long before the local police are called. Turns out the past has crashed the party, with deadly results.

Other Spooky Books for Swifties?

Pleeeeeeease drop a comment here if you have any other spooky books you really enjoyed. It’s a genre I really enjoy, and I am always looking for recs!

Leave a comment

Apple Podcast Subscribers can now listen ad free with a paid subscription!

This week on our social feed

📜 This Week’s Extra Credit by Jodi

When I was a bright-eyed, ambitious 23-year-old working my first corporate job, my boss told me I had an edge. I didn’t disagree—while I have a bubbly, chatty personality, I was direct when I expected an answer, and could be curt when I felt someone wasn’t working up to my standards. “You’d go further if you softened your edge,” he said.

I wish I could tell you that instead of immediately internalizing this feedback that I pushed back with a “would you say the same thing to a man?” But I didn’t. Instead, I softened my interactions with “how are you doings” and “how was your weekend” before gently asking for what I needed. I apologized, I hedged, I added conditions and maybes and perhapses. Anything to appear less direct.

I don’t think it was until I went to business school years later, during the “Lean In” and “girl boss” eras, that I second guessed this feedback. And it certainly wasn’t until “The Man” came out on Lover in 2019 that I had a way to contextualize the double standard in front of me: If I was a man, I’d be direct and decisive. Having an “edge” would be a good thing, it’d be what makes people call me competent and successful.

“The Man” questions the double standard in society that treats men and women differently for taking the same actions. Written during the girl boss era, it calls into question whether that advice actually works. The prevailing leadership advice of the time was for women to demand a seat at the table and assert ourselves just like men do. Do that, and you’ll be taken seriously, you’ll grow your career, you’ll be seen as a leader.

Share

And yet despite doing just that, as Taylor sings, “if I was out flashing my dollars I’d be a bitch not a baller, they’d call me out to be bad.” With a poppy beat and a catchy chorus, Taylor proclaims that women simply cannot act like men and expect to be treated the same. Women are measured and perceived differently, held to different, often much higher standards, and we have every right to be mad about it!

Taylor long exhibited the clear vision, consistent follow-through, and firm decision-making skills that traditionally characterize strong leaders. It’s with “The Man” that she acknowledged that playing by the same rules as men won’t change people’s perceptions of her, so she might as well write and play by her own rules. So what do these new rules look like?

For Taylor, it starts with control and ownership. The music video for “The Man” marked Taylor Swift’s first solo-directorial debut. While she co-directed her other three “Lover” music videos, for this one she literally was The Man who everyone had to look to for direction and vision and execution. This song came out on the first album she fully owned, after leaving her long-time record label, Big Machine Records, after a dispute over ownership over her master recordings.

Subscribe now

Beyond ownership, there’s leading with authenticity and vulnerability—two characteristics often seen as a weakness in men, but can be wielded as a strength for women. In “Miss Americana” Taylor shared, “I needed to get to a point where I was ready, able and willing to call out bullsh*t rather than just smiling my way through it.” That’s a pretty big shift from a self-proclaimed people-pleaser who admitted how important it was for her as a girl for others to approve of her and her actions. It’s during this documentary—filmed largely during the 2017-2019 time period when she wrote “Lover,”—that we see Taylor at her most vulnerable. If she had a feeling, she embraced it rather than hiding it to please others, as we saw when she defied her father to call out Marsha Blackburn in the 2018 midterm elections. She led by example, and opening up about her struggles and insecurities, as well as standing her ground on her values and opinions, made Taylor even more approachable to her fans.

Was she criticized for her vulnerability, for sharing her political views, and for fighting for ownership of her masters? Absolutely. People questioned her personal choices and business decisions. But that criticism stings less if she’s confident in her actions and decisions. That confidence comes from no longer trying to play by someone else’s rules. It comes from doing what feels right to you, even if other people will chastise you for it.

Which brings me back to my “edge”. I’ve come to appreciate that my boss made me aware of being seen as having an edge. Because now I can use it carefully—be direct and straightforward where I feel I need to, but soften my edges so as not to draw blood when I don’t intend to. Will I be criticized for being too direct? Probably. But if I feel confident my approach was warranted, then I’m OK being seen as having an edge. Even if they’d never see if that way if I was a man.

Jenn kicks things off with Better Man, flipping every one of the ex’s flaws to sketch the man Taylor actually wants, Jodi brings The Man and gets real about the double standards that turn a woman’s “edge” into a man’s ambition, and Maansi closes with Father Figure, tracing every Jaguar, chateau, and glass of brown liquor back to the patriarch. Pour yourself a whiskey (or don’t, it tastes like fire) and press play.

Apple Podcast Subscribers can now listen ad free with a paid subscription!

Share

📜 This Week’s Extra Credit by Maansi

On this week’s episode we talked about Taylor Swift songs in the context of masculinity. But like many cultural things, masculinity is fluid and defined by the people, geographies, and time that give it context. I wanted to spend some time in the extra credit this week exploring how the definition of masculinity has evolved in American culture just in the last two decades that Taylor Swift has been writing, but also take a peek at what it may look like in different cultural contexts.

Leave a comment

Mirriam Webster defines masculinity as the quality or nature of the male sex: the quality, state, or degree of being masculine or manly. When Taylor’s first song came out in 2006 (almost exactly 20 years ago), this is what was trending in terms of masculinity:

• Boy bands and metrosexuality inspired by popular 90s boybands and single gay men who were not yet out of the closet, but single and desirable (think Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass, etc).

  

• Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain was an image that was popular - cowboy aesthetic and yet once again challenging challenging “conventional masculinity” because he was playing a gay character.

  

• That same year George Clooney was considered to be the hottest man of the year - recognized for being classically good-looking, but also down-to-earth, self-deprecating, and funny.

  

• Powerful, athletic men with chiseled bodies that correlated with athletic prowess were also being revered. Dwayne Wayde’s face was on many magazines for his dunk in the NBA final that year.

  

Basically - in pop culture, there were some competing images of what masculinity looked like at this time. The traditionally hardened edges of man were softening. Keep in mind, this was pre-instagram and EVEN in the very early, college-only years of Facebook, so magazines and TV is where masculinity took to visual form.

Fast forward

Today, 20 years later, our perceptions of masculinity are being shaped more by social media and AI. What’s really fascinating is that when I asked AI to generate an image of what masculinity looked like in America in 2006, this is the image it spat out:

How drastically different is this from the images I shared above and what does it say about the biases that are built into the media we consume today? The distance between 2006 and 2026, between the two realities of the kinds of images I shared, is the cultural context in which Taylor Swift references masculinity in her song-writing. It’s a humble reminder that we need to make sure we’re living in the real-world, and not being influenced by biased images that are being force-fed into our minds. CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

Apple Podcast Subscribers can now listen ad free with a paid subscription!

Subscribe now

Share

📜 This Week’s Extra Credit by Maansi

On this week’s episode, we did a line-by-line analysis of Taylor’s song, Dear John. While I was aware of them movie, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name, and thought it was a clever reference by Taylor, I (apparently live under a rock because) I was not aware of the full history of the Dear John letters. So I wanted to take a beat to explore this history more in our Extra Credit this week.

Subscribe now

The origins

Apparently, “Dear John” has come be synonymous with the unceremonious one-sided dumping of someone in a relationship — but at one time, these letters referenced a very specific context. While there’s a super interesting record of Earnest Hemmingway being dumped this way by Agnes von Kurowsky in 1919, and also a dramatic letter written by Oscar Wilde (source), these letters mostly gained traction in the 1940s through the WWII era, perhaps just because of the sheer number of soldiers that were being sent off to war at this time. The terms was apaprently coined by GIs and the name John was simply a stand-in for any name because it was generic and popular at this time. It was such a phenomenon that these letters inspired press coverage.

The evolution

What’s interesting is how the term has persisted far beyond these beginnings. Wikipedia cites the Vietnam War as inspiring more Dear John letters “than any other U.S. conflict.” And through various pop culture references that include movies, an 80s TV series, and several songs, the meaning has evolved to just mean one-sided break-up.

Today, there’s a term for when specifically a man breaks up with a woman in a similar manner — the gendered variation is “Dear Jane.”

Share AP Taylor Swift Podcast

Implications & interpretations

This was a term coined by GIs, who were the “victims” of these letters. Some of the press articles from the 1940s pointed to the camaraderie that soldiers would often find in commiserating over their letters together. Because of this, there was a sense of stigmatized animosity towards the writers of these letters, the women. This comes through especially in the Nicholas Sparks novel, where the female lead, Savannah, ends her relationship with John when she falls in love with Tim. This plot line is altered slightly in the movie adaptation to be more forgiving of Savannah, who marries Tim out of more of an obligation because of his health issues. Savannah is positioned somewhat as the antagonist to John, the tragic protagonist. The audience has real sympathy for John, who’s a model citizen who signs up for the tour in Afghanistan after 9/11, loves his dad, and anonymously donates his beloved coin collection to pay for his friend’s treatment. He’s such a good guy who doesn’t deserve to have his heart broken, and yet, Savannah breaks it anyways.

Leave a comment

What it means for Swifties

I find this dynamic to be an interesting one because Taylor chose to write the song likely knowing that women were seen as being the antagonists in the Dear John narrative. In some ways, her writing this song asking John if it was right for her to be treated how she was treated forces listeners to reconsider who the real victim is in this relationship, in a format which would have previously assumed the man was the victim. In that way, Taylor’s song is almost a reclaiming of the traditional Dear John narrative.

Jenn kicks things off with the big thinkers of play, from Johan Hui…

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

This week we’re setting sail on one of history’s greatest epics, Homer’s The Odyssey, and asking a very important question... did Taylor Swift write it? (We’re mostly joking. Mostly.) In this Show & Tell episode, we…

Read more