In “the last great american dynasty,” Taylor Swift demonstrates her uncanny ability to cram a lifetime's worth of stories into a just-under-four-minute ballad––and pays tribute to generations of American women who are shameless, loud, mad (as in off-your-rocker), and altogether marvelous.
Artist: Taylor Swift
Album: folklore (2020)
Song Link: Click here
Photo credit: Beth Garrabrant/Stoke via The Guardian
This is the folklore moment where Swift shows off all that historical knowledge she’s acquired during quarantine. She chronicles the adventures of Rebekah West Harkness, a fiery 20th-century philanthropist, composer, sculptor, and patron of art and medicine who lived lavishly in her Watch Hill, Rhode Island mansion. “Tlgad” starts out innocently enough (as do most women who turn out to be “mad”) with Swift describing the “saltbox house on the coast” where Rebekah and her husband, Bill, resided. Tay momentarily transforms into a delightfully snobby socialite from the surrounding town, sneering at the couple’s “charming, if a little gauche” wedding. (Leave it to Ms. “Therein” to casually toss “gauche” into a 21st-century alt-pop song.)
It’s all fun and games and opulence until somebody, um, dies, which is exactly what happens to Bill just one minute in. Yet an unflinchingly cheerful Swift shrugs, “It must have been her fault his heart gave out.” Thank you, Taylor, for clarifying that she, Rebekah, was responsible for her husband’s cardiac arrest, which was in no way related to those drunken parties that prompted the doctor to say, “settle down.” Yes, this is definitely a Rebekah problem.
And the hoity-toity town knows it. “There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen,” they whisper. Swift has long been preoccupied with the outcast, gossiped-about, feared, and demonized half-witch, half-woman (or half-witch, half-snake, if you’re Taylor Swift in 2016) who’s all but burned at the stake. She loves telling the witch’s side of the story (most directly in folklore’s aptly titled “mad woman,” which comes nine tracks after “tlgad”). Snobtown also whispers that Rebekah––Watch Hill’s “most shameless” woman––“had a marvelous time ruining everything.” With “marvelous,” Swift circles back to Red’s “Starlight” (2012), which describes a powerful woman from (and the parties of) another “great American dynasty” during the mid 20th-century: The Kennedys. If you listen to a Taylor Swift song and can’t find at least one connection to another Taylor Swift song, you’re not listening hard enough.
Come verse 2, Taylor Swift––the millionaire-next-door––comes precariously close to critiquing excessive wealth as she describes how Rebekah “blew through the money” with her lavish, “big name” pool parties and “Bitch Pack” city friends. Tension skyrockets during the bridge, which finds a restless Rebekah fighting with her neighbor, whose dog she snatches and dyes “key-lime green.” (It was actually a cat; the fact that Taylor Swift, among the world’s most famous cat owners, added this particular anecdote and performed some ~revisionist history~ brings me an inordinate amount of joy.) Finally, Rebekah leaves, liberating the house from “Women and madness, their men and bad habits.” After all, women are stuff-them-in-the-loony-bin wacky; men just drink and smoke too much, and at the end of the day, their real downfall is mad women.
And then, in the kind of plot twist, mic-drop bridge finale that only one human on planet earth can pull off, Swift reveals that, after sitting empty for 50 years, Holiday House was purchased by a certain Taylor Alison Swift. At which point you realize, holy shit, I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift delineate the history of her own home this whole time. Holiday House’s 21st-century owner turns the spotlight on herself, swapping out “she” for “I”: “There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen / I had a marvelous time ruining everything.” (Interestingly, this is identical to the move Tay pulls in yet another historical Red-era song––“The Lucky One”––where, at the eleventh hour, Taylor becomes the jaded starlet.) Taylor Swift is now Watch Hill’s maddest lady, loudly and shamelessly tearing up the town with those star-studded, Gatsby-level pool parties she bragged about on reputation. (And the pictures of which she’s since stopped spamming Instagram with, even pre-pandemic.)
Make no mistake about it, “tlgad” is doused in white, rich, cisgender, heterosexual privilege. The 11,000+ square-foot (!) Holiday House screams “The one percent lives here!” Heck, if you’re looking at a picture of Holiday House while listening to “tlgad,” that mic drop moment (“and then it was bought by me”) sounds like insufferable smugness from a pompous elite. Plus, you know who’s not just scorned but actually killed for being “loud,” “shameless,” and “mad”? Black women, particularly those who are low-income and/or LGBTQIA+. Perhaps Taylor Swift could stand to check her extraordinary privilege. But it's worth noting that, in the past two years, she's become an increasingly vocal advocate for marginalized communities. Plus, who’s to say we can’t apply “tlgad’s” message about the marvels and general badassery of being a “mad,” loud, and proud woman to those on society’s margins?
Despite its undeniable entanglement with white privilege, “tlgad” sends a strong feminist message. Harkness was a free-spirited artist with a rebellious streak, host of female friends, and (having been married four times) “long list of ex-lovers”––just like Taylor Swift. Independent and ambitious women like Rebekah Harkness and Taylor Swift tend to scare the crap out of society, whether it’s 1960 or 2020. As Swift observes in the bridge, “50 years is a long time,” and yet nothing changes. But women like Taylor Swift and Rebekah Harkness don’t stop ruining “everything,” whether smashing double standards or paving the way for women in the arts––and having a downright “marvelous” time in the process.
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