Taylor Swift and the Soviet Union

It turns out I was wrong about Taylor Swift. I can admit it now; she makes pretty damn good music. I blame “Shake It Off” for this revelation. I still remember what dusty and lonely township road (500) I was driving down the first time I heard that song, I hated it. Peppy and repetitive pop tripe. I was told to listen to it a few times with an open mind and that I would love it by listen number five. The Swifty was right, it took five listens over a long weekend before I had to admit I really liked it, but I really liked it. It made me… happy? My, and the Swifty’s opinion was confirmed when my sister said the same thing to me about Shake It Off when I came into work singing it, “give it five listens” I assured her; it infected her like a rogue strain of Ebola too. So while I was getting down with all the liars and dirty dirty cheats of the world, I could have been getting down with this, sick, Venn:

A “Timeline Venn” – please, click to enlarge

It turns out I liked a lot of Swift’s songs even though I hadn’t paid enough attention to them to know they were Taylor Swift songs, so, whilst getting in touch with my inner Swifty, I decided her last four album, could easily be associated with the left side of the political spectrum and they all could be applied (with a certain twisting) to communist ideals and events. Since I love history, the collapse of communism, and Taylor Swift (apparently) I figured why not try to tie it all together. Doing so couldn’t possibly hurt anything unless Fox News picked up on my blog and decided to ruin the career of Taylor Swift because she’s a secret communist sympathizer. Don’t laugh, Senator McCarthy made a career out of this sort of thing. He even appointed a gay, cross dressing, megalomaniac to be the man in charge of enforcing 1950’s morality. If you think it can’t happen today, then you didn’t pay attention to the mid-term elections that happened one week after 1989 dropped, which I’m sure is also a coincidence. Anyway, none of this is an indication of Ms. Swift’s politics, I honestly don’t know or care where she stands on geo-political issues. What I do know is “1989” was released in Canada 25 years, less 12 days, after The Fall of the Berlin Wall. Which is marginally interesting in terms of relative world importance and a commentary on global attention spans.

Because these things will change

Can you feel it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down

This revolution, the time will come

For us to finally win

And we’ll sing hallelujah, we’ll sing hallelujah

Hope this helps 🙂

PS: Google the Velvet Divorce. That is what self-determination should strive to be.