The Worst Thing You Ever Heard — on pop songs, being 'in your feelings,' and cruel summers
I recently asked my co-worker, Andrea, if she had heard the
new Taylor Swift single, “Cruel Summer”—not because Andrea is a Taylor Swift
fan, or even a fan of ‘pop music.’ I asked because of Annie Clarke’s
association with the song—credited as a co-writer in the album’s liner notes.
Andrea was, at one time, and still is to some extent, a fan
of St. Vincent.
She was not aware of Clarke’s involvement with “Cruel
Summer,” and proceeded to tell me she didn’t really have an opinion on Swift’s
music, one way or the other.
I told her the song was good; alarmingly good, and that she
should give it a listen.
After asking maybe one other time if she had listened (she
still hadn’t), I texted a link to the song’s YouTube ‘Official Audio’ video,
hoping she would humor me.
“May or may not have made me dance…just a bit,” Andrea
texted me back after she finished listening. Then, after another three minutes
(the duration of the song) had passed, “I totally listened a second time.”
Roughly five minutes later, “Um, I think it might be my new
jam?”
*
Since her arrival in the late 2000s—I want to say that, much
like my co-worker, I haven’t had an opinion on Swift’s music, one way or the
other.
But that isn’t true.
Five years ago, both out of the hype surrounding it and out
of my own morbid curiosity, I listened to Swift’s fifth album and first as a
true pop star, 1989—reviewing it, and more or less panning it, writing it off a
little too haughtily as disposable product (except for “Wildest Dreams,” which
I legitimately enjoyed at the time.)
A year later, I, like so many others (white men, mostly)
fell under the spell cast by Ryan Adams, who ‘mansplained’ 1989, claiming that
Swift’s original helped him while he was separating from his wife at the time,
Mandy Moore, and because of how much the album meant to him, he recorded and
released a song by song cover album of it—dramatically reinterpreting Swift’s
pop songs.
I knew Taylor Swift as the frizzy haired blonde, clutching
an acoustic guitar, who slowly, gradually, began making her ascent from simply
being a teenage country music singer, to being embraced by ‘pop’ music as a
whole.
I knew Taylor Swift from her 2009 acceptance speech being
interrupted by a very drunk, leather clad Kanye West, at the MTV Video Music
Awards, when he told her he was really happy she had won and was going to let
her finish, but that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” was the best video of all time.
Swift later, in 2015, introduced West when he won the Video
Vanguard Award at the same award show; he returned the favor only a few months
later by referencing her in a ribald lyric on “Famous,” from The Life of Pablo.2
I knew that at some point, maybe even soon after it was
released, Swift’s fourth album, Red, had been named a part of the pop canon—the
vinyl edition gracing the turntable of a very hard to please, opinionated
‘music friend’ of mine, and it recently earning a very generous 9+ review from
Pitchfork when they did a retrospective on her previous albums, leading up to
the release of her most recent effort, Lover.
I knew that the two singles released in advance of Lover, the Technicolor “ME!” featuring
Brendon Urie of Panic At The Disco, and the cumbersomely titled “You Need to
Calm Down,” had been received well commercially, but were perplexing to
critics.
And truthfully, I had not really planned on paying much
attention at all to new album from Taylor Swift—but after Lover arrived on the internet a day before its release, there was a
palpable buzz about a number of songs from it, including the album’s second
track, “Cruel Summer,” co-written by Swift, Annie Clarke, and Swift’s go-to pop
music impresario Jack Antonoff.
*
My co-worker Wesley lives and dies by his Google Music
algorithm, or as I have taken to calling it, the ‘algoriddim.’
Or has he has taken to calling it, the ‘Google doodab.’
Wesley was a guest on the Anhedonic Headphones podcast,
where we talked a lot about Better Than Ezra’s “Desperately Wanting,” and the
time he saw them at a county fair when he was still living in Missouri, but
more importantly, I learned that he doesn’t listen to albums—he is more song
oriented, partially because of the line of work he’s been in for a majority of
his life.
He’s the assistant manager of the deli, and you can’t just
stop prepping a dish because an album has come to an end, and then put
something else on; the songs have to keep coming—and that’s what he’s used the
algorithm for.
As a whole, I am an album oriented listener, but am able to
appreciate a song, or a single, on its own, and recently I’ve learned that
Wesley has become rather impressed with what a song, on its own, can do for—and
do to—a listener.
One of the pre-set stations on his ‘Google doodab’ is “Kiss
Me” Radio—the station always begins with “Kiss Me,” the ubiquitous slice of pop
music from Sixpence None The Richer. I don’t even recall how, or why, this song
came up originally in the algorithm, but we have often discussed the nostalgia
for the late 1990s that it brings up, and that while yes, lyrically, it may be
slightly on the insipid side, I’ve realized now as an adult what I failed to
realize as a teenager—that it’s a good pop song.
“Kiss Me” Radio, much like any streaming radio service
assembled through an algorithm, has provided Wesley, and whoever else happens
to be in the kitchen at the time, with some similarly minded songs, as well as
some questionable and perplexing choices.
A few weeks ago, I was wandering by the kitchen when I was
stopped in my tracks as I heard the sound of something familiar coming from the
stereo.
It’s a song that I hadn’t thought about in a very, very long
time, and as I caught it at just the right moment, with the infectious refrain
exploding, I more or less burst into the kitchen, both of my hands in the air,
doing a dance move that involves a lot of pointing on my part, singing along
with reckless abandon.
The song, released 15 years prior, was “Pieces of Me,” by
Ashlee Simpson3, which I proceeded to declare an absolute banger,
much to the disbelief of Wesley, who was visibly confused, and possibly
uncomfortable, by the events unfolding around him.
I continued, once the excitement from hearing the refrain
had died down, by telling Wesley that the song came out in the summer of
2004—the summer before my final year in college, and that it, in a way, it was
a song that meant something to me because at the time, as I put it, I was
“going through some things.”
I think I may have also used the expression, “I was in my
feelings.”
It took Wesley maybe one or two more listens in subsequent
days where we were working together for him to come around on “Pieces of Me,”
eventually admitting that it’s a really good pop song, which is why I tried to
push things further in the kitchen by asking him if he had heard “Cruel
Summer.”
He humored me by calling it up on his Google doodab, giving
me a sideways glance and asking if it was a cover—the second time that question
had been asked of me, w/r/t this song, in 24 hours4. He hit play,
and even with “Cruel Summer”’s enormous refrain—the kind of refrain that hits
and the only thing you can do is throw your hands up in the air and do some
kind of white person dance move that involves a lot of pointing, singing
along—Wesley, much to my disappointment, was nonplussed by the song.
He quickly changed the station on his phone—“Cruel Summer”
Radio was going to open a deluge of other Top 40 pop music neither of us were
ready for, and as he did that, I excitedly told him that I thought the song was
my summertime jam of 2019.
Without even missing a beat, Wesley looked me in the eyes,
telling me in a low, serious voice, “Kevin, summer is almost over.”5
*
“Cruel Summer” is sequenced second in what is, in today’s
marketplace, an extraordinarily long album.
Lover is 18 tracks deep, arriving at over an hour; it’s two advance singles
are buried well into the latter half, not so much as a bait and switch, or to
make people forget that these songs were released ahead of the album, but to
make listeners understand that there is a lot going on here.
Lover is almost
intimidating, just because 18 tracks is, like, a lot of songs, and over an hour
of pop music (some of which is of diminishing returns) is a lot to ask of
somebody who is, by all accounts, not that much of a fan of Swift in the first
place—or, at the very least, hasn’t bothered to form a real opinion of her
canon.
Placing a song as good as “Cruel Summer” so early in the
record is audacious. It makes up for the awkward misstep of “I Forgot That You
Existed,” which serves as the album’s opening track, and it also is a tough act
to follow. There are lot of songs on Lover
that are not as well executed, and there are a lot that are surprisingly fun
and listenable.
There is, like, a pretty unbelievable run of songs,
beginning with “I Think He Knows,” and ending with “Cornelia Street” that is
surprisingly impressive.
But nothing comes this close.
“Cruel Summer” works in only the way a near perfect pop song
can work—it’s in the way its structured, built around low, simmering verses
where Swift’s voice slithers and slinks in between glitchy, skittering, and
bubbling synthesizers, until the whole thing explodes in the refrain, because
that’s the point of a pop song—something huge that makes you reach for the
volume button on your radio, so you can belt it out in the car when it comes
on.
The hook, or refrain, or whatever you want to call it, is
what people remember—or what people will remember, but in a song that is, hands
down, as good as “Cruel Summer” is capable of being, the verses, as well as the
song’s incredible bridge section, are equally, and in some cases more
important.
*
It has almost become satirical at this point, but outside of
her music, the one thing Swift may be known for even more is her very public
relationships—the joke, often being, that every man that she’s reportedly
linked to is going to wind up the subject of at least one song, at some point,
in the future.
“Cruel Summer,” as is a bulk of Lover, is about her three-year relationship with British actor Joe
Alwyn, who, as of this writing, is her current partner. While the song’s lyrics
have not been officially annotated on Genius, there are a number of theories
surrounding the song’s surprisingly evocative imagery. The only comment Swift
herself has made on the song itself is that she wanted it to sound like a ‘desperate
summer love that was doomed from the start,’ and that her favorite lyric in the
song arrives at the end of the bridge section—“I love you. Ain’t that the worst
thing you ever heard?”
The line between fact and fiction within a pop song like
this is a tough one to navigate. How much of this torrid love affair described
actually occurred throughout a summer of Swift’s life; how much of it is
dramatized for effect; and how much of it is a constructed narrative used to
get the song from one point to the next?
In the end, it truthfully doesn’t matter. The listener will
find as much truth in the song as they want—or they’ll read it like they would
a novel. Swift, and in this case, Antonoff and Annie Clarke, are both
songwriters and storytellers, using the verses and refrain to craft vignettes,
or moments, brimming with vivid, robust images.
It’s in the song’s second verse where that kind of
storytelling really begins to take shape, and Swift, even through what seems
like the use of simple phrasing, manages to conjure an expressive portrait of
the tumult that is young love—or, love, in general.
“Hang your head low in the glow of the vending machine—I’m
not dying,” she sings in a low register. “We say that we’ll just screw it up in
these trying times—we’re not trying.”
It’s in what is referred to as the ‘pre-chorus,’ that she
also continues with the expressions that walk an incredibly thin line between
being totally cloying and borderline cliché, and fascinatingly emotional and
relatable. “…Summer’s a knife and I’m always waiting for you just to cut to the
bone,” she says, before adding right before the refrain slides in, “If I bleed,
you’ll be the last to know.”
*
Then, there’s that refrain. That chorus. The hook. Whatever
you want to call it.
They’re always big—they have to be, in a pop song, don’t
they? The refrain? It has to be enormous—more than likely the thing that a
songwriter starts with is that idea, then works it out both backwards and
forwards, hoping the verses come together and that they’ve earned6
that moment.
There’s a part where much of the instrumentation drops out,
for like a split second, before the refrain kicks in—“It’s new—the shape of
your body. It’s blue—the feeling I’ve got,” Swift sings, and it’s a stark,
surprisingly complicated juxtaposition to be found in a pop song. The startle
that comes from embracing a new partner for the first time, or during those
early intimate moments is one thing, and it’s sharply contrasted with a frank
statement of melancholy, tinged with haunting regret.
“It’s cool, that’s what I tell ‘em. No rules in breakable
heaven,” she continues the second, maybe slightly less impactful portion of the
song’s refrain. “It’s a cruel summer with you.”
The thing about “Cruel Summer,” and why it works so well as
an energetic, mesmerizing pop song, is the way the song’s second use of the
refrain slides almost effortlessly into a bridge, and it’s in the bridge
section where the song’s penchant for very visual drama—invented, or real, or both—thrives
to a visceral level.
There is a fair amount of self-referential, recurring images
and themes throughout both Swift’s latter day canon, as well as within Lover itself as a self-contained
collection of songs. The idea of sadness, or being ‘blue,’ as well as the
religious imagery of angels, devils, and heaven (whatever ‘breakable heaven’
is), and conceding to the fact that you’ve had too much to drink and are very
much in your feelings, are things that are mentioned, at least according to
Genius, within other Swift songs, but they are especially prevalent ideas on Lover.
Swift maybe an American Sweetheart of sorts but she’s also
not afraid to put it out there—“I’m drunk in the back of the car, and I cried
like a baby coming home from the bar,” she confesses without apology during the
bridge of “Cruel Summer.” “Said ‘I’m fine,’ but it wasn’t true—I don’t wanna
keep secrets to just to keep you.”
She continues, growing more emotional and unraveled—“I snuck
in through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate, and I
scream, ‘For whatever it’s worth, I love you—ain’t that the worst thing you
ever heard?’”
I guess it’s in that moment that the song, which is, from
beginning to end, a fun and energetic pop song—it becomes something else. It
becomes slightly more desperate; maybe a little more manic. It reveals how
fragile—how ‘in her feelings’ the protagonist of the song really is, how cruel
the summer really has been, and where the lines of being ‘in love’ and ‘love’
become blurred until they are difficult to distinguish.
It’s a huge moment—that part of the song. It’s a bit moment
for Swift, as the protagonist, within the song’s narrative. And she goes for
it—she makes it look effortless, to stand outside somebody’s window and scream
at them about love.
*
I’m surprised by how quickly Andrea latches on to “Cruel
Summer.”
In talking about the song one afternoon, she said it’s a bit
of a flex on Swift’s part to release a summer song so late into the season—the
album itself arrived on August 23rd, with roughly a month left
before the first day of Autumn.
Later, Andrea tells me the song has a cathartic effect on
her—something, that, I suppose all good, or well-executed pop music, can do to
its listeners. It’s not something that happens to me all that often, so when I
can feel that kind of release coming as the result of a pop song, I know that
it’s something special.
I think about pop music as a form of escapism—it, as a
whole, doesn’t ask a lot of its audience in return. It doesn’t ask a lot of
difficult questions that maybe can’t be answered. The average pop song, by a
pop singer, is here to entertain; to be, at the end of the day, ‘fun.’ This is
the same reason why specific movies are financially successful, or why
audiences turn on their televisions week after week to watch things like “The
Bachelor.”
Taylor Swift, as a singer and songwriter, is an
‘entertainer.’ And even though Lover
is an album full of fun, infectious songs—“Cruel Summer” being one of
them—occasionally, even when you have, perhaps unknowingly, sought out a form
of escapism, there’s a part of you that is unable to escape completely. You
don’t ‘see yourself’ in the song—no, not exactly, but in the way it rebuffs
your attempt at escapism, and the way you find yourself connecting to the song,
and back in your own head despite your best efforts, is completely unexpected.
Even with telling me of the catharsis she felt, I’m equally,
if not more, as surprised by how quickly Andrea burns herself out on “Cruel
Summer,” apparently having listened to it entirely too many times in the car to
and from work, or on a longer commute up to the Twin Cities.
She and I wonder what the shelf life of a song like “Cruel
Summer,” at a time of year like this, is. Part of me wants to argue that it
isn’t ‘timeless,’ but that is something that could still be enjoyed or
appreciated—maybe not into the fall or winter, but it could be dusted off again
next summer.
“Isn’t that the point of music like this?” Andrea contends.
“To just listen to it a bunch, over and over again, and then move onto
something else?”
*
Who decides the shelf life of a pop song? Is it the
artist—is it in the intention when a song is written, recorded, and released,
that it will only live on for a few, beautiful, invigorating, evocative moments
before it all flickers out?
Is it the audience; or the listener—even the casual
listener, such as myself, who latched onto one song out of 18, bestowing the
title of “Summertime Jam 2019” unto it? The song lives on as a file on my hard
drive, or a CD-R in the car of a friend, but how often is it revisited after
summer has gone, the cool air comes through, and the leaves begin to turn and
spiral to the ground?
There are people who always lament how quickly the summer
passes—the chatter you hear from those who, come late August, ‘can’t believe
how quickly the summer went.’ You rarely hear this about other seasons—the
opposite, in fact, when it comes to the winter.
The summer months pass by just the same as the other
seasons, but there’s a feeling associated with the warmer, longer days, that
makes you want them to last more than they are willing to—and it makes those
days easier to return to in memories.
The expression ‘Cruel Summer’ isn’t new—originating in the
early 1980s with the Bananarama song of the same name, then being used in 2012
as the title of an often-forgot G.O.O.D Music compilation, curated by Kanye
West.7 I’ve never thought of the summer as being particularly cruel
before, but it can be—it can be as cruel, if not worse, than any other season.
Maybe, 15 years ago, when I was a college student heading
into my final year, with a soft spot for the kind of pop song Ashlee Simpson’s
“Piece of Me” was, I was in a cruel summer.
Maybe now, I’m coming to the end of another cruel summer—and
maybe the cruelest part of all is that this song, sure, is capable of being
both fun and cathartic, but here’s the thing—CD-Rs wear out, files get
corrupted or are deleted, and songs fade from the zeitgeist almost as soon as
they arrive, but we’re still left with the memories—and those confusing, ‘blue’
feelings and the visceral need to scream at somebody about love that Swift
describes aren’t as easily forgotten.
Is that the worst thing you ever heard?
1 – The short version is that in February, Ryan Adams
was outed as being a serial sexual abuser through a New York Times piece that
citied Moore, and a handful of other women who he had preyed on throughout his
career. I never believed Ryan Adams was, like, a good person deep down, but
this news had made it impossible to listen to his music.
2- “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex—I
made that bitch famous.”
3 – It’s worth mentioning that following my
conversation with Wesley about “Pieces of Me,” I asked him if he thought I
should write some kind of thinkpiece about it. I don’t remember how the
exchange we had exactly went, but at some point, I told him that what I do
isn’t special, and that anybody could write a thinkpiece, which he took as a
personal challenge, and did. It started out as a hitpiece on me, but then, as
they always do, turned out to be a lot of other things too, and it’s really
good.
4- I played this song for my wife who was incredibly
unimpressed with it while she listened—she had asked if it was a cover of the
Bananarama song, and then proceeded to play that video for me instead. It was
weird, in the way that only a video from the early 1980s can be.
5- There are times when people I work with make me
laugh a lot harder than I usually do in life. Wesley’s reflexive, earnest
answer actually caused me to fall to the ground in a fit of laughter.
6- I don’t talk a lot about my ‘writing process,’ especially
with music writing, which seems pretty straightforward, but rarely is,
especially when I do audacious things like write 3,500 word essays about one
Taylor Swift single. But, like, when I do write personal essays, long reads,
et. al, I usually know how I want to begin, and I usually know how—sometimes
right down to the very final line—I want it to end. It’s the middle, working
myself back and forth between those two points, that I struggle with, and hope
that by the time I’ve reached an ‘ending,’ I hope it is one that I’ve earned.
7- There was minor speculation that, when the Lover tracklist was revealed, the song
“Cruel Summer” was going to be about West, as a direct reference to this
compilation (G.O.O.D. Music is his vanity imprint, distributed through Def
Jam.)
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