Dear Miss Swift,
You and I have never had much reason to quarrel, and I have nothing against you as a person. But you have clearly recorded a song that was meant for someone else (one could argue that "You Belong With Me is not your song either, since the speaker of the lyrics is clearly fat, but that's a discussion for another day.)
I speak of your latest minimum opus, "22." Putting aside the style of the song, and the fact that it took my wife and I like two listens before we understood what the hell you were saying in the chorus ("I'm feeling Tentative? Twitty, too? Tinted blue? Titty you?) I want to point out instead that this would be a fine song if given to Faith Hill or one of the many pseudo-country/pop singers who helped wear in the groove into which you have slipped.
The song's lyrics speak of the joys of feeling (not necessarily being) 22 years old: the sense of freedom, liberation and promise that comes with that time of life. A time when you are now old enough to drink, but have learned a little about how to do so intelligently. When relationships come fast and easy and are all romance and arguments and breakups and sex with the delicious regret that comes with it. When the scars of high school are finally beginning to fade and you no longer view college as a scary adventure, but instead as an experience you can use to help shape your future.
It was written for a 40 year old.
This is a song for a mature woman. Certainly a man could easily adapt this with a few lyrical changes and getting rid of that yodeling shit that you do (unless he's country, where that nonsense is deemed acceptable,) but I am going to stick with the gender as written.
It is for a woman who has been 22, and remembers all the joys of that period (mentioned above,) while selectively forgetting all the trials and difficulties of the same (rent is due and my shiftless roommate drank away her half, how am I going to pay for college and what the hell future am I supposed to be shaping, and when the hell was my last period because it feels a lot like it should have been here two weeks ago.)
This is a woman who has been through all that and now lives in a different world, one of deadlines, bills, relationship problems that last for decades instead of a weekend, and worrying about how someone else is going to be able to afford college. This is a woman who is under more stress than her 22 year self was able to count after two semesters of 'business math.' A woman who must now live the future she was supposed to have shaped in college at age 22.
So the woman expresses this frustration (and her need to release it,) by singing about how tonight she is going to be 22. She is going to reset her clock for just one night to be 22 again, and live consequence free, even though she know oh so well that nothing is free of consequence.
It is sad and pathetic, and that pathos is why we can all relate to it. Because for those of us on the far side of 22, we understand that feeling, and we are rooting for her even as we know tomorrow will dawn to a grey and dismal reality, and we can empathize with her.
Faith Hill or Mary Chapin Carpenter or any of the others like that could have made this song an anthem of the mature, desperately longing for that sweet immaturity in which we once basked and that we remember so fondly not appreciating at the time.
But here's the thing; YOU WERE FUCKING TWENTY TWO WHEN YOU SANG THE DAMN SONG!
When you are forty and you sing how great it is to be 22 there is regret, pathos, desperation, self delusion, and a host of other deep emotions that can provide a real basis for a song that resonates with the human condition.
But when you actually are 22, and more than that, you are an extremely pretty blonde haired blue-eyed 22 year old with a great body, tons of money, a skyrocketing career and worldwide fame, singing about how great it is to be 22 is not empowering, it is merely bragging.
Cocky, self-agrandizing boasting that smacks of the vilest form of hubris any Greek tragedian could have ever designed. And you simply don't get to do that as a teeny bopper pseudo-county/pop star.
That's what they invented rap for.
Sincerely,
Shut Up
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