a madewell review sent me into a Taylor Swift spiral

Today I was online shopping (as I’ve been doing more and more these days) when I read this review: “This is a jacket Joe Alwyn would own and Taylor Swift would steal from him. Total fall babe vibes.” I winced. For context, this jacket was beautiful—it was cozy and quilted, a warm fall hue. It was the jacket that would solve all my problems.

Then this review came out of nowhere, and conjured an unshakable image. It was like those chain emails people used to send in 2009 where you’d have to scroll all the way down to the bottom and forward it to 10 people otherwise some mythical e-creature would show up in your closet and kill you.

Reading this review stunned me back into reality, where the facts were: it was Madewell, it was basic (but well-made basic), and it did seem like something Taylor Swift would steal from her boyfriend. It’d pad her shoulders and smell like him, and make her feel swaddled and safe.

I’m almost afraid to even mention Taylor Swift in anything on the internet because of the wrath of the stans. But let me make it clear: I love Taylor Swift. Hers was one of the first big concerts I ever went to. It was during her sparkly dress phase, at Madison Square Garden, and I couldn’t believe I was in the same room as her (if you can call an arena a room).

I used to sing backup on my sister’s Photo Booth covers of “Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)” and “Tied Together With A Smile,” and I’m pretty sure “Our Song” was my ringtone at some point. I loved her appearance on Saturday Night Live and watched it multiple times, especially the part where she calls out Joe Jonas for breaking up with her in the infamous 27-second voicemail. If you forgot:

You might think I'd bring up Joe,
The guy who broke up with me on the phone,
But I'm not gonna mention him
In my monologue
Hey Joe! I'm doing real well,
Tonight I'm hosting SNL
But I'm not gonna brag about that
In my monologue

La la la, ha ha ha
Ha ha ha, ha ha ha
La la la

Unfortunately, Taylor’s shift toward pop coincided with my high school years—when I started writing emo poetry and listening primarily to the Velvet Underground, Fiona Apple, Tame Impala, and Big Star—so my fandom dropped off. The last album that I truly, fully liked was probably Speak Now (2010). When I think about songs to play for a cathartic sing-along release, I always come back to “Dear John” and “Better Than Revenge,” both songs off that album. I listened to them tonight while cooking dinner, and “Dear John” genuinely moved me (as it usually does). We all know by the song title, the lyrics, and the speculative backstories that “Dear John” is about Taylor’s relationship with John Mayer, whom she dated when she was 19 and he was 31. I don’t have much to say about that relationship, other than that I personally do think that “19’s too young to be played by [his] dark twisted games,” and that it is a killer heartbreak song.

But the lyric in the song that consistently sticks out to me is “All the girls that you've run dry / Have tired, lifeless eyes / 'Cause you burned them out.” Why is it that the most hurtful lyric, the sickest burn in the song, is about the other women John Mayer dated rather than about John himself? Something about the “tired, lifeless eyes” is just so visually striking, so eviscerating. The suggestion is that these women are ruined. It’s odd, because these lyrics give John so much power when she could have just torn him to shreds (à la Phoebe Bridgers on “Motion Sickness”) without taking a stab at his exes, too. Had she kept his exes out of it, though, she wouldn’t have gotten to cultivate the narrative at the root of “Dear John” and many of her other songs.

She goes on, “But I took your matches before fire could catch me, / So don't look now, I'm shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town.” The triumph of the world within Taylor’s music is that she’s special—she’s not like other girls. She wouldn’t let herself be “burned” out by a man, like these other girls did.

Nowhere is the “not like other girls” narrative more explicit than in “Better Than Revenge,” which is rumored to be about Camilla Belle stealing Joe Jonas from Taylor. Again, if you’ve somehow forgotten, here’s the chorus:

She's not a saint and she's not what you think
She's an actress, whoa (she deserved it)
She's better known for the things that she does
On the mattress, whoa
Soon she's gonna find stealing other people's toys
On the playground won't make you many friends
She should keep in mind, she should keep in mind
There is nothing I do better than revenge, ha!

This is the chorus! It repeats! It’s the part you’re supposed to remember, that you’re supposed to sing along with. “Better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” What the fuck?

I’ll admit that I loved this song when I first heard it and I still do, but the reason I love it is because it’s so unbelievably mean and catty. The fact that the slut-shaming is in the chorus is brutal. In retrospect, the song is almost funny, like a cringeworthy diss-contest from elementary school I would look back on and feel embarrassed about (real and true fact: the resident middle school ‘hot boy’/bully once told me at a dance, “If you ain’t got no money take your broke ass home.” No one called him out for stealing his burn from Fergie and Raheem the Dream. I don’t remember what I said in return, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I did.)

I wonder what Taylor would have to say about both of these songs now that it’s been a decade. In 2012, John Mayer publicly responded to “Dear John,” saying the song “humiliated” him and that it was “cheap songwriting.” And if this Instagram post from four years ago is any indication, it seems like Camilla Belle hasn’t forgotten about “Better Than Revenge.” Honestly, though, who could ever?