By: Abbigail Woodworth
It is common to hear someone say “Those Taylor Swift fans are crazy” or “Everything is always about Taylor Swift.” I can say that those 2 statements are true, at least about myself. My studying is spent with headphones on, listening to her entire discography, my drives home, my showers, everything. I am always listening to Taylor Swift. I spend my weekends watching her record-breaking “Eras Tour” on my phone on some livestream. I also love to talk lyrics and discuss the meanings and stories behind her songs. I think more people would have more of an appreciation for her if they listened to her lyrics rather than her music. For example, in her album “Folklore” the whole theme is about a love triangle that Taylor completely made up. All of the main characters in this triangle “Inez” “Betty” and “James” are famous actress; Blake Lively’s children’s names. Or how her name album “The Tortured Poets Department” gives us a glimpse into Taylor’s recent relationships that have ended. For example in her song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” there are many clues that she is talking about ex-boyfriend Matty Healy. With comments like “if rusting my sparkling summer was the goal”(Swift, T. (2024). The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. TTPD) Taylor was on tour during their relationship and broke up suggesting that Matty’s goal was to ruin her experience on tour by breaking her heart. Or when she says “In your Jehovah’s Witness suit” (Swift, T. (2024). The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. TTPD). Matty is known to perform in suits that resemble the likeness of those suits. There is more to Taylor and her lyrics than people realize, although most argue that most of her songs are breakup songs. I will agree with the statement that most are about breakups, but if you dive further you’ll realize that they relate to so much more than breakups.
To prove my statement above, I will be relating Taylor Swift’s song “How Did It End?” on her newest album TTPD to the 2008 Housing Crisis. This may seem like a long stretch for some but upon further analysis of the lyrics you too will see the similarities. Throughout this, I will be taking lines from Swift’s song and comparing it to the housing crisis. Let’s start at the beginning. “We hereby conduct this post-mortem. He was a hothouse flower to my outdoorsman.” (Swift, T. (2024). How did it End?. TTPD). The housing crisis has ended and all that is left is a massive number of foreclosed homes leaving many without houses and a bunch of economists slowly losing the money they are used to having. A “hothouse flower” is someone fragile because they have been sheltered or protected, they haven’t been left to the elements to develop endurance. The hothouse flower in our case is the economist who had been sheltered from the real world. They did not see the effects of their poorly written mortgages and the trading of their CDOs, these men had been sheltered from the real world which allowed them to move selfishly in the housing world by trading CDOs and doing what would make them the most money. A great quote within The Big Short captures this beautifully Lewis says “There was a thrilling disconnect between the pain you experienced and the damage you caused.” (Lewis, p. 145) Saying that these men were so disconnected from the damage they were causing by trading these CDOs and giving out these loans. The outdoorsman in this is the people, the homeowners. The ones who were left in the elements and had to receive the brunt of the Economists’ “fun game”. These homeowners were often drowning or faulting in mortgage payments and would eventually end up without homes.
A common theme within the housing crisis is that no one had any idea what was going on in The Big Short a character who was introduced by Michael Lewis is Charlie Ledley the kind of guy you find where the money is. Charlie is quoted saying “I had a vague idea what an ABS (asset-backed security) was.” “But I had no idea what a CDO was.” (Lewis, p.126). This is just one small example of the many people who had no idea what was going on during this time. These are people who were holding your mortgages and didn’t even know what they were doing. The people you are told to trust and blindly trust. We naturally trust those within certain fields because we simply believe they know more than us. After all, they are supposed to be the experts. Taylor says it best, “We were blind to unforeseen circumstances. We learned the right steps to different dances (oh). And fell victim to interlopers’ glances. Lost the game of chance, what are the chances?” (Swift, T. (2024). How did it End?. TTPD). All involved in this crisis were all blind to the unforeseen. Michael Lewis suggests throughout the book that no one had any clue what was going on. Those involved in it were blinded by the money and the homeowners were blinded by the mortgages they could now get, and their futures and dreams of owning a home, their house. These same homeowners had trust in their banks and mortgage holders to know what was best for them; blind trust. They fell victim to the interlopers within the companies who were buying and selling these mortgages without any knowledge of what they were dealing with. All of these factors influenced the multiple mortgage faults and foreclosures.
The homeowners are the victims in all of this, many having to leave their homes and fault on their mortgages or others who had their homes foreclosed on and left without a home to live in. Many of these average people wanted the dream like we all do, they wanted a nice home to live in and many to grow a family. However, due to the negligence of the economist and those involved with buying and selling these mortgages they had borrowed too much from those who couldn’t pay that much. Like Lewis describes in The Big Short “There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors appetite for the end product.” (Lewis, p. 143). These investors and economists knew exactly what they were doing, they wanted those with the “shitty” credit. These homeowners were being set up to fail without even knowing it. Leaving them without the homes they had always dreamed of. “The deflation of our dreaming. Leaving me bereft and reeling. My beloved ghost and me. Sitting in a tree. D-Y-I-N-G” (Swift, T. (2024). How did it End?. TTPD) This lyric I believe perfectly captures the feelings these homeowners must’ve had finding out their homes were being foreclosed, or choosing the difficult decision to leave and fault on their mortgages. Their dreams of owning a house were not deflated.
Like all things that go up, they must come down, and that is exactly what happened to the housing crisis of 2008. To economists it was harmless trading for more money, as it progressed some saw it for what it was and knew it wasn’t going to end well. To this day no one knows who or what caused this crisis. Leaving many without a finger to point and others angry. Taylor ends her song with “But I still don’t know. How did it end?” (Swift, T. (2024). How did it End?. TTPD). Taylor perfectly captures the housing crisis, as everyone is left with one question How did it end? The crisis left many homeless, in debt, and careful with who they trust.
You may have read that and thought “Okay but what a crazy stretch, to compare a 2024 Taylor Swift song about a breakup to the 2008 housing crisis that affected real people.” To which I would say, you are right. It was a stretch to connect these two completely different things. However, upon further analysis, the stretch doesn’t seem as crazy when you look at the lyrics and relate them to the crisis. Above is evidence that you can create something from what may seem like nothing. But like King Lear once said “Nothing will come of nothing.” (Shakespeare p. 64).