SPEAK UR GUTS

On being 19 (again), lyric rewrites, and a revelatory wrinkle in the space-time continuum

Hello again! As a Type A workaholic, I’ve always been skeptical of what good rest can do for my productivity, but after a very relaxing time in Mérida this past week, the following piece came flowing out of me in a way that made me feel like my old self again. I’ve been playing Olivia Rodrigo’s new single “Vampire” on loop obsessively since it came out last week, and I knew from the first listen that it was special—not only because it’s an absolute banger, but how distinct it feels from a particular genre of heartbreak songs dominated by the one and only Taylor Swift.

I wrote most of the essay below in a frenzy, on the plane in my Notes App and curled up in a corner seat at my gate at the Miami Airport. It feels good to be writing again—with ease and passion—about the women I can’t stop simping even if I tried.

Thanks for indulging me, and I hope you enjoy! xx

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It's a special week for those of us whose music taste is beholden to the masterminds of heartbreak. Proving that the universe can still be generous even from within our late-stage capitalist hellscape, I've found that the most pleasurable place to be right now is plastered to the inside of the mind of a teenage girl. 

On June 30th, Olivia Rodrigo released her new single "Vampire," the first taste we have of her sophomore album GUTS, which is set to come out this September. In sweet, sweet kismet, exactly a week later, Taylor Swift gifted us with the highly anticipated re-release of her 2010 album Speak Now, which has now all been sung à la (Taylor’s Version). The sage wisdom of teen girls has once again swum to the fore, the stench of their dirty laundry mixing with the nascent summer’s muggy heat, all with enough angst to last us the entire season.

This glitch in the matrix allows us to experience these two influential artists—who are actually 14 years apart in age—simultaneously at the hinge of adulthood. While Rodrigo wrote most of GUTS during her “19th year on this earth,” Swift similarly wrote Speak Now between the ages of 18 and 20. This summer, for all intents and purposes, Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo are both 19 years young—and what a gift it is to see the two grow up side by side, twin souls nursing their heartbreaks the best way they know how. 

Whether or not this was their intention, it's difficult not to compare "Vampire" and Speak Now, which are undoubtedly rich in resonance. Since the beginning of her career, it's been obvious where Rodrigo has taken inspiration from Swift—both spiritually (as a longtime Swiftie and diaristic songwriter) and literally (through borrowed chord progressions). Rumors of a potential feud between the two may be brewing, but this tradition continues steadily with "Vampire," which, despite its swearing and gore, is Swiftian at its core. It is "Dear John" with a different bite, damning an older man for taking advantage of her young age and innocence with his bad intentions, using her fame to buffer and shine his own. Without having to say it outright, Rodrigo comes to the same bitter conclusion as a young Swift once did: I should've known. 

The lyrics and sentiments of Speak Now—many of them callous and some of them cruel—have spent years lodged in the depths of my psyche, shaping the way I've come to understand my own past breakups and love more broadly. Listening to it all again at 25, I’m deeply appreciative of the time capsule that Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) serves, not only for Swift, but for so many of us who grew up with her music. And even if I've only spent a week or so with "Vampire," it feels equally obvious where Rodrigo peels herself away from her once-idol, establishing herself distinctly as her own artist.

Though it might feel premature to hinge Rodrigo’s growth on a single song, she has already demonstrated the ways in which she's learned from—and has ultimately grown past—Swift. “Vampire” is not only impressive in its ability to place blame on someone who deserves it—pressing deeper into the wound when necessary—but in the graceful way it admits when blame is unwarranted. 

With the lyric “Every girl I ever talked to told me you were bad, bad news / You called them crazy, God, I hate the way I called them crazy too,” Rodrigo dodges the errors of Swift’s “Better Than Revenge,” which ruthlessly pins the blame on another woman (famously known to be the actress Camilla Belle) for the end of her relationship with Joe Jonas. Instead of wielding the easy weapon of misogyny, Rodrigo seems to have written “Vampire” from a clear-eyed point of view; even from within the pit of her bloodstained rage, she realizes where she was previously wrong and calls herself out in the process. 

Ironically, it wasn’t with the original release of Speak Now, but with its re-release, where Swift reveals that she handles her past mistakes quite differently. Much to many fans’ dismay (and quite frankly, our horror), Swift completely rewrote the controversial, slut-shaming “Better Than Revenge” chorus for (Taylor’s Version), choosing to cement her growth by taking the path of least resistance: by pretending her blunders never existed in the first place.

There are many legitimate reasons why Swift chose to rewrite these lyrics—ranging from annoyingly people-pleasing to tepidly feminist—but what irks me most about it is how it falls so squarely in line with how Swift handles her image. From straightforward romantic conflicts to messier, more damaging entanglements like the ones that fueled the entirety of her Reputation phase in 2017, Swift has routinely positioned herself as the one who has been wronged, and hardly ever the one to have wronged.

We can’t write this tendency off as a simple byproduct of Swift’s past naïvete and youth: My least favorite song on her most recent album Midnights (2022) is the incredibly popular “Anti-Hero,” particularly for the ways in which the alleged accountability Swift takes today is drenched in sarcastic self depreciation (It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me), her insincerity ringing hollow against its deceptively poppy beat. 

What feels most troubling about this act—beyond the fact that it is a staple tactic of white womanhood—is that in the handful of instances in which Swift does reflect on her fault with intention and care (namely, in moments like Speak Now’s “Back to December” and Lover’s “Archer”), she comes out the other side more human, infinitely more interesting for also having also inflicted pain rather than solely being its pitiful recipient. 

Because of this careful curation, it shouldn't have really come as a surprise after all that she couldn't bear to keep “Better Than Revenge” as it was, an homage to her inherent flawedness as much as it is one to the unfiltered rage and delicious pettiness of a broken-hearted 19-year-old. The song may have weathered an ambivalent legacy over the past 13 years, but if today’s internet discourse has anything to say about it, a majority of fans would have preferred Swift forwent her feminist insistence and let us scream the mattress lyric we all know and secretly, sinisterly love. 

It goes without saying that the very reason Rodrigo hasn’t released a song with the same hateful undertones as “Better Than Revenge” is because of the very fact that Swift had already paid the price for doing so over a decade ago. It is also because of her that Rodrigo demanded up front that she have ownership over her masters, which will hopefully save her from ever having to re-record her entire discography however many years down the line.

But beyond imparting the music industry do’s and don’ts onto Rodrigo, Swift didn't turn 19 again in vain. Buried within the largely forgettable tracks from The Vault—newly released songs that didn’t make the album’s original cut—Swift shows a glimmer of the growth that I've been craving in “Castles Crumbling,” which fittingly features Paramore’s Hayley Williams, another female musician who spent most of her youth in the scrutinous limelight.

In it, the two sing about the process of falling out of the public’s grace—an unraveling that is partially the narrator’s own doing. “Their faith was strong, but I pushed it too far / I held that grudge 'til it tore me apart / Power went to my head and I couldn't stop,” Swift and Williams admit. “Castles Crumbling” does the work that the matured version of “Better Than Revenge” doesn’t: it gives credence to a version of Swift that messed up and can own it, who can be at peace with a portrayal of herself that might not have gotten things right.

Whether it’s your first go around or you’ve had the strange honor of doing it all again, Rodrigo and Swift both prove that being 19 holds a wealth of artistry and useful lessons for the future. Rodrigo may have learned a lot from Swift’s firsthand experiences, but she’s also proven that the learning goes both ways. Come GUTS’ release in September, it’ll be interesting to see what Rodrigo takes from Swift’s well-trodden path, and in what ways she’ll forge ahead in a new direction, owning every beautiful, disastrous mistake she makes along the way.