Diane Polletta

This album is remarkable. Across 31 songs, she both tells a deeply personal story and delivers a stinging social commentary, and does it with deadpan humor, unmatched lyricism, and the kind of emotion that cuts right through you. And to my ear, there are tons of catchy, radio friendly hits (Florida!!!, But Daddy I Love Him, etc.) alongside the ring-you-out emotional ballads. Read the "In Summation" poem that accompanies the physical album to understand one piece of the story. Listen to The Manuscript and Clara Bow, the last songs on each of the two albums, to understand another piece of the story. An artist puts art out into the world - and it's an act of catharsis, a need to create - and once out in the world, "the story isn't mine anymore," as Taylor sings in The Manuscript. Taylor Swift has such devoted fans who are hungry to consume her art because she puts into words, with the most vivid imagery and storytelling, universal, relatable human emotions. But for the artist, "It's hell on earth to be heavenly." We live in a culture fueled by celebrity, the media and the public's literally constant attention and judgment, constant stirring the pot, looking to create or magnify any kind of drama, always ready to raise people up and then cut them down to size. The artist accepts this bargain! But is this a necessary bargain? And does it inevitably lead to a case of “restricted humanity”? Enter what sounds like a truly terrible couple of years in the personal life of the artist, at the height of professional success. A woman in her early thirties who, as I hear from these songs, wants marriage and a family, and feels the time slipping away. Her long term relationship is dying for a while and then ends. She never got the commitment she longed for, and she is “pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.” And because of who she is, the whole defeated mess is just fodder for gossip: “Come one, come all, its happening again.” The empathetic hunger descends. But despite the public microscope, “old habits die screaming” and she’s making the kind of messy, human mistakes people make after a devastating loss. She’s “fresh out the slammer” and knows who her first call will be to – the person she had a brief, powerful connection with long ago. He tells her she’s always been the love of his life and sells her the story she’s been longing for --marriage and family and future. She takes the “miracle move on drug, but the effects were temporary.” He’s still got problems, and because everything she does is under a microscope, the public knows it and everyone is judging it. She’s angry about all of it! It all falls apart, and now she’s left to absorb the totality of the loss in full (both the long term relationship and the embarrassment that she fell for something counterfeit). In her defeat, she begs to speak to someone who can change the Prophesy. Is she doomed to never finding lasting love or having a family because “I got cursed like Eve got bitten.” Like Eve, she actively chose her fate. She knows that the celebrity part of her job is part of the bargain she made to be able to create art that reaches the world. But is celebrity a kind of restricted humanity, a burden that prevents real, lasting human connection? The Albatross, with all of its literary allusions, is a powerful and hopeful answer to this question. And anyone can feel the joy, hope, and redemption in songs like The Alchemy and So High School. I love so many songs individually this album, but I was totally transfixed by the story being told by all of the songs collectively.