On her newest album, Taylor Swift’s ‘So High School’ is a hidden gem
It’s the desperately needed injection of energy that only further vindicated the ‘Anthology’ side of her latest double album as the better side.
There’s something oddly sanitized about Taylor Swift’s newest record — The Tortured Poets Department (hereby referred to as TTPD). In the wake of an era defined by a sense of artistic integrity (the exploration of new genres with Aaron Dessner, a desire to reclaim past works through re-recordings), the album’s purported over-commercialization quashed any notion of Swift forgoing worldly success for a more “artistic” legacy à la Beyoncé, for instance. These external factors have only worked to dilute the message of a story already struggling to get its point across. The unfortunate reality is that an album titled ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is setting itself up for ridicule, even if it is meant as satire.
The truth is that in a year defined by pop music that confronts, challenges, and seeks to restructure (think Brat or Cowboy Carter), Swift’s TTPD has resigned itself to the gallows of apathy — a record that’s perfectly content with being of value only when considered in the context of the Taylor Swift ©™ universe.
The standard version of TTPD is ok. I’d be lying if I said ‘Fortnight’ wasn’t stuck in my head for a few days, or that the retrospection on ‘Clara Bow’ isn’t fascinating (and in my opinion in dire need of a ten-minute version). However, a 12-week run at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and a newly minted Eras tour segment later, I am yet to understand the album’s worth outside of being a Taylor Swift record.
That being said, it was the surprise follow-up extension (titled The Anthology) that caught my attention. Scattered amongst the tracks were songs such as ‘The Black Dog’ and ‘How Did It End?’ — moments that to me captured the anxiety and whirlwind of her publicized relationship upheavals in early 2023 better than anything on the standard TTPD.
However, there is one song on there that lives on my “will unironically defend with essays” playlist — and that’s ‘So High School’.
From the opening guitar that feels straight out of a coming-of-age film, it was clear that the song had wildly different aspirations that didn’t involve the eradication of 19th century racism or fixing Lana Del Rey-coded men with calloused hands from holding pistols. It sets its ambitions just high enough to make the mundanity of life seem extraordinary, while being realistic enough to not invite the kind of mockery that beguiled songs like ‘The Alchemy’ and ‘I Can Fix Him’.
Taylor Swift situating herself in levels of education composed mainly of pubescent teenagers is a cinematic universe all its own, and this song is no different. It’s fits like a glove in the football grounds of ‘You Belong With Me’ and the hallways of ‘Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince’. That being said, it does make sense. There’s an innocence to the song — a sort of classic American fairy tale framing with the character who wore t-shirts and cheered from the bleachers now being big enough to be included in economic statistics and showing off her equally successful footballer boyfriend.
From American Pie to Spin-The-Bottle, she taps into key milestones for millennial Americans in the 2000s (with varying degrees of success — “touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” is still a touchy line on karaoke night). All this is backed by a joyfully rich production that colourfully bursts out of the monotone pastiche before it that incentivized fans to make rock versions and to re-hash parts of the album with livelier instrumentals from previous records.
Watching movies on a Saturday night, having the car door opened for you (one of the classic “gentlemen” things you learn early on), and spot-on impressions of one’s parents — these are all refreshingly real scenes in an album chock-full of typewriters, smoke clouds, and obtuse asylum references. There’s a celebration of the ordinary on here, a skill she’s repeatedly proven to be adept in with tracks like ‘All Too Well’ and ‘Lover’. It’s something that’s been mostly sidestepped on the rest of the record in favour of “tortured” poetry instead.
The classic take on some of Taylor’s recent works are that somewhere within the standard track list lies a good album. TTPD is no exception. I have a playlist with my vision of the album, which opens with ‘How Did It End?’ and ends with ‘So High School’.
Why? Because it felt right to answer the Sisyphus-like romantic restlessness on this album with the realization the peace comes not from the mockery (and ironic co-opting) of tortured poetry, but from revelling in the basics of what makes day-to-day existence on this planet an existence well-spent.
Listen close enough to ‘So High School’, and you might just be able to hear her smile through the microphone.
