How You Get The Girl: Swift, Adams, and the Usurpation of Feminist Musicality

Taylor Swift’s 1989 occupies a neat little niche in current pop culture. Aside from being the biggest selling album of 2014, 1989 has quickly become a rallying cry for modern feminists. In the post-Beyoncé era, Swift’s polished pop and subtly punchy lyrics fit a need for a strong feminine voice for young women. Ryan Adams’s decision to do a full-album cover seems like an indie gimmick at first, since it’s become trendy to cover pop songs as a statement of how twee and relatable you are. Only after a deeper look does it make more sense. Swift is a brilliant songwriter and her roots lie in country, only steps away from singer-songwriter territory, and Adams’s  performance is more of a reinterpretation than a cover. It’s fitting that he created the arrangements while coming out of a rough breakup, finding genuine solace in the songs.

I was more interested in the album because of the excellent discussion around it, focusing on women’s voices and place in music. I decided to give the album a shot following the NPR story about it, and I entered the album skeptically, to say the least. I’m a pop culture feminist, and my best friend had just written a published essay on feminism, madness, and “Blank Space” (look for it in Intersections: The Women and Gender Studies Undergraduate Journal). The idea of a man covering such a powerful display of feminine anger made me edgy. But, at the end of the day, I’m a sucker for acoustic music—especially the mopey, sad-boy type—and Adams’s “Blank Space” is a straight up Mountain Goats song. Swift calls it “this beautiful aching sadness and longing,” and that’s an accurate description.

This new “Blank Space” is a retrospective, while Swift’s was a bristly dare. Her song reveled in recklessness and power, and his reflects instead on the emptiness after the loss of something huge and poisonous. It’s a different song, and the feminist in me isn’t sure if I like it. (The indie trash in me knows she loves it.) In contrast to the original, it verges on sounding like a bitter man whining about how a strong woman toyed with him and hurt him. The song in Swift’s rendition was a reclamation of the “crazy ex” trope, but Ryan Adams almost takes it back to where it was, especially with the single pronoun he left intact from the original, “Oh my god, who is she?” sung with fear and reverence. Adams’s “Blank Space” suffers in a theoretical comparison to the original, which makes it seem threatened and frightened by Swift’s power. However, it stands solid when viewed as if he’d written it, which interviews have suggested is his intent. In the end, Adam’s 1989 is a story summed up by a quote from the album’s song “Out of The Woods”: “We were meant to fall apart, then fall back together.” It’s a story about broken and wrong love, and a wish for a world where it could have ever worked. Adams calls it an alternate universe. Despite my bitterness at the context of the album, I sort of love it.

There’s the crux of my complicated feelings on the topic: the album works best if it’s imagined as Adams’s creation. Nevertheless, he is being hailed as Taylor Swift’s prophet, as the voice that stripped the pop sheen from her music to reveal the true brilliance of her song writing. And that scares me. The idea that Swift can’t showcase her own talent and requires a man to come and reinterpret her words for her is chilling. As if men have not already been the dominating voice in “serious” music, leaving women to the kiddie table of pop. That the album harkens back to Bruce Springsteen helps to solidify it as the property of the Indie Boys’ Club.

In some ways, this feels like an appropriation (taking the best and then taking the credit), but the covers are undeniably respectful and heartfelt. Perhaps this is a commentary that intends to showcase the misogyny of the music industry. This is certainly a tribute, and Adams does highlight some new points. His 1989 flows like a story album, telling the highs and lows of an ended relationship.  This is also a cover album that turned my least favorite song on the album, “How You Get The Girl,” into my favorite. 1989 as refashioned by Ryan Adams makes me desperately want a Taylor Swift who returns to her stripped down country girl roots—now empowered with lyrical chops, an adult past, and an Intro to Women’s Studies course under her belt.