Pop-Country Nostalgia
Perhaps you know this already, but I love Taylor Swift. Formulaic pop-country is, well, totally awesome. I’ve been listening to “You Belong With Me” (see video) for a while now… it’s like a nostalgia trip slathered in cliche with just the right amount of twang, and the video condenses the plot of a romantic comedy into a few minutes. But all pulled off with a lot more panache than her first album. Seriously, what’s not to love about this? (Disclaimer: This is from the guy who just watched National Treasure 2, Angels & Demons, and Step Up 2: The Streets… all in one week.)
I’m just saying… it doesn’t get any better than this.
I guess I’m a little weirded out by the marriage-focused lyrics and costumes for a bunch of her songs. Like, how many times can TS end up in a white wedding-ish dress by the end of the video? And what’s with “I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress”? I talked to your dad??! To be fair, my friend thinks that “Love Story” is secretly a gay anthem. But that’s a whole different story.
And one more thing about the “You Belong With Me” video… the cheer captain is the evil girl who’s messing up the chances of the nerdy (yet secretly beautiful! just take off the glasses!) girl… but the perfect guy is still the QB of the football team. First Friday Night Lights with the artistic, sensitive Matt Saracen and now this? I’m just saying… caricaturing the cheer captain while idealizing the QB strikes me as… odd. Come to think of it, Leila Garrity isn’t portrayed with much sympathy either in FNL.
Okay, but seriously, this song is awesome.
Big. Eye. Roll.
Not to play the “I lived in Alabama” card, but the talking to your dad thing is *way* more of still a thing than I’d expected.
Not that it’s ok. Or non-ookey. (Sorry, Laura.) Just that it’s not, like, a line about the feudal era.
Also, if you want to see a jaw-dropping quarterback story, watch Fox’s new “Glee.” (I’m *pretty* sure he’s a quarterback.) At least FNL has the excuse of, you know, being about football.
Dude, I felt like it was a thing in NoVa too… so I can only imagine. The weird admixture of feudal and southern in ‘love story’ is totally odd but not entirely inaccurate… i mean other that the fact that she forgets that R+J *die* in the end. Oh, and she calls herself a scarlet letter… not sure I’m understanding the import of that reference.
I’m impressed that you have any feeling of northern virginia matrimony rituals. . . .
Had a facebook-status colloquium on the meaning of the scarlet letter a couple months ago. My theory has something to do with them being in English class together from 9th grade (R+J) and 11th (Scarlet Letter) — they have a disagreement about the meaning of Hester’s story, which leads to their separation. But (and this is important) neither of them ever finished the readings, so they don’t know that, for example, R+J die in the end. (And, yes, they saw the Luhrman film but were too busy making out to catch the ending.)
Clearly not the case. It’s also kind of fun to search the internet for interpretations of the song. Lots of teenagers have the same questions that we do. . .
Get back to work you lazy son of a…