In "Tim McGraw", the first song on Taylor Swift's eponymous 2006 debut, a boy flatters a girl by comparing her eyes to "Georgia stars", and she responds, "That's a lie." This begins Swift's exploration in songwriting of rhetoric, lies, and truth. Through the lies and truths of rhetoric, that song's speaker negotiates the meaning of her former relationship with herself and with her ex-boyfriend. Truth, lies, rhetoric, and the negotiation of truth, as well as rumors and the simultaneity of truth and lies, are also addressed in such later songs by Swift as "Dress" (from "reputation", 2017), "illicit affairs" ("folklore", 2020), "happiness" ("evermore", 2020), and "Cassandra" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 November 2024)
Note: This is the abstract for "On Truth and Lies in a Swiftian Sense", my talk on Taylor Swift on Tuesday, 10 December, at 1 pm, in room 11 of the English Department of the University of Basel, Nadelberg 6, Basel.
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