September 20, 2020 – This past week the Academy of Country Music award show aired on TV. I didn’t watch it. I would have, but I don’t have network TV, so I couldn’t. I would have watched it not only because I like a lot of the current country songs, but also Taylor Swift was on it, so I definitely would have. Only, maybe not. Because what I wanted to know is what the reaction would be to Taylor.
On October 27, 2014, Taylor released her first pop album, the massively successful 1989. From 2014 on, Taylor didn’t appear on any country show. Taylor’s last performance on the ACM (short for Academy of Country Music) award show was 2013, and honestly I probably didn’t pay attention even then. I did like the record that was out then though; it was Red. The song I constantly play on my guitar – All Too Well, is from that record. They say this was her cross-over record, crossing into country to pop, but really it was still country. But with the 1989 record, she was gone from country. And even though she has dozens of country songs, country radio, for the most part, turned their back on her. It’s a super rare thing to hear any Taylor Swift song on country radio.
Taylor’s 2020 surprise album, Folklore, has a country feel. Perhaps she intended it as a cross-back from pop to country, a hybrid to make it easier. One song, Betty, is country, not full-on twang, but country of the same type as Taylor’s country was before. And she purposefully released it to country radio. I don’t know what position on the country chart Betty is, but it’s not doing all that well. It was 39 last I knew, and Billboard’s site isn’t cooperating with me right now so I can’t tell you. But what I can tell you is I don’t hear it on my country station. Sometimes I check to see if it’s on the recently played, but it never is.
The song is a story, like many of Taylor’s song, one of three songs on the record about a high-school boyfriend-girlfriend-summer fling other girl of the boyfriend, written from the point of view of each. Betty is from the point of view of the boy. The lyrics are written after the conclusion of the summer fling when all three are back at school. The namesake Betty has changed her homeroom, won’t have anything to do with the boyfriend, and he’s trying to ask for forgiveness, using his youth as an excuse; I’m only seventeen, I don’t know anything, but I know I miss you, the boyfriend says. In various tenses, he asks if he shows up at Betty’s party would you want me, would you have me? At the end of the song, he does show up at the party and the tense changes to present tense, will you have me, will you love me?
This is a favorite of mine from Taylor’s current record. I am going to learn to play it. No, it’s not the song I said I’m holding out on talking about that first struck me as the one I wanted to play, but this one is the one that stayed with me. I was convinced the words of the song are actually Taylor asking to come back, to come back to her first love – country music. Yes, pop music made her into a queen, but nobody really wants to be a queen, unless you’re an actual queen, and even then, I kind of doubt it. We all want genuineness, and country gives its artists that. It allows them to grow older. It allows them to grow, period. But does it take people back? Does it allow its people to stray?
Before the ACMs, Taylor posted on her Twitter, directing one tweet to the ACMs, and one to country fans. In the tweet directed to the ACM, she said “bout to show up at your party.” And to fans, she Taylor tweeted, “guys, I don’t know anything, but I know I miss youuuuu.”
Taylor’s tweets confirmed my thoughts about the actual meaning of the song Betty, that it’s a love-song trilogy to country music, that she’s the boyfriend, and she wants to come back and is so hoping the country world missed her and will have her back. At some point, I need to study the lyrics of the other two songs, Cardigan, written years later from the point of view of the girlfriend, and August, written from the point of view of the other woman, to see if I see music-genre references, but I haven’t done that yet. I might as well save something for each listen to the record, I suppose.
Given my view of the lyrics to Betty, a view that Taylor’s own tweets seemed to confirm, what I wanted from the ACMs though was not just to see Taylor sing. No, I wanted to see the audience reaction – would they have her, would they want her when she showed up to their party.
There wasn’t an audience, so I can’t tell, but I kind of think not.
I say that because the radio here isn’t playing Betty. I heard a very short clip of the morning DJs around the time the album came out discussing how Taylor left country music. They sounded like jilted lovers. They mentioned her pop queen status too. Nobody actually likes a pop queen, but I do hope they come around. I keep listing to the radio and from time to time looking at the recently played entries on the website hoping to see Taylor again. But it might just be too late. What that means for her music after this current record is an interesting question. I do hope the sound continues though. Perhaps she’s could go the route Lana Del Rey takes – just make music she likes regardless of radio airplay, or genre classification. Taylor’s Folklore record was number 1 for at least five weeks. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if it really has a genre. Perhaps she doesn’t need country, as a genre, to want her and have her. But it was bittersweet to see her ask the question to country and not to have a real answer from the genre at large.