"Rime" and Reason: Unraveling Taylor Swift's Coleridgean Threads

Taylor Swift is the epitome of a pop star, embracing the love and hate that come with fame. Her relationship with her fans separates Taylor from any other pop star. A Taylor Swift fan is easy to spot, mainly because they will tell you they are a Taylor Swift fan within the first ten minutes you interact with them. This is because her music is not only relatable to fans; it transcends a space between person and artist that few have been able to do. She encourages listeners to look past the words on the page or the melody in the music, instead to dive into her world and find the easter eggs in each thing she does to further understand and immerse themselves into her mind. As Taylor grew up with her fans, that world became more diverse and deep, the easter eggs more complex and allusive, and her lyrics much more educated and mature for her likewise older audience. This brings us to the analysis of her bonus track, "Albatross," on her 11th studio Album, The Tortured Poets Department.  

Many fans were quick to connect the album name to her ex-boyfriend, Joe Alwyn; Alwyn stated in an interview with Paul Mescal (another esteemed "sad-man" actor) that he created a group chat with the two and another actor, Andrew Scott, titled "Tortured Man Club." Although many claim the naming of the album The Tortured Poet's Club to be a direct jab at this group chat, I ask that we analyze Taylor's previous connections and homages to poets in her work and how, instead, those poets have influenced her earlier work and this new album. Taylor Swift is aware of the big three. The big three, of course, being the poets of the Lake District- William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, and John Ruskin. This grouping of some of England's most renowned Romantic poets, who had been writing from the 18th to the 19th century, was esteemed for their work that reflected their natural surroundings, escaping the hustle and bustle of London and other industrial cities. How do we know this? Let us reflect on Taylor's last studio-produced album, Folklore, and most specifically her bonus track, "the lakes." In this song, we see direct lyrics and allusions to these Lake District authors, most specifically Wordsworth. 

• "Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?"

• Romantic poets...

• "Tell me, what are my words worth?"

• Direct pun to Wordsworth's last name

• "Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry."

• Windermere peaks are located in Cumbria, formerly Cumberland and Westmorland, where Wordsworth resided

For further analysis and connections, not just at the surface level, I encourage you to look into Caitlin Conway's research on Poet Pop. (https://poppoetry.substack.com/p/where-all-the-poets-went-to-die) 

This bonus track clearly flexes her literary muscles by bringing esteemed poets into her pop tracks. Her songs are not just "teeny-bops" or crafted to have a catchy melody and no substance; they are pieces of literature worthy of analysis and emotion. From this, when Swift announced the bonus track on her next album, Albatross, other literary geeks quickly assigned the song's meaning to that of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was written by our next lake district poet, Samuel Coleridge, showing a clear linear progression. 

To begin, we must look back to before Swift even announced the album, let alone the album's bonus track. The 2024 Grammy's. When Taylor arrived, she wore a floor-length white gown with long black gloves and heels. On first look, many fans thought the grimmer look connected to a possible release for a re-recorded album, Reputation. However, after a second glance and knowing what we now know, the look itself can resemble an albatross. Their white body, black feet, and long wings with black tips, the resemblance is uncanny. The look shows that she has a connection to the albatross, but the connection was not made clear until the release of the song.

So what is the connection? The premise of the song is that Taylor herself is the albatross. (Hence, she dressed herself to resemble an albatross at The Grammy's this past year.) Taylor refers to herself in the third person for the first part of the song, only to switch to the first person in the latter part of the song- "She's the albatross/ She is here to destroy you." She brings ruin and destruction to the men who kill and capture her, or at least that is what is first perceived. The songs act much like a warning tale to anyone who wants to know the albatross, or Taylor Swift, echoing the tale's tone from the Mariner himself. In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Mariner stops a wedding guest and tells him the story of the life and death he endured. The Mariner himself is haunting the man, scaring him with the tale, yet he cannot leave as he is engrossed in the story- 'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!/ I fear thy skinny hand!/ And thou art long, and lank, and brown,/ As is the ribbed sea-sand." (224-227) This correlates to the telling of Taylor Swift's life and how she fears her future partners, yet it is engrossing, so they might stay. Because she is the albatross, this leaves the critics and society to be the Mariner. They tell tales and stories about her, showing how society views her life, specifically her love life, as having a "haunting" message, with no resolution in her getting married and having too many partners. Taylor reflects on this in the first verse of the song,

Wise men once said

"Wild winds are death to the candle"

A rose by any other name is a scandal

Cautions issued, he stood

Shooting the messengers

They tried to warn him about her

Taylor herself is the wild wind that will put out the candle of life. She is damaging to men and worth being warned about to any prospective partners. Wise men, society, and other patriarchal figures against her propel the narrative that Taylor is scandalous, she is terrible to any man she dates, she is dangerous to the societal expectations of what a woman should be. Taylor has faced scrutiny for the men she dates, how long she has dated them, how many men she has dated, yadda yadda. She is the albatross to these critics, as she brings about destruction in what she does. In The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, after the Mariner shoots the albatross on the ship, all chaos breaks out, and the Mariner suffers destruction and pain. This destruction and pain entail in the worst-case scenario- All other crew members die, the woman of Life and Death shows up herself, nature rebels with relentless storming and rain, etc. Coleridge illuminates the albatross as the reason for the destruction of the Mariner in his poem: "And I had done a hellish thing,/ And it would work 'em woe:/ For all averred, I had killed the bird/ That made the breeze to blow." (91-94) Here, we can reflect on Coleridge's reason for creating the albatross- it was to show that the albatross itself did not bring about destruction, but instead, the "hellish" act of killing it brought about destruction. Swift shows that by making herself the albatross, she does not bring about the "destruction" of men; rather, the public prosecuting her brings down the men and relationships in her life. 

The song ends with the man not listening to the forewarning tale and rather being saved by the Albatross. Although Coleridge's poem does not have this happy ending, some people speculate that the song is an ode to her new and future partners who take her side over societal prejudice. Perhaps, Travis Kelce?