"They Tried to Warn Him About Me": Swift's "The Albatross" Explained

As an English Lit student, seeing the various ways old works are constantly revitalized in modern pop culture is incredibly fascinating. Taylor Swift is the most recent artist who has recently been increasing her references to important canonical literary works in her songwriting. On The Tortured Poets Department, her most recent release, she points out a few specific places where she applies these older stories to reflect what has happened in her own personal life, with “The Albatross” being immediately recognizable as the symbol of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s work, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 

Swift’s most obvious connection to Coleridge’s poem is through her direct comparison to herself and the albatross in the song. In the third chorus, she switches from stating “she’s the albatross” to “I’m the albatross,” embodying the bird as herself and drawing comparisons between her reputation and the way the albatross brought destruction to the sailors. She weaves plenty of biographical information into this track, but most interestingly, she references an older work as a guide to her fans to decode a meaningful element of this song. In “The Lakes” on her 2020 album Folklore, she writes, “I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze / Tell me what are my words worth,” causing keen listeners to draw connections to her public feud with her previous record label who sold her masters without offering her the opportunity to buy them for herself. She does something similar in “The Albatross” in her description of the albatross— and, by extension, herself— as a liminal omen, being both a positive force that can simultaneously put the wind in the sailor’s sails in Coleridge’s poem but also cause their downfall. She writes “I swept in at the rescue / The devil that you know / Looks now more like an angel,” and in contrast to this image of salvation, Swift writes that “She is here to destroy you / Devils that you know / Raise worse hell than a stranger.” Swift’s notoriety and songwriting talent both brought wealth and fame to her record label, and her very public, hostile parting with the label brought economic difficulties as she re-records her older works in her quest to officially have ownership of them. Swift’s Romantic allusions in both “The Lakes” and “The Albatross” further emphasizes the way they should be connected in her listeners’ minds. 

While her comparison of herself to the albatross is poignant, the directness of the comparison leads me to believe that she wanted her listeners to read between the lines and deduce that she is actually comparing herself to another figure in Coleridge’s poem: the Life-in-Death woman. Specifically, in Swift’s description of the albatross, she echoes Coleridge’s description of the Life-in-Death woman, writing that “She is here to destroy you / Devils that you know / Raise worse hell than a stranger / She's the death you chose / You're in terrible danger.” This description not only draws the connection between Swift and the Life-in-Death woman, but also offers an interesting divergence from Coleridge’s tale. The Mariner quite literally had no choice over this form of death, with Death and Life-in-Death rolling dice to see who would win the Mariner’s soul. Maybe Swift disagrees with the Romantic belief that nature is all-powerful and offers humanity no agency, or maybe she is establishing agency for the passive albatross she associates herself with. Whatever she believes, this divergence functions as a way to re-assign the blame that the media places on her by stating it is “the death you chose.”

The Life-in-Death woman is ultimately the force that brings death to all of the sailors on the ship, with Coleridge writing that “Four times fifty living men, / (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) / With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, / They dropped down one by one.” After 

Coleridge describes the Life-in-death woman as even more deadly than her companion, Death, because she has the power to steal souls, which is exactly what she does to the Mariner. When the Mariner first spots the couple, he notes that “Are those her ribs through which the Sun/ Did peer, as through a grate? / And is that Woman all her crew? / Is that a Death? And there are two? / Is Death that woman’s mate?” (lines 185-189). Not only is the Mariner shocked that this figure is a woman, but he is also more terrified of her than Death. Rightfully so, as this figure dooms the Mariner, with the removal of his soul causing him to be cut off from both the living and the dead and wander forever to tell his tale. 

Aside from all of these connections, Coleridge’s physical description of the Life-in-Death woman echoes some of Swift’s notable features: “her lips are red, her looks are free, / her locks are yellow as gold: / Her skin is as white as leprosy, / And she is far liker Death than he” (lines 196-199).

It’s incredibly interesting to consider why the British Romantics are so relevant to Swift and her work. I think if she ever decides to go to college, I definitely think she would be an English major.