Lyrics Part 2: Love Story
My annoyance with Taylor Swift continues with her song “Love Story”. This song is based upon Shakespeare’s work “Romeo and Juliet” minus the tragic double suicide. But that’s not the thing that bothers me. The thing that does bother me is the line ” Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter”. Here are my reasons
1. This is a song about “Romeo and Juliet”, and your including a reference to a completely other story, now if another story had been referenced along with “The Scarlet Letter” that would make this all better because it would show repetition and patterning. But this is the only reference in the song about anything outside the realm of “Romeo and Juliet”
2. In the Realm of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet could only make a reference about the Scarlet letter if she had a time machine. The story of Romeo and Juliet is believed to be written somewhere between 1591-1595 and was published in 1597. Mean while about 255 years later Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “The Scarlet Letter”. Making it physically impossible to make a scarlet letter reference.
3. The Scarlet letter is a reference to adultery. It is basically a badge of shame.
Now id like to end this criticism of Taylor Swift’s poor sound writing at 2 parts but it seems to be a trend so in my mind a part 3 and beyond is foreseeable.
