A Love Letter to Taylor Swift

fourth year priya desai

Dear Taylor,

Are you ready for Valentine’s Day? I think you of all people would be. They say you write too many love songs, though they’d learn they’re wrong if they actually listened to your discography. And anyways, that’s the same old tired talking point, and I personally think you have just the right amount to teach someone about love. After all, you have no idea who I am (and I know an embarrassing amount about you, clearly), but you’re the one who taught me, long before I was old enough to understand–though maybe I’m still too young, and we’ll all laugh at this in a few years–back when I was still playing with legos and listening to Tim McGraw. I learned about all kinds of love through you: tender and new, like Enchanted, or turned sour, like White Horse, or transformative, like Daylight.

In fact, I’m not sure who I might have turned out to be without this guidance in my formative years. Maybe a little more cynical and jaded, a little less of a hopeless romantic – but maybe hopeless isn’t the right word, in the end. Anyone who’s listened to Red (Taylor’s version, obviously) through the heartbreak of All Too Well and into the optimism of Begin Again couldn’t use “hopeless romantic” as an insult.

Often I think of You Are In Love, a testament to someone else’s relationship that didn’t survive, and your confession that you’ve spent your whole life trying to define love in your own words. Do you think you have? Do you think anyone can? I’m not sure where I stand on the whole issue, but maybe, if anyone can do it, it’s you. Lover, an album that feels like a love letter of its own, comes close.

Taylor, you’re better at giving advice than most of the people I know, or maybe I just refuse to listen to what I don’t want to hear, your music included. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you’re perfect, not by a long shot. We have a complicated relationship, and I mean, if we’re being realistic, most love stories fall apart from both ends, but I applaud the times you’ve acknowledged that publicly (see: Back to December). All the same, I’m sure releasing an album feels a bit like releasing a piece of a diary, and the poems in my notes app paint others in a worse light than myself. By the way, if we’re being candid, I think folklore, the album I’ve decided you created specifically for me, is your best.

Taylor, I have to apologize. This (like everything either of us write) is about me, not you. I’m sure you’ve heard that line before, but I don’t mean in the cliche sense of a break-up, I mean in the fact that this isn’t really a love letter to you–it’s ultimately to myself, or to the concept of love itself, or whatever weird shit I use you as a parasocial substitute for in my life. With all that said, thanks for being the stand-in within my life and an oracle of love to everyone willing to listen.

With love,

Priya

The Chapel BellFebruary 7, 2022