Whenever Alyssa lets me have a say here, I'm tempted to write things I know she disagrees with, just to be annoying. I mostly resist (and you're not getting an impassioned defense of Rachel Berry, mostly because I'm trying not to think about this season of Glee any more than absolutely necessary), but hey, let's continue this Taylor Swift conversation Alyssa started here and here. Now, I'm not defending or agreeing with all of the actual content of Swift's songs, but I think her decision to write about famous people in a way that makes them easy to identify is, in general, a reasonable one, because . . .
1. It's her life. At this point, the reality of Swift's life is that the guys she dates is famous. It's sort of refreshing that she's honest about that instead of doing what so many other musicians do and singing about getting up and going to the office even though they've never done that a day in their lives. And Swift herself has gotten both sides of this - when her single "Mine" came out, critics complained that a line about having bills to pay was unrealistic. If she's told not to write songs directly about her current life in the spotlight or songs that aren't about herself, what's she supposed to do, write about high school forever?
2. It's good marketing. Critics may prefer to spend decades speculating about "You're So Vain," but Swift's teenaged target audience is growing up in the age of faux-intimacy with celebrities due to the Internet in general and social networking in particular. If Swift came out and stated the names of the boys she's writing about, there would be no game, but the extremely obvious "clues" make her fans feel like part of the in-crowd when they figure out who she means. An additional level is added to the listening experience when the listener can picture exactly whose "tan skin [and] sweet smile" and whose vintage dresses Swift is talking about.
3. She's not writing in a vacuum. Some of these guys are writing songs about her - Joe Jonas has, with "Better," and John Mayer certainly might - but, perhaps more importantly, these relationships are all over the tabloids and gossip sites. And even if Swift's songs were all about puppies and rainbows and how much she loves her mom, her relationships would still be on the cover of US Weekly. I can't blame her for wanting to grab control of the message and make sure that when people think about her and her relationships, the first thing that comes to mind is not sad pictures and headlines but rather her songs. As Swift says to another girl in a song on her new album, "You might have him, but I always get the last word" - and isn't that the comfort and refuge of writers everywhere? Paging Nora Ephron!