Taylor Swift's Punk Phase

On Wednesday night, after idly flipping to Fox’s “The Masked Singer” thanks to a complete void of worthwhile television, I was caught off guard when one of the singers was revealed to be John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon, most famous as lead singer of the extraordinarily influential punk rock band The Sex Pistols. On Thursday, I found myself listening to their iconic debut album Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols on repeat throughout the day. And on Friday, I listened to its spiritual successor, Taylor Swift’s re-recording of her 2012 album Red. Now hear me out.

Nevermind the Bollocks is easily one of my five favorite albums ever released. The first time I listened to it, I regarded it as a scholarly project, along the lines of listening to Robert Johnson’s 1930s blues recordings to try to pick up on why Eric Clapton and Keith Richards were so into them—I didn’t think I would actually enjoy it. But it blew me away, and part of why it blew me away was because of what the album wasn’t. The Sex Pistols, a band that almost everybody knows of but are far less famous for their actual music, are perceived as an extremely raw band, but their lone studio album itself is produced in a way more reminiscent of a Guns N’ Roses album than a live recording—the guitars and loud and layered, the drums are heavy, and the bass is downright competent (given that Sid Vicious, who does not appear on the album, was a famously terrible musician and is arguably the most well-known member of the band, this was a tad surprising). But the vocals were what truly drew me in. Johnny Rotten is nobody’s definition of a great or even a good or even a competent singer (that Ken Jeong guessed that a masked Rotten was The Who vocalist Roger Daltrey should, frankly, invite a lawsuit from Daltrey), but he sang with such an energy and ferocity that it helped me discover what I truly enjoy in vocal performance. For some people, the guy who did this was Bob Dylan—for me, it was John Lydon.

Is Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols the greatest punk album? Is it a punk album at all? How do you define punk rock? The three most definitive bands labeled “punk” from its earliest days (not counting the great late-1960s Detroit rock bands like the MC5 and the Stooges, to whom the label was retrospectively assigned) are the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and the Clash, and the factors which link the three bands are fairly loose. If you took the politics of the Clash, the style of the Sex Pistols, and the song length of the Ramones, you’d have a fairly good idea of what the genre is seen to be from the outside, but their disparate styles create a complicated definition of the genre.

In the 1970s, the Sex Pistols were viewed as a dangerous and revolutionary group, but sonically, it is hard to imagine a band more within the established form of rock and roll. Structurally, they were mostly a louder version of 1950s rock and roll—there is a reason their cover of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”, aside from Johnny Rotten’s carnival-barker vocal delivery, is so faithful to the original. And for as much attention as the Sex Pistols got for their anti-monarchist views, their primary form of rebellion was against progressive rock. While the Sex Pistols were loud in their hatred of the Beatles, it is fair to assume their primary grievances were with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and not, say, their cover of “Roll Over Beethoven”.

The Clash are a particularly unusual case because, aside from their debut album, their musical style was rarely even in the same neighborhood as the Sex Pistols. Fundamentally, Joe Strummer was a much deeper thinker than John Lydon, a fact which simultaneously made his politics (and by extension his lyrics) far more sophisticated and his music far less passionate. I don’t think any of this makes Lydon a dumb guy, but rather a man motivated by different things than Strummer. Joe Strummer was a committed socialist with a deep musical appreciation who wanted to articulate his leftism with a rich variety of worldly music influences. Johnny Rotten, particularly in his non-Lydon days, was a broke kid from London who wanted to yell about the things that made him mad. The part of me that tries to sound fancy in blogs reveres Strummer; the part of me with a crippling Twitter addiction reveres Rotten. I love them both so much.

The expressly political songs on Nevermind the Bollocks are a mixed bag in terms of lyrical effectiveness, largely because the man who wrote the lyrics doesn’t seem to really know whether or not he even believes in them, even if he goes all the way in when it comes to performing them. “Anarchy in the UK” calls for its title sentiment, but Lydon has dismissed literal anarchy as a political concept. “God Save the Queen” has almost nothing to do with Queen Elizabeth II but a more general disaffection with the upper-class of 1970s England (the same can be said of “Holidays in the Sun”). “Bodies” is an aggressively anti-abortion song, but Lydon has expressed relatively pro-choice political views, which suggests, unsurprisingly, that he was mostly just a troll.

But for my money, the most “punk rock” in the casual sense of the term song on Nevermind the Bollocks is “Submission”. The song is not the least bit political, but the backstory of the song reflects the Sex Pistols’ irreverence—their manager, Malcolm McLaren, wanted the band to write a song called “Submission”, thinking a song about bondage. The band hated the idea and hated even more being told what to do, so the band wrote a childish song called “Submission” about being on a mission on a submarine, opening with the hilariously dopey line, “I’m on a submarine mission for you, baby!” It’s a mid-tempo song whose primary musical hook is the layered, yelled vocals of the chorus. And it inexplicably is one of my favorite songs on the album. Great art can come out of spite.

Taylor Swift has built much of her career on the back of spite. While her reputation as “only writing songs about boys she broke up with” is an unfair and largely sexist trope (though now that Olivia Rodrigo exists, maybe we can much more fairly transfer that to her), she has turned grudges into art regularly. Whether it is “Picture to Burn” (rage), “Mean” (passive-aggressive), or “Look What You Made Me Do” (empowered/famously not about a man but there really aren’t as many examples as you think), Taylor Swift rarely ventures into political themes in her music, but she is very aware of her own feelings.

Biographically, Taylor Swift is much closer to Joe Strummer than John Lydon. Strummer, despite his image, was the son of a diplomat and a nurse and his upbringing, which included ample world travel and private schooling, could not be described as anything lower than middle class. Swift, the daughter of finance employees, received intense parental support, including a teenage relocation from Pennsylvania to Tennessee to further her burgeoning attempt at a musical career. Musically, she isn’t especially close to either, though I guess I’d say she’s closer to Strummer since he has some songs without yelling in them. Spiritually, Taylor Swift is turning into John Lydon. And I love it.

Following the Sex Pistols’ 1978 implosion, the man then known as Johnny Rotten had plenty of options musically—while his band never made a significant dent on popular music in the United States during their existence, they were legitimate hitmakers in the United Kingdom. Would spending a decade making Sex Pistols-esque ragged hard rock as a solo artist or with a new band have been the “punk rock” move? It certainly would have been the move that led to music that most sounded like what had been defined as punk rock, but in a “punk rock equals subversion” way, going against expectations was the move, and the experimental, avant-garde Public Image Ltd was the way he went. I don’t listen to PiL nearly as much as I listen to the Sex Pistols, but the man now known as John Lydon made his own choice, and how can you not respect that?

In April, Taylor Swift released her pseudo-new album Fearless (Taylor’s Version). Like the original Fearless which catapulted Swift from country to pop superstardom, the album was met with critical acclaim. The album, mostly a re-recording of her original album along with some bonus tracks, did not exactly break new ground, though her matured voice did receive some praise supplemental from the original. But the main thing worthy of praise, as well as the thing about today’s release of Red (Taylor’s Version) even more worthy of praise than her ten-minute version of “All Too Well”, is itself extratextual. It is the most punk-rock-as-subversive move of her career.

Because the music business is nothing if not a shallow and vampiric industry, Big Machine Records released Taylor Swift’s first six albums under a contract signed with a then-minor desperate for a big break, but refused to negotiate with Swift when she offered more than fair value for the rights to the master copies to the recordings. Industry creep Scooter Braun instead bought up the rights for $300 million. Taylor Swift could have sued, but instead took on a more self-empowering route—she announced she was going to re-record the albums herself. Since she is still the songwriter or co-songwriter on every song on all six albums, she can license the new recordings and keep Braun from pocketing any of the money.

Ultimately, this is a fight between two insanely rich people, but similar fights exist all the time in sports. And just as I gravitate towards players, the doers, over owners, the financiers, I am inclined to support Taylor Swift’s quest to rankle the system. What Big Machine Records and Scooter Braun did was completely legal, but that does not make it ethical. A legal fight almost certainly would not have worked out for Taylor Swift but relying on the will of the people did.

The music of Red (Taylor’s Version) is still pop-country, music that was written by a singer-songwriter but otherwise has most of the DNA of a musical industrial complex. But despite the shine of it, the re-recordings were built up through an aggressively do-it-yourself aesthetic. Punks in 1970s London decided that they could make their own clothes and bang around on instruments, making noise despite a lack of formal training or talent, and Taylor Swift, refined and pristine as her music is, parlayed that aesthetic on the grandest scale.