Getaway Cars
Taylor Swift’s Eras tour has taken the globe, and now, Southeast Asia, by storm. Hundreds of thousands of Swifties have poured into Singapore as the only venue in the region for the record-breaking event. Now, Taylor Swift is not known to be a prominent car collector, but cars and other land mobility vehicles—trucks, trains, buses, feature prominently in her songs, from the very first album, “Taylor Swift,” to the latest “Midnights.” Let’s drive by the Eras of Taylor Swift, via her odes to various cars and car culture:
Taylor Swift’s entry into music was via the country genre. Moving first to Nashville to break into the music industry, she no doubt soaked in the country’s fondness for trucks. This was evident in one of her first hits, “Tim McGraw,” which mentions “a boy in a Chevy truck that had a tendency of getting stuck on back roads at night.”
In Fearless and Speak Now, cars feature as crucial settings for first love and forays into new interactions. Most notably, there is a feature of a Mustang in the “Fearless” music video, and in “Fifteen,” when she says “You’re on your very first date and he has a car.” In “Never Grow Up,” she also mentions taking a car on the way to the movies.
The album Red is more about the maturity of romance. The title track has a lyric about “Driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street,” a simile about a doomed romance. In the music video for “All Too Well” (10 minute version), actors Dylan and Sadie drive a car that has symbolic significance: the Mercedes-Benz S-Class looks to be a 1989 model, same as Taylor’s birth year. The album cover of Red (Taylor’s Version) features the artist in what appears to be Series BA Convertible, a 1930s Chevrolet. The car also features in the narrative prominently, with the famous lyric “You were tossing me the car keys“ when recounting a phrase from her ex.
Moving on to 1989, no cars were harmed in the making of the music video for “Blank Space,” where the destruction done to an AC Cobra by the jilted persona that Taylor plays was done by CGI. The Cobra in the video was itself reportedly a replica, but it’s still better not to sacrifice it for a music video. Taylor supposedly accidentaly scratched the car’s hood with her fingernails. The video production paid to have the car repainted, but the car would probably be worth a lot more with the scratch marks intact. The Cobra was so iconic (and the “car destruction” subject to strong outcry) that the set-piece for the 1989 segment of the Eras tour features Taylor atop a virtual version of the car, while backup dancers repeatedly dent it using golf clubs.
In Reputation, considered by Swifties to be a powerful album about secrecy and protecting one’s personal life, it’s fitting that the backs of taxis and Getaway Cars are literal vehicles for emotional journeys. She seems to deride flashy cars or at least what they symbolize, as she says in the track “King of My Heart,” that “Boys in expensive cars with Range Rovers and Jaguars, never took me quite where you do.” The album also deals with the challenges of fame, and one illustration of this is her persona in the “Look What You Made Me Do” music video, who crashes a Bugatti Veyron supercar—again, done with computer graphics. In the “Delicate” music video, she jumps over a 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special.
One of the most anticipated moments of the Eras tour concert comes early on, when Taylor asks, “Do you know the lyrics to this bridge?,” in the Lover segment. The bridge of “Cruel Summer” has fans singing along: “I’m drunk in the back of the car…” One of my favorite lines has Taylor making an offer “casually in the car” to stay at her place in “Cornelia Street.”
With the folklore and evermore albums, Taylor turned to more fictional narratives in an exploratory attempt to broaden her songwriting horizons. A continuation of cars featuring as venues of secrecy and memories is seen in the lyric “to kiss in cars and downtown bars” in “Cardigan.” In the iconic bridge of “champagne problems,” she mentions one’s “Midas touch on the Chevy door.” Perhaps in a callback to her country roots or the places she grew up in, she mentions trucks in “no body no crime” and “‘tis the damn season” – songs on opposite poles of the thematic spectrum. In “Cowboy like me,” perhaps she speaks for all of us when her persona sings that she “never wanted love, just a fancy car.” Finally, she dives into memory in a song about Marjorie, her grandmother, where she recalls taking a “car ride home and up the stairs.” Lastly, a notable line from the vengeful declaration “Vigilante Sh*t” from the album “Midnights,” is when Taylor says that an enemy’s ex-wife “looks so pretty, driving in your Benz.” Taylor herself seems to like her Benzes, as she reportedly owns a G-Class and an S-Class.
The variety of ways in which Taylor uses cars to convey diverse stories in her lyrics is a testament to her creativity and the reason why so many all over the world resonate with her music. I, for one, will be excitedly awaiting any mentions in her upcoming album! -BY ALEXANDRA C. ANG
