Taylor Swift just got censored—by Taylor Swift
Hers is the latest in a series of celebrity self censorship. And although they address different taboos, the revisions all seem to go in the same direction. They move to align with the monoculture.
Those who affirm the monoculture do so for a variety of reasons. They might simply agree with the monoculture, but there are also carrots and sticks to consider.
Being accepted by those on “The Right Side of History” feels good and makes almost every step of your artistic endeavor easier, from financing to distribution to publicity. Alternatively, being rejected by the most influential tribe makes everything harder, and can sometimes trigger career disaster.
The monoculture maintains no official platform, but codifying its worldview is largely unnecessary because most of us know it already. If I hollered out a topic, you could probably holler back with the “right” and “wrong” opinions.
The monoculture affirms positions across a wide and growing array of topics including race, sex, speech, LGBT issues, and climate change. In Tay Tay’s case, she moved to conform with the latest iteration of feminism.
When the track “Better Than Revenge” was released on the 2010 album “Speak Now,” the song included the line: “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.”
Swift recently released a re-recorded version of that album, called “Speak Now (Taylor’s version),” in which the “Better Than Revenge” line has been changed to: “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.”
Here’s the change in context:
She's not a saint and she's not what you think
She's an actress, whoa
She's better known for the things that she does
On the mattress, whoaHe was a moth to the flame,
she was holding the matches, whoa
Soon she's gonna find
Stealing other people's toys on the playground
Won't make you many friends
She should keep in mind,
She should keep in mind
There is nothing I do better than revenge, ha
Variety weighed in with some pros and cons:
“Matches” is a less perfect rhyme than “mattress” for its matching line, “She’s an actress” (which was thought at the time to be the real-life profession of the woman Swift wrote the song about). But the substituted line is a better match for her feminist credentials as an adult, since she has often spoken in subsequent years about how women’s dating lives, including her own, should not be up for judgment.
Other artists have made similar changes in recent years. Due to concerns over ableism, superstars Beyonce and Lizzo scrubbed the word “spaz.”
And in 2018, Swift’s tour mate, Haley Williams, announced that her band Paramore would no longer perform its biggest hit, “Misery Business,” because some regarded the line “Once you’re a whore, you’re nothing more” as “misogynistic.”
In 2022, the band resurrected the song but Williams refrained from singing the problematic lyric (audiences sung it for her).
And the “Better Than Revenge” fix isn’t Swift's first lyrical revision. She deleted the word “gay” from the 2006 song “Picture to Burn.”
The old version goes like this: “So go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay, by the way.”
Swift changed the line in question to: “…That’s fine, you won’t mind if I say, by the way.”
Variety notes that plenty of Swift’s LGBT fans were likely fine with the original version, and the impulse to censor art leaves lots of gray area. Swift snips the word “gay,” but doesn’t touch the preceding line “So go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy.”
Plenty of people regard “obsessive” and “crazy” as ableist. The same goes for “stupid,” which also survived the edit.
Of course, artists have the right to revise their work, and sometimes revisions may be warranted. I’ve even engaged in a version of it myself.
When my wife and I released our feature film Little Pink House in 2018, we also made a cursing-free “clean” version. We engaged in the extra hassle and expense because we wanted the film to reach younger audiences.
It’s true that artists’ revisions predate the social media age, but social media speeds up the deliberation. In 2010, Swift and her team deemed the original version of “Better Than Revenge,” suitable for release, but at some point during the ensuing decade or so the “mattress” line became taboo.
Social media also adds new sticks to artists’ “should I or shouldn’t I” decision.
Singers and others like to cite “personal growth” as the reason for their revisions, and that probably does motivate some decisions.
But has new evidence against the “mattress” line suddenly emerged or are artists like Swift simply cowing to the loudest voices regardless of whether they actually represent the groups they purport to represent, and regardless if they have the best arguments on their side?
Whether any particular word shows up in song lyrics is less important than which ideas are being advanced and why.
The monoculture advances the idea that speech is dangerous. Certain words are so dangerous that reporters often omit them from their coverage of artist self censorship.
Which word did Beyonce and Lizzo delete?
Variety won’t tell you. Instead the writer offers readers this hint: “a word … that refers to physical disabilities but is casually used as slang.”
The monoculture pays little attention to the counterarguments, including the ones outlined by my collaborators Greg Lukianoff and Jonthan Haidt, that teaching people that they can be permanently harmed by words fosters fragility, anxiety, and depression.
And what about the idea that apparently sparked the “Better Than Revenge” revision?
Yes, there are right and wrong ways to assess behavior, and we can all point to plenty of ugly “wrong way” examples. But have pop stars and other artists considered what kind of world we’d live in if people weren’t judged on the basis of their actions, including their actions between the sheets?
Twitter may disagree, but experts across the political spectrum explain how our romantic lives aren’t just about us. It’s the kind of common sense conclusion that most people affirm, yet it suddenly becomes problematic when it pops up on social media.
I’m not so naive to believe that people choose their positions solely (or even mostly) on the basis of arguments and evidence, but it would be nice if arguments and evidence played some role in the decision-making process.
Culture makers can help or hinder that goal. They can call for a fair fight of ideas or surrender to groupthink.
But if they want progress in the real world, they might have to accept some flak in the online world.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
On the other hand, Taylor Swift was the one celebrity who refused to do ads for FTX, as she smelled a rat. So, sometimes self-censorship is a good idea. :)
Ha -- yes indeed! I hadn't heard about that.