Nurse, Taylor Swift Is Rhyming "Aristotle" With "Grand Theft Auto" Again
A Tortured Poets Department Line Reading
One week ago Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. It was seemingly an album cooked up in a lab to appeal to me, and yet on first listen it was one of my least favorites in her vast discography. When the 16 songs concluded, I was left feeling annoyed at half of it and vaguely interested in everything else if I’m being generous. When she announced at 2AM EST that it was actually a double album with 15 new tracks, the delirious annoyance I had spent over an hour cultivating began transforming into dread. Great, I thought to myself as I stared blearily at The Anthology tracklist, time to clock in for another shift at the Being Humiliated By Taylor Swift factory.
I skimmed through the first few songs and, to my surprise, I found myself enjoying the songs at a higher ratio than its standard edition counterpart. Still, there was nothing so thrilling as to jolt me out of my resentment at trying to decipher lyrics at 2:30 in the morning. And then, six songs into The Anthology, God or some other higher power answered my prayers and gave the album a saving grace in the form of eight words and one of Taylor Swift’s funniest and stupidest lyrics of all time.
On the off chance that this post leaves my orbit, I feel compelled to issue a disclaimer — I am a Taylor Swift fan. I have been since 2008 when I watched the “Love Story” music video for the first time on CMT in my aunt and uncle’s basement the morning after my dad died. When I was watching a screener for the penultimate episode of the Apple TV+ show Dickinson and they needle dropped “ivy,” I began wailing so loudly I woke up poor Myranda who was downstairs napping in my living room. I learned how to get to East Rutherford, New Jersey for her! I will not entertain any accusations that I am a hater just because there are a handful of songs out of almost 300 that I don’t care for. In fact, this is a celebration of the thing from this album cycle that has infiltrated my every thought for the last seven days!
If you’re familiar with the tracklist for TTPD: The Anthology, you may have already realized that the song I’m talking about is “So High School.” Compared to the five previous bonus songs, “So High School” jumps out merely because it, to put it plainly, sounds happy. It also has real drums!!! Sonically, they nailed the atmosphere they were going for — the song would fit perfectly in a 2000’s high school movie. Swift is likely playing up the narrative that many have perpetuated since the whispers about her relationship with football player Travis Kelce began: this is a high school fairytale come to life. It’s a sugary sweet, corny little love song that captures the beginning of a relationship. But what I’m here to talk about is that bridge, particularly a line that has divided the masses.
“Truth, dare, spin bottles,” the bridge starts. Okay. Typical high school party games. That makes sense. Let me keep listening. “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle.” My eyes snapped open like that one Squidward meme. I paused the song and sat up in bed, staring at the wall and trying to determine if I had finally succumbed to late night hysteria and was now hearing things. I rewound the song to the beginning of the bridge again and let it play. The second time I heard it I burst out laughing, any resentment I may have felt towards Taylor Swift melting away into euphoria at the discovery of a phrase I was going to run into the ground. It’s so perfectly cliché: the boy who is good at sports and the girl who is bookish. Welcome back, “You Belong With Me” music video.
Those eight words changed my life. They were made even better by what comes next: “Brand-new, full throttle / Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.” Truly the songwriter of our generation. Now, you may be tempted to say things like, “This is the worst thing she has ever written,” or as one Genius commenter stated so succinctly, “goofy ahh line.” To that I’d say nothing can be the worst thing she has written until “Me!” (feat. Brendon Urie) has been wiped from existence. As for the latter comment, that’s what makes it so perfect to me. It’s just stupid (but I bet if Taylor’s daughter Sabrina Carpenter sang it as one of her little outros Twitter would eat it up).
I hate to defend Taylor Swift like this, but in the lead up to the release of TTPD, people (including me) were clamoring for her to return to the poetic, metaphor-soaked lyricism of folklore and evermore. When the new album was released, I saw tweet after tweet declaring that the album is too wordy, over-saturated with metaphors. She certainly did open her thesaurus and get to work on TTPD, but I will say it rings hollow compared to the polished and hypnotic writing on its folk pop predecessors. For me, the true issue lies in the neglect paid to the actual music — beautiful orchestrations sacrificed at the altar of impressive words slapped over a repetitive synth “beat.”
“You know how to ball, I know Aristotle” however, exists in the miniscule world of TTPD that I have been fascinated by. To an extent, this album is Taylor at her most genuine. The idea that this is the world’s biggest pop star thrashing against the constraints of her own “good” public image is, in theory, exciting. In practice however, there’s only so many times she can lash out at her fans for their parasocial behavior while still enabling their worst traits when she wants to sell an album before the words begin to lose all impact. She’s screaming get out at intruders she invited into her house.
The triumph of TTPD is the humor in Taylor’s songwriting. She’s always been a clever writer, but there were numerous times that I genuinely laughed at something she said on these songs. “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle” is funny. It’s funny for so many reasons. Why Aristotle? Well, this actually isn’t the first time Swift has referred to the Ancient Greek philosopher. The “cardigan” lyric “A friend to all is a friend to none,” is a quote from him. If you want to dig a little deeper, Aristotle’s Poetics breaks down the art form of poetry, defining the genre in the ancient world primarily through the lens of tragedies. Or maybe she just read Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and really liked it.
Then there’s the Travis Kelce of it all. He does, in fact, know how to ball. Many of killatrav’s Instagram reels have him walking in slow motion in some wild outfit. But I think we need to take her at face value and assume she means he literally plays ball. We also need to face the fact that she may be insinuating that he’s stupid. In my mind this is not a bad thing — I’m endlessly charmed by every unearthed tweet of his from years past. Just this week I’ve been obsessed with a new clip of him trying to read the word pseudonym in a sentence, skipping over it, and then Jason Kelce clocking him and forcing him to go back and sound it out. Again, this literally happened the other day. The notion that “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle” is Taylor Swift saying “You’re very good at football and I am very good at reading Ancient Greek literature” cracks me up. She could have just as easily written something like “I’m a Homeric Epic, he’s Homer Simpson.”
From this day forward, if anyone asks me my favorite Taylor Swift lyric, there will only ever be one option. Those eight words compelled me to write 1400 words for a blog that’s not even about music (though if anyone cares the name of my Substack was taken from a song lyric so I can do whatever I want). Long live comedian Taylor Swift.