La Trobe

‘Betty, I won’t make assumptions’: The narrative jurisprudence of Taylor Swift

journal contribution
posted on 2025-03-18, 04:28 authored by Danish SheikhDanish Sheikh

https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/mclrn/research/publications/malr

In the early months of the pandemic, Taylor Swift released her 8th studio album. For a songwriter known for her diaristic body of work, Folklore was a notable stylistic departure. The album was marked by Swift’s attempt to incorporate other voices into her storytelling, written from the perspectives of figures both real and fictional. Amongst the most widely discussed elements of Folklore is a love triangle told over the course of three songs: ‘Cardigan’, ‘August’ and ‘Betty’. Each song is written from the vantage point of a different character, with intertextual references to the other songs filling in the gaps of the story and providing a connecting thread.

In this article, I approach Folklore and its central love triangle for the jurisprudential lessons it might offer. A jurisprudent is someone who develops a persona which cares for the conduct of lawful relations. In this article, I ask what forms of training Swift might provide to those of us who care about law. In particular, I approach Swift as a narrative jurisprudent, focusing on how she goes about crafting different personae, how she attempts to take responsibility for each of these personae, how she trains herself through the act of writing other selves, and how she trains her audience to listen well. I place each of these lessons in the context of Swift’s broader oeuvre as a songwriter, while also making a case for how they teach us to better take responsibility for law

History

Publication Date

2024-12-01

Journal

Media and Arts Law Review

Volume

26

Issue

2

Pagination

17p. (p. 148-164)

Publisher

LexisNexis Australia

ISSN

1325-1570

Rights Statement

© 2024 LexisNexis

Usage metrics

    Journal Articles

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC