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Student Name

EN106

Mr. Lester

DATE

The Fearless Writing Process of Taylor Swift

Following the research of the writing process on professional writers, I was interested to

understand the writing process of other professional writers in their own element. As I really

enjoy listening to music, I figured researching a musician’s songwriting process would be very

interesting and fun for me. Taylor Swift is an artist who is known everywhere in the world, and

one of my personal favorites. I have just recently begun to explore her music; however, I do like

the lyrics and melodies a lot and was interested to see how she comes up with them. The now

thirty-one-year-old has been part of the music industry, writing, singing, producing many songs,

and touring, since she was around fifteen. Swift has changed her style of music multiple times

over the years, starting with the country genre, moving to pop, and now, with her latest two

albums, a more folk-indie style. The singer has written on every one of her tracks, which would

mean many, many hours spent writing lyrics and rehearsing melodies. I wondered what her

songwriting process would be like, how it would compare to other writers’ writing processes,

and what it could tell us, as students and teachers, about the writing process.

Focusing primarily on the songwriting process behind her latest two albums, folklore and

evermore, I watched an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music. She mentioned in the

interview, that she wanted folklore “to represent spring and summer” and then have evermore

“reflect fall and winter” (Apple Music 12:38-12:48). Therefore, she had that mind going into the

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writing process and would drop hints about those seasons and the aspects of them in the lyrics of

both of her albums. She’s mentioned multiple times how she also finds inspiration in everyday

life and in different people around her. In the same interview, Taylor reflects on her song tolerate

it and where the inspiration from that came. She said she read a book that gave her the story she

wanted to write about, as she loves writing songs based on characters and relating them to herself

(Apple Music 24:57-25:20). Another aspect of her songwriting process comes from the words

and phrases everyone uses. Swift “really [loves] a turn of a phrase, or play on words, or common

phrases” and keeps them written in a folder to use in her songs (Apple Music 34:40-34:46). I

watched an episode of Taylor’s recordings from “Taylor Swift NOW: The Making Of a Song”

where she had a thought in the middle of the night, recorded it and showed it to her co-writers

the next time they met. They then went on to incorporate that into the song (love, swifties 5:03-

7:46). Continuing on with her play-on words, in the Apple Music interview, Taylor mentions she

loves “a bridge where you tell the full story” (26:29-26:36). Taylor keeps these words and

phrases and incorporates them into her songs, often with the phrase being the “hook” of those

songs.

The melodies and group work are another big aspect of the songwriting process. Aaron

Dessner and Jack Antonoff are the two who worked with her primarily on melodies and the

sounds behind the tracks. She has also written multiple songs with her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn,

who goes by William Bowery on her tracks. Swift bases her lyrics off her melodies. You can see

multiple times in the “Making Of a Song” episodes, her playing a melody on a guitar or piano,

and then changing the lyrics around to fit accordingly. She does this with Dessner and Antonoff

as well, them playing out melodies for her while she is singing, assessing what lyrics sound

better with the sounds and how the lyrics should be sung. She wrote a song with Justin Vernon

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on evermore and she said the process behind that would be sending lyrics to him and then he

would send them back with more lyrics (33:45-34:00). In an article with Rolling Stone, Aaron

Dessner spoke of his collaborations with Swift. The two had wrote on folklore together, and

ended up writing multiple other songs that continued the stories of characters from the songs on

folklore, hence the sister-album release, evermore. Dessner said after they had written several

songs, they had felt this “weird alchemy that [they] had unleashed. The ideas were coming fast

and furiously and were just as compelling as anything on [folklore], and it felt like the most

natural thing in the world” (Shaffer). Dessner felt that the two of them really had chemistry when

it came to writing songs together, especially on folklore and evermore. However, it is not always

easy to collaborate with people, and it will not always work as smoothly as it did with Dessner

and Swift. In group work projects for school, there have been many instances where I have had

to pull up slack from someone else who hasn’t done their part, which I can imagine has happened

when Swift has collaborated with other people as well.

There are many differences I found when researching the writing process of Swift and

comparing it to the writing process of Donald S. Murray in Carol Berkenkotter’s “Decisions and

Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer, and Response of a Laboratory Rat:

Or, Being Protocoled”. Swift writes songs, therefore, she has melodies behind it, instruments,

and “hooks” that she wants her listeners to pick up on and never forget. Murray writes papers for

academic journals or newspapers, so he is given a task on what to write on, plans accordingly,

then writes down and revises/edits. Upon this difference, Taylor writing for millions of fans and

Murray writing for academic journals, the writing processes can be and are very different. Swift

has to reach many different people with her music, people of any and all ages and demographics.

Her music, that she produces and is personal to her, is understandably not going to reach every

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single person who comes across it. However, she is a celebrity, and celebrities like to please the

people who listen to their music and provide them with tunes they can enjoy and listen to.

Therefore, she has to work to ensure her writing will be appropriate for everyone it comes across,

and “good enough” to please everyone else. In a platform where she is in the spotlight twenty-

four/seven and everyone knows her name, she is meant to represent a certain image, and has to

put her work on display for anyone to read. This is vastly different from Murray as he writes for

a very specific audience and has an academic purpose behind his writing. This means his

audience is more inclined to understand his writing or be familiar with it or him (on a personal

level, rather than fan-like). His work is also not likely to reach people outside of the specific

academic journal audience, and if it did, it would not matter all that much to the rest of the world.

Another difference of their writing processes is the simple fact that Swift has to follow the

melody of her song and Murray has more freedom to construct his prose. This does not

necessarily mean that one is easier than the other, as Taylor has the freedom to write about

anything she wants or can think of, whereas Murray is set to one category, and more often than

not, one specific prompt.

Apart from this difference, and any other differences that we would come across in their

writing processes, there are some similarities within them as well. One major similarity I noticed

was that they both do the “revision” process during the entire making of their pieces. Murray

would be in the middle of writing his piece and then decide he wanted to change something up,

or reorganize what he was doing, often going back to the planning process. As I mentioned

before, Swift would have lyrics written, then get to the melodies and alter it to fit accordingly. In

another case study I researched by Nancy Sommers on the difference between student writers

and experienced writers, Sommers wrapped up revision as defined by the experienced writers as

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“a ‘constant process,’ that they feel as if (they) ‘can go on forever’” (Sommers 384). This shows

that the experienced writers, too, do not view revision as a single-way, one-and-done step in the

writing process, that it can happen whenever and constantly. Another similarity I found within

Sommers’ writing process case study and the writing process of Taylor Swift was within the

results of the student writers. Sommers found that the student writers put a lot of emphasis on

words when writing, changing words, deleting words, and using them (Sommers 381). This is

similar to Swift because she bases a lot of her songs around words or phrases she picks up in

everyday life, as I have mentioned earlier in this piece. While they both put a lot of importance

and emphasis into words, they do so in different ways. Swift hears words she likes; sometimes

difficult words like “epiphany” and likes to make songs that follow that word or make the word

fit in with the story she is writing about. The student writers, during their revision process, go

over words, and find they don’t fit right and want to change or add something else. The student

writers emphasize words on an editing scale, to make the text flow better, and Swift’s is more of

a creative inspiration process.

Swift and Murray also mentioned that they did not like processes where they felt that

they had to follow rules. On Swift’s latest two albums, she described the writing process as

throwing the checklist away and asking herself “what would [her] work sound like if [she] took

away all of [her] fear-based check-listing that” she had put on herself (15:28-15:58). Swift felt

that folklore and evermore opened the door for her creatively. When Murray was placed in an

unfamiliar environment and was forced to write an essay in one hour, he said that he had “rarely

felt so completely trapped and so inadequate” and that he “had a desperate desire to please”

(Berkenkotter, Murray 169).

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Following this topic of Swift and Murray’s desire to not have to be set in a certain box or

forced to do things they did not want to do; I believe Swift revisiting her album Fearless is an

important topic to mention. Taylor was owned by a company who controlled a lot of what she

did, from writing music, to even aspects of her personal life. When she released Fearless,

initially in 2008, her company got majority of the profit from it and essentially made it “theirs”

not letting Taylor own it herself, despite her being the songwriter and singer. Recently however,

she got away from that management and label company and got a new one who bought the

records from them. Taylor wanted to revisit her previous albums, to make them her own and

started with Fearless. She re-recorded songs that were already released on the album, however,

she released other songs that the public had not yet heard. In an interview with People for the

release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift claimed that during the re-recording process, she

went “in line-by-line and listened to every single local and [thought] ‘What are my inflections

here?’” and mentioned that she improved on what she thought needed to be improved on (People

0:28-0:32). I think the question she asked herself is a common theme amongst revision in writing

overall. Asking yourself that question about your writing can lead to more things to write about,

or a better draft of your writing in the areas that need improvement. Swift also mentioned in the

interview that she wanted to remain true and loyal to the initial music and tried her best to not

change the lyrics on them (People 0:33-0:35). She plans to, and has already begun to, re-record

the other albums that she did not previously “own,” such as 1989, Red, and more.

Taylor Swift, Donald S. Murray, and Nancy Sommers and the experienced and student

writers have shown us that writing should not be a straightforward, follow-these-steps process.

They have also shown us that no writing process is exactly the same, and it shouldn’t be. We, as

students, can then decide what works best for us and carry on with our writing that way. We can

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also understand that because one writing process works for a certain situation/prompt, it may not

work for every situation/prompt, and that we have to be open-minded when it comes to learning

how to write and figuring out what works for us. As teachers, we can analyze the writing

processes of both of these writers and understand that setting up rules may make students feel

“trapped” and unable to write with their own creativity. Therefore, giving freedom can allow

students more opportunity to perform better, learn more, and have fun with it. This could make

writing a more enjoyable and, hopefully, efficient process.

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Works Cited

Apple Music. “Taylor Swift’s Songwriting Process on ‘Evermore’ | Apple Music.” YouTube,

uploaded by Apple Music, 16 Dec. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQacWbsLbS4.

Berkenkotter, Carol, and Donald M. Murray. “Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies

of a Publishing Writer, and Response of a Laboratory Rat: Or, Being Protocoled.”

College Composition and Communication, vol. 34, no. 2, 1983, pp. 156–172. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/357403. Accessed 1 Mar. 2021.

love, swifties. “Taylor Swift NOW - The Making of a Song.” YouTube, uploaded by Taylor

Swift NOW, 19 July 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4WlSnWtkt8.

People. “Taylor Swift Says She Went ‘Line By Line’ on Every ‘Fearless’ Song | PEOPLE.”

YouTube, uploaded by People, 9 Apr. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAnbsUz1fOs.

Shaffer, Claire. “Aaron Dessner on How His Collaborative Chemistry With Taylor Swift Led to

‘Evermore.’” Rolling Stone, 18 Dec. 2020, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-

features/aaron-dessner-interview-taylor-swift-evermore-1105853.

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.”

College Composition and Communication, vol. 31, no. 4, 1980, pp. 378–388. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/356588. Accessed 14 Mar. 2021.