Like many other readers, I am also an avid Swiftie. I love seeing bookish posts that encapsulate how people relate certain Taylor songs/albums/eras to certain books, so I thought I would share some of my Taylor Swift/book correlations, one album at a time. These were all comparisons from my own mind, but as I have seen many of these posts throughout the years, it is possible I subconsciously thought of someone else’s comparison (fully accidentally, of course). Rather than try to capture the vibe of the album as a whole, I picked three songs from each and made bookish comparisons to those. Safe to say there will be some spoilers in this post to make my points, so proceed with caution! Let’s get into book recommendations based on Midnights. :)
While it is 5:50 p.m. while I write this, it’s time to discuss the concept album, Midnights, that was inspired by Taylor’s sleepless nights. I feel like this is an album I sleep on (pun fully intended here), but the songs I love on it, I love deeply. While I don’t love certain songs (Dear Reader, I'm looking at you),I love Maroon and You’re On Your Own, Kid as passionately as if I had written them myself. Midnights is one of those albums that I often forget about, though I adore it when I actually put it on and give it a listen. Writing this has given me the opportunity to revisit an album that fell to the basement floor of my Apple Music downloads.
Sweet Nothing is one of the most subtly beautiful love songs of the modern day, in my opinion. “You say ‘what a mind,’ this happens all the time” so casually squeezes the heartstrings. Someone being astounded by your mind is one thing, but it being something that occurs so often it is brushed off as happening all the time? That’s the love we all deserve. A book that reminds me of a pure love like this is Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. This book has a lot of haters, but if it has no diehard fans left, I am dead. This book follows the neurotic Sally, a writer for a SNL-type show in her mid-thirties, as she falls in love with one of the show's musical guests-Noah, a famous heartthrob that I highly believe is based on John Mayer. The book follows their love story, one Sally cannot wrap her mind around. Her insecurities and, like I said, neurotic tendencies, lead her to self sabotage and believe someone like Noah would never want to be with someone like her. The truth is, Noah likes her for her. He likes her mind. He doesn’t need her to be a supermodel that society would try to pair with him; he just needs her to be Sally. He wants (sweet) nothing from her. This quote from the novel depicts this comparison well: “Aren’t we all just looking for someone to talk about everything with? Someone worth the effort of telling our stories and opinions to, whose stories and opinions we actually want to hear?” There is a scene where Sally asks Noah if he knows what sapiosexual means. When she explains it is someone that is attracted to someone’s brain, Noah confirms that he is, in fact, attracted to Sally’s mind. This song, and this novel, depict the beauty that is a love without conditions, asking nothing of the other person except their love and company.
Lavender Haze reminds me a bit of Book Lovers by Emily Henry. Book Lovers follows Nora, a ruthless literary agent, who ends up in a small town with her sister for the summer. She is the antithesis of the perfect 1950s housewife that Lavender Haze pokes at. She belongs in New York City, being a cutthroat badass that absolutely kills at her job, not in a small town having a romance. In comes Charlie Lastra, a book editor Nora knows from the publishing world, who is running the local bookshop that his parents own while they deal with health issues. While editing a book together, Nora and Charlie begin to have feelings for one another, even though Charlie is staying in the small town and Nora has no interest in a life that isn’t in the big city. Nora is seen as overly ambitious, which fits the “I’ve been under scrutiny” vibe of Taylor’s song. The romance with Charlie, their newly dating phase that feels like a lavender haze, means a lot to Nora, but not enough that she is willing to change her life. This aspect reminds me of the lyric “all they keep asking me is if I’m gonna be your bride / the only kind of girl they see is a one night or a wife.” Most of society would expect Nora to give up her city life for the Hallmark coded romance, but this isn’t a sacrifice she is willing to make. Nora and Charlie split up, her going back to New York and him staying in the small North Carolina town, until Charlie returns to his city when his parents’ health improves. This love story does have a happy, lavender tinted, ending, without Nora having to give into the “1950s shit” they expect from her.
Finally, Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score reminds me of Labyrinth. While I ate this book up when I read it, I don’t necessarily think it’s the best read now that I have many more years of reading under my belt. It’s what you want from a cheesy, spicy, romance novel, but I don’t think the average romance needs to be over 500 pages. This novel follows Naomi, a 30-something-year-old trying to figure herself out in a small town after getting out of an unhealthy relationship, and Knox, the local bartender. Labyrinth depicts the storyline of someone getting out of a relationship and dealing with the pain of that, before finding themselves falling in love again. The song begins with “it only hurts this much right now,” which is how Naomi must feel at the beginning of the novel. Though Knox is the typical grumpy love interest, Naomi finds herself warming up to him, especially due to the way he treats Naomi’s niece that she is watching over. I don’t have many lyric specific comparisons for this book, but the idea of falling in love again after heartbreak is clear in both. “I thought the plane was going down; how’d you turn it right around?” may be exactly how Naomi feels about her relationship with Knox. At the beginning of the novel, Naomi is lonely and heartbroken, but Knox was able to steer the plane in a different direction.
With Midnights completed, I officially only have one Taylor Swift album left to discuss: The Tortured Poets Department. When I decided I wanted to start making my own comparisons between Taylor’s songs and books, a song from The Tortured Poets Department was the first comparison that was clear in my mind, so I’m excited to get to discuss it and finish out this series.
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