Taylor Swift: More Irish Than The Irish Themselves!

Taylor Swift’s impact on the music industry is immense. From her staggering back-catalogue to the public reclamation of her masters, the GRAMMY-winning artist has, at 34, achieved an astounding level of success.

But it isn't just success in the ordinary sense of selling lots of tickets and records. It is about agency. About shaping your own life and narrative. About asserting control.

You might not have expected it from her opening gambit in the Romeo and Juliet narrative of her first big international hit, 'Love Story', released in 2008. Then again, you might.

"Romeo, save me," she pleaded, "they're tryna tell me how to feel/ This love is difficult, but it's real/ Don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this mess/ It's a love story, baby, just say, 'Yes'."

That was a happy-ever-after fairytale song, but even then you could see that she had the flow.

Sixteen years on, Taylor Swift's songs have been compared to the revered works of major artists like Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. As she releases, and re-releases, more work than ever, it is clear that she has yet to reach the apex of her songwriting prowess. There is so much more to say, and do, and tell.

And that's how Taylor Swift works. There is a strongly confessional aspect to her oeuvre, but of course, only from her side. That leaves a lot to be puzzled through by fans – and it will in the future too, when academics inevitably start furrowing their brows over Taylor's lyrics.

Reading between the lines is nothing new for Swifties. In fact, it’s a prerequisite: we see friendship-braceleted fans parsing lyrics like English majors, asking the why, what, when, how and, especially, the who of it.

But seldom have people asked where? Where does all this songwriting grit and might come from? Where did she acquire the power of her pen? As she gets ready to bring The Eras Tour to Ireland, in a country famous for its poetry and its songs, that's a question worth dwelling on.

TOUGH JOURNEYS

Taylor Alison Swift was born 13th December 1989. As Swifties will already know, Taylor’s immediate family comprises her father Scott Swift, a former Merrill Lynch stockbroker, her mother Andrea Swift and her younger brother Austin.

Like many Americans before her, Swift has a broad ancestry with Scottish and German roots on her mother’s side and Scottish, Italian and English heritage on her paternal side. But she also has Irish roots, dating all the way back to her great-great-great grandparents Francis and Susan Gwynn, who emigrated from Derry – in the far North of Ireland – to Philadelphia in the United States.

Together, they raised seven children. As was not uncommon in that era, five of them pre-deceased Susan and Francis. They were survived by daughter Mary Gwynn. Taylor Swift’s great-great-grandmother, laid the loving Irish couple to rest, a mere two months apart.

An epic love story, long before 'Love Story', Susan and Francis’ relationship serves as a wonderful reminder that love can help us endure the toughest journeys, a theme so often encapsulated in Taylor’s lyrics.

There is, it transpires, another Irish connection. Taylor's British great-great-grandfather George Findlay enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1866. He was posted on the HMS Flora in South Africa. There, he met a widow Emma Maria Whiffin, who accompanied him back to the UK. They had a son – also George – before the relationship ended. George Sr came to Dublin, and married Louisa Anna Darling in Grangegorman in 1880, recording himself as a bachelor. Maybe he was.

The Irish Family History Centre at EPIC museum has uncovered that the Findlay family had an artisan background in Ireland. For at least three generations, they were members of the Hosiers Guild in Dublin. Their improving fortunes can be traced from Phibsborough to Portobello and then Harold's Cross, on the south side of the capital.

With all of these peregrinations in mind, we've looked at Taylor's work for the best songs that speak to the tough journeys, to migration and the ever-enduring sunlight of love. This is what we found...

DOMESTIC BLISS

Young love means a lot to Taylor Swift. So does the sense that if things had happened differently, love that faded might have turned into something far longer-lasting. There is a generosity of spirit at the heart of these leaps of the imagination.

‘’tis the damn season’ is a case in point. Narrated by Dorothea, a fictional character from Swift’s self-woven universe, it is about returning to your hometown and running into a past love you had to leave behind. In the song, a historic fling is rekindled. While peppered with twinges of regret, ‘’tis the damn season’ deals with nostalgia and the way old feelings come flooding back. In a sense, the song highlights the difficult side-effects of leaving home. But it also captures the openness of a free spirit to a unique experience.

"We could call it even
Even though I'm leaving
And I'll be yours for the weekend"

The dropping temperatures, foggy windshields and familiar landmarks – the old schoolyard, the church, an old lover’s car – ground the song in a sense of place that both comforts and constraints. In '‘tis the damn season' there is acknowledgement of the value of young love. But you also know that the narrator has moved on. It is a big world out there, and she is on a personal journey, with – unlike Susan and Francis – no specific romantic destination in mind.

‘exile’ is also about coming back to love. It is one of Swift’s most interesting songs from a narrative standpoint. The two narrators in a duet, performed by Swift and Bon Iver (Justin Vernon), are torn-apart lovers pining after each other across the great divide of heartbreak. There is a fascinating metaphor at work: love boasts the comfort of home, and for it to end entails an exile of biblical proportions:

"I think I’ve seen this film before
But I didn’t like the ending
You’re not my homeland anymore
So what am I defending now?
You were my town
Now I’m in exile seeing you out"

Themes of exile and homeland are, of course, pillars of Irish literature. It is at least partly because of Ireland's long history of emigration that there is such a profound emphasis on attachment and belonging to a place – which too often has been left behind. Such underpinnings are apparent on ‘exile', which continually intertwines the inner movements of characters’ consciousness with the physical landscape.

Migration often involves heartbreak and leaving a relationship. It certainly does in Swift's songwriting.

‘Sweet Nothing’ is a song full of easter eggs for the Swifties immersed in Taylor’s romantic life. Joe Alwyn was her partner for six years. An actor of considerable reputation, Alwyn was filming the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, around the summer of 2021. Swift often visited him here, the two of them embarking on trips to Northern Ireland, among other places. ‘Sweet Nothing’ was co-written by Alwyn (who wrote under the pseudonym William Bowery) and follows Swift’s gratitude for – and appreciation of – the life she has built with her partner.

"I spy with my little tired eye
Tiny as a firefly
A pebble that we picked up last July
Down deep inside your pocket
We almost forgot it
Does it ever miss Wicklow sometimes?"

The song describes a kind of domestic bliss and does so beautifully and convincingly.

"They said the end is coming
Everyone's up to something
I find myself running home to your sweet nothings
Outside, they're push and shoving
You're in the kitchen humming
All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing"

But there is also a sense that it is all too good to be true, and that the characters being described will move on, because they can.

STAR-CROSSED LOVERS

'Cornelia Street' is another sharply-observed song about the indelible connections made between a person and a place, and the early-days anxieties that creep in when something good happens.

“I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends,” she sings, “I’d never walk Cornelia Street again.”

The happy memories of sitting on the roof and playing board games on the floor would wither if the relationship soured. The relationship did sour, but 'Cornelia Street' will resonate for anyone who takes the long way around to avoid the cafe where you and your ex used to go.

"It’s about the things that took place, and the memories that took place, on that street… all the nostalgia," Swift explained on the Elvis Duran Show. "Sometimes we bond our memories to the places that they happen. I wrote it alone and it ended up being one of my favorite songs."

No inventory of Taylor Swift’s love songs is complete without, arguably, her most well-known one to date. Which brings us back to 'Love Story’, in which Swift casts herself as Juliet, one-half of history’s most famous star-crossed lovers. The other half: Romeo, who she asks to “take me somewhere we can be alone.” She commits herself to him, even against her family’s wishes; all he has to do is say “yes.”

Everyone who has read Romeo And Juliet knows what happens next, right? Wrong. In a plot and key change for the ages, Swift softens Shakespeare’s tragic ending into a stirring ode to fated love. That reminds us of Swift’s great-great-great grandparents who emigrated to America with friends. Some invisible string tied them together and they married despite having first separated for three years.

The crazy thing is that without them, we would not now be talking about Taylor Swift. Nor ever. Thank you Francis and Susan.

The world owes you.

• Caroline Kelly will be participating in 'From Roots to Records: Taylor Swift’s Genealogy Journey' – which will be broadcast on Facebook/Insta Live, on the EPIC accounts. It takes place on Wed. 26 June at 5pm.