“Like a Key Had Just Unlocked This Forbidden Area”: The Songwriting Trick Taylor Swift Learned From Carly Simon

Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star on the planet, and she has secured that spot thanks to a variety of musical, promotional, and financial factors. Though, regarding her music, one of the biggest factors that has amounted to Swift’s whopping success is her empowering break-up anthems. Not only are they Swift’s most successful songs, but they are also her most divisive, and frankly they might not be so successful if they weren’t so divisive. Nonetheless, Taylor Swift knew these songs would be successful, and it’s thanks to Carly Simon’s hit single, “You’re So Vain.”

Videos by American Songwriter

Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” is one of the most famous, recognizable, and successful pop singles of all time. Not only was it fundamentally a great song, but the subject matter also fed tabloid magazines and fan theories for years upon years. That being so, Taylor Swift learned something from that song and capitalized on it. Not only do break-up songs reveal empathetic truths, but they also sell, and they sell well.

How “You’re So Vain” Clicked for Taylor Swift

It seems that a good chunk of Taylor Swift’s musical catalog consists of break-up songs. Now, we aren’t saying she or those songs aren’t original, because they are. However, they do fit into a very specific formula partially crafted and made incredibly popular by Carly Simon. Taylor Swift knows this, as she acknowledged the fact in her 2015 interview with Rolling Stone.

She told the publication, “It was the shot heard ’round the world that left everyone debating and wondering, ‘Which famous ex-lover did she write it about?’” “I’ve felt the ripples of that blaring public curiosity affect my own lyrics” and “After hearing that, it was like a key had just unlocked this forbidden area of storytelling for me. You can say exactly what you feel, even if it’s bitter and brazen,” added Swift.

Needless to say, Simon’s hit track burned itself in the mind of Swift and helped influence some of her biggest hits. Speculatively, it seems the break-up anthems Simon helped influence include, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “Better Man,” “How Did It End?,” and the poignantly titled, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”

In addition to creating some rather original hits, by taking influence from Carly Simon, Taylor Swift is adding the greater canon and tradition of feministic break-up anthems. And doing say in quite a catchy and contagious way at that.

Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images