BY: PAUL MUHLHAUSER | June 15, 2024
Travis Kelce’s the jock who caught Taylor Swift’s heart, but she’s just as athletic, hitting home runs, making touchdowns and scoring goals with her lyrical dexterity.
It’s not surprising Swift’s most overtly political song, “Only the Young,” plays with sports metaphors. Though Colin Kaepernick’s protests against racial injustice in 2016 preceded the song by four years, his political statement has continued to resonate as a touchstone in American culture connecting sports to politics. “Only the Young” continues that connection.
The song frames political participation as a race, encouraging young people to get involved: “Only the young, only the young / can run.” The reason to “run” is put in sports metaphors as well: “The game was rigged, the ref got tricked / the wrong ones think they’re right.”
Besides building off the continuing resonance of sports with politics, Swift is actually being a politician. She’s taking part in the linguistic gymnastics politicians make in connecting politics to sports and using sports metaphors in their speeches. “Only the Young” is more than a political anthem. It’s a speech persuading Gen Z and Millennials to take part in public affairs.
Swift also uses sports metaphors in love songs. But they are less motivating and more, well, confusing. In “Reputation,” for instance, the lyrics frame love as a desire to win the game and be the “best” athlete: “I wanna be your end game / I wanna be your first string / I wanna be your A-Team.”
The confusing part comes with what it means to be “first string” and “A-Team.” After all, in sports there are second-string players and B-teams. It’s difficult to imagine Swift is being ultra-progressive about relationships where her desire is to “win” the starting spot in the context of a relationship where her end game or partner can “play” or continue to date non-starters.
The finality of an end game suggests that nothing comes after the win. It forgets the off-season, training, and the beginning of a new season, playing into tropes about finding a prince or princess charming where the end of the story is the “win” of a romantic partner, rather than the beginning of a relationship.
Another sports metaphor occurs in “You Belong with Me,” which came out in 2020. Swift sings, “She’s Cheer Captain and I’m on the bleachers.” The connotation is clear: Swift’s character is shy and not popular. In the context of the song, the Cheer Captain is her adversary in romance.
The Cheer Captain, furthermore, doesn’t “get” her boyfriend’s/girlfriend’s – the song never directly pronouns the person Swift’s character is in love with – humor or know him/her like Swift’s character.
What do you think about Swift’s use of sports metaphors? Are some uses of them better than others? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below!
