What Can TikTok Teach Us About Poetic Devices in Taylor Swift’s Lyrics?
At school we spend a lot of time identifying poetic devices in all kinds of poetry, but never songs. Searching for the tools songwriters use is a great way to strengthen our technical vocabulary.
Meet Dana Schwartz
Dana Schwartz is a #1 New York Times best-selling author, writer for television and film, and host of the history podcast Noble Blood. Schwartz has written two romance novels, Immortality and Anatomy, the latter of which received Reese's Book Club 2022 Winter Young Adult Pick.
Schwartz also makes TikTok videos including a series on her favourite poetic devices in Taylor Swift’s lyrics. We’ll use her videos to help us understand some fantastic poetic devices.
Zeugma
Zeugma (sometimes called syllepsis) occurs when one word, usually a verb, has two different meanings with two different parts of the sentence. Of these two meanings, one is usually figurative whilst the other is literal. Some examples of this include: “She broke my heart and my car” or “I was floating in uncertainty and the sea.” In each of these cases the first half should be interpreted metaphorically or idiomatically, and the second half is literal.
Let’s see what Schwartz has to say about zeugma in Taylor Swift’s songs:
Note: Schwartz corrects herself in a subsequent video that “fancy me not fancy stuff” is an example of antanaclasis rather than zeugma, more on that below!
Antanaclasis
Antanaclasis is a type of pun. Similar to zeugma, this technique also involves a word being interpreted with two different meanings, but this time the word is actually repeated so it appears twice in the sentence. An example from pop icon Miley Cyrus is “those wasted nights weren’t wasted” (Used to be Young, 2023) where “wasted” first means “drunk” then means “underutilised”.
Antithesis
Antithesis occurs when two related - but opposite - words appear in close proximity to each other making the comparison between the two very clear. An example of this is “I couldn’t pay the price, but love is free” where “price” and “free” are contradictory ideas.
Let’s see how Taylor Swift uses this:
Further Reading Listening
Analysing the lyrics of our favourite songs is a fun and approachable way to practice identifying poetic techniques. We encourage you to try this out with some music you like, maybe you’ll even unlock extra meaning in the songs you love!
Dana Schwartz has more of these wonderful videos that can be found in her playlist here.