Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you’re in my head? Cause I know that it’s delicate.
Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Isn’t it?
These are some lyrics from a Taylor Swift song called Delicate.
As you see them, you might experience any range of emotions — from delight to disgust and anything in between. Like any musician, Taylor Swift is a polarizing figure.
But when I see these lyrics, there’s only one thing in my head.
The pounding drumbeat that serves as a baseline for the entire song.
It’s hard to put a drumbeat into words, but my best approximation would be as follows.
BOOM. Ba da ba. BOOM. Ba da ba.
The drumbeat is persistent enough to be annoying, yet not overpowering enough to be a nuisance.
Over the course of the four-minute song, you could even get used to it. Like the hum of a clothes dryer or the whoosh of cars on a nearby highway, it might sink into the background after a while.
That might work for you. But not for me.
Each time I hear that song, that beat takes over. And much like an Eskimo in the middle of the Arizona desert, I get the feeling that it’s out of place.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved listening to music.
My first memory was sitting in the back of my parents’ station wagon, listening to You Can’t Always Get What You Want from the Rolling Stones.
I must have been a year old, or even less. I know I was young because I remember thinking the song was about hot air balloons. (Perhaps because of the heavenly choir solo at the start of it.)
As I grew older, my tastes evolved. Soon, I was listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Then the Gin Blossoms and the Goo Goo Dolls. Then Hip-Hop and rap.
And eventually, I turned my attention to Reggaetón.
I was in high school at this time. I had just gotten my driver’s license, and I was taking any opportunity I could to get behind the wheel. The radio was my soundtrack for these expeditions.
Unfortunately for me, the Emo trend was in full swing at this point. So, the alt-rock stations I’d grown up listening to were serving up a never-ending buffet of whiny music by bands with names like My Chemical Romance, New Found Glory and Plain White T’s.
That was the last thing I wanted to listen to. So, I flipped over to the Spanish language station — which was starting to feature Reggaetón.
I was immediately drawn to the underlying drumbeat.
BOOM. Ba da ba. BOOM. Ba da ba.
The Reggaetón artists would rap over the beat in barely intelligible Spanish. I was taking Spanish classes in school, but that didn’t help me understand the lyrics one bit. There was too much slang, and too many of the words were slurred.
Still, it didn’t matter. The beat had me hooked. And that was all I needed.
I listened to Reggaetón incessantly for a year or two. Then, I stumbled upon some translations of the lyrics to some of the hit songs.
I recoiled in horror.
That slurred, slang-filled Spanish I was hearing in these songs? It was full of offensive and misogynistic references. I would even go so far as to say some of these lyrics graphically described sexual assault.
I’d had enough.
I deleted the Reggaetón from my music collection and said goodbye to that distinctive and addictive beat.
Or so I thought.
When I first heard Delicate, I was perplexed. What was Taylor Swift doing with the Reggaetón beats I’d listened to nearly more than a decade earlier?
It didn’t seem to fit.
Here was Taylor Swift — singer-songwriter turned country star turned pop icon — mixing some Caribbean beats into her latest hit. But not just any island drumline.
No, one of the most powerful women in music was appropriating the same beat artists once used to denigrate women.
It was absurd.
What was it that attracted Ms. Swift to this beat, anyway? When it was first making the rounds, she was just cutting her teeth in Nashville. She most likely wasn’t listening to the same music I was back then.
No, the return of the Reggaetón beat had to be part of a larger trend.
And indeed, it was.
By the time Delicate hit the airwaves, the fervor from two other songs was just starting to die down. One was a Katy Perry song called Chained to the Rhythm. Another was a Luis Fonsi song called Despacito.
Those two songs had little in common — one was a disco-pop hit in English and the other a Latin pop hit in Spanish. But both of them were wildly popular at the same time. And both of them had elements of that Reggaetón beat mixed in.
Taylor Swift simply took the beat and laid it under her entire song.
It was the next step in an evolution.
As times change, so do tastes.
There was once a time when people used the word Swell to express approval for something desirable. Eventually, that term was replaced by words like Rad, Far Out and Off The Chain. As I write this, terms like Lit and Woke are in vogue.
This is no accident.
As our society is based upon freedom and self-expression, culture is destined to be a moving target. Trends are perpetually shifting, as we seek to explore new avenues at every turn.
Yet, we are still rooted in our sense of community. Even in the most divisive of times, our cultural experience is meant to be shared.
Family matters. Friends matter. Traditions matter.
The pace of change cannot outstrip these constants.
So, our shifting trends and cultural norms take a cyclical pattern. High fashion from the 1990s sees a revival three decades later. Young adults flee the inner city en masse, only to return in force a generation later. And a drumbeat used in some trashy Reggaetón songs one decade becomes the backbone of a pop hit in the next decade.
Looking from this vantage point, the drumbeat from Delicate seems less jarring. Its presence is simply a reminder that culture evolves, and our perceptions can shift over time as well.
It’s important to keep an open mind. To be aware of the constants of change, and to embrace them wholeheartedly — no matter how vulnerable that makes us feel.
For someday, it might not be a hit song that surprises us with its evolution. It might be something even more impactful.
It’s in our best interest to be prepared.