Taylor's Obsession

“You, with your words like knives and swords and weapons that you use against me” This is how Taylor Swift’s song “Mean” starts out. Freud would say that Taylor Swift has a bit of an obsession with phallic symbols. In “Freud’s Dream Theory” it is stated that “any manifest object which suggests penetration, such as swords, guns, umbrellas, snakes etc., can symbolize the penis.”(Freud 9).

Taylor Swift’s song mean mentions what could be classified as phallic symbols three times in the first stanza. According to Freud this means that Taylor has to quote the image “Vanity, self-obsession, sexual anxiety, inadequacy, inferiority, envy.” In a way, Freud describes almost every Taylor Swift song in existence. All of her songs deal with boys and the other issues described by Freud.




In the song, Taylor Swift mentions words with very strong Freudian meanings. She uses the words knives, swords, and nails. All of these words are very phallic in nature. In this song, people believe that she is addressing criticism from a song critic who used to be a fan of hers but is no longer one. This helps account for the feeling of betrayal that permeates the song and music video.

A Freudian reading of almost any Taylor Swift song will include phallic symbols due to what her songs are about. Her songs are always about boys, love, and sex. These of course tend to result in a large number of mentions for phallic symbols. In the song, Taylor discusses how mean a certain member of the male species has been mean to her. She then proceeds to discuss how successful she will be without him and in fact in spite of him trying to stop her. To conclude, Freud would probably like Taylor Swifts music.

https://youtu.be/jYa1eI1hpDE