Just Thoughts on Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me"

Ok, we've all been there. If you are an American human being with a television set and a pair of eyes (and probably grew up sometime after the 50s), you've seen a pop video that was entirely about the fact that the protagonist belonged with the attractive object of their affection. It's a tale as old a time, a song as old as rhyme, right?

Yes. It is. But yesterday as I was driving on I-40 I heard Taylor Swift's longing rendition of this theme on the radio, and I found myself thinking of the music video I posted above. I will make no excuses for the song or Taylor Swift herself; I am a music snob [generally speaking] and her pop is some of the worst pop. During this drive, however, I realized what could make this music video exactly the opposite of what it is (repetitive, overwrought, unoriginal drivel): the protagnoist should be a gay kid. Yeah, that's right. In the video, Taylor Swift plays both versions of this cute high school jock's possible girlfriends. Wearing a brown wig, she's the bitchy one. Looking like herself with big ol' glasses, she's the au-natural, practically-perfect-in-her-nerdiness band geek. (And hello? Hasn't everyone already seen Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend?") So the video should really be about unrequited gay love. The perfect blond jock-boy should be dating Taylor Swift. The person singing the song, living next door to Mr. Perfect, and writing him cute signs should be a boy. Then this video would really be interesting--and perhaps, could speak to a largely unexplored version of unrequited teenage love in mainstream pop culture. It would be marvelous and perfectly fantastic--imagine a boy singing the lines "She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts", "She wears high heels, I wear sneakers" or alternately, "She's the cheerleader and I'm in the bleachers." The song already matches up so well to this idea I'm tempted to sell it to Taylor Swift herself.

I dream of a world in which pop music has an iota of originality. Oh well, at least there's Lady Gaga.