Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

by Chuck Klosterman

Have you ever stopped yourself from writing a fictional lyric because you feared it would be incorrectly applied to your literal life? No. Some of the things I write about on a song like “Blank Space” are satire. You take your creative license and create things that are larger than life. You can write things like, “I get drunk on jealousy but you’ll come back each time I leave, because darling I’m a nightmare dressed as a daydream.” That is not my approach to relationships. But is it cool to write the narrative of a girl who’s crazy but seductive but glamorous but nuts but manipulative? That was the character I felt the media had written for me, and for a long time I felt hurt by it. I took it personally. But as time went by, I realized it was kind of hilarious. It’s impossible for an artist to control how she is perceived. But an artist can anticipate those perceptions, which is almost as good. “A nuanced sense of humor does not translate on a general scale,” Swift says, “and I knew that going in. I knew some people would hear ‘Blank Space’ and say, See, we were right about her. But at this point, if you don’t get the joke, you don’t deserve to get the joke.”