TAYLOR SWIFT – YOU BELONG WITH ME Andrew Goodwin’s Theory

TAYLOR SWIFT – YOU BELONG WITH ME

LYRICS AND VISUALSThe video uses a very lyrical dance style, it is fun and bouncy which works as an attraction to a more female audience so as to appear relatable to them. The costume changes also reflect the lyrics of the song and play on teenage stereotypes. This may have been done to further the relatability element of Taylor, making young girls want to be like her as they to sing and dance around their bedroom.

MUSIC AND LYRICS

The music in this section of the video is very bouncy and upbeat, clearly aimed at a young female audience as it feels like a song that you can dance around your bedroom to, hairbrush in hand. The visuals match up with the tempo of the music. In the faster bouncer sections the dance is upbeat and fun, then when the music slows down we see a slower more lovey-dovey- prom scene. This could be have been done in order to create an emotional connection from a young female audience who might be like Taylor’s character, showing them that they can have a love story like that if they just dress up and go to prom.

MUSIC AND GENRE CHARACTERISTICSTaylor has had a few re-inventions of her ‘look’ over the course of her career, this video comes from the first of many. At this point Taylor carried a very country, good girl image that you can see clearly in this video. The way her first character acts and dresses is very stereotypical of the ‘good-girl’ this could have been portrayed like this so as to keep her relatable and inoffensive so as to retain the key teenage girl demographic and keep them interested in her.

DEMANDS OF THE LABEL The label will be quite invested in Tayler upholding her good-girl reputation as this helps her as a brand being able to target the key group of teenage and pre-teen girls with out alienating or intimidating them. Taylor also plays both key females in the video, this helps the label to establish her as a brand as no other woman is focused on in any detail. The binary oppositions also highlight that Taylor is the nicer of the two characters because we see from her characters perspective.

EMPHASIS OF LOOKING

The ‘Male Gaze’ is personified in the male neighbour, her prefers the “cheer captain” to the nerdy Taylor until a clear transformation from the baggy tee-shirts and large framed glasses to styled hair and a pretty dress. This suggests that all a girl needs to do to get a guy, which of course should be her only aim in life, is dress up and go to a place you know he’s going to be.

INTERTEXTUALITYThe images in the video are very stereotypical of the teen-chick-flick genre. It plays on ideas presented in films such as ‘Mean Girls’, ‘Clueless’ and ‘Ten Things I Hate About You’ and even more recently TV shows like ‘Glee’. The mean girl cheerleader has the guy you want, she will get in the way of the nerdy, intellectual finding love. But low and behold when she removes her spectacles she is actually really pretty and the guy immediately falls in love with her instead.