Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
MarjorieTaylor Swift (2020)
Superfans of Swift, aka Swifties, love nothing more than to look for hidden connections in the songs of their heroine, Taylor Swift, the new queen of pop. Take now Marjorie. That beautiful ballad can’t just be about her grandmother, can it?
While it seems so clear and ready. Marjorie is an ode by Taylor Swift to opera singer Marjorie Finlay (1928-2003), her maternal grandmother. You can even hear fragments of her voice in the song. Swift said she always experiences her closeness and that her grandmother appears in her dreams. She’s not dead, she sings, and though she’s dead, she’s still alive for her.
In the Swift universe, every thirteenth number on a new release is of great importance, because thirteen is Swift’s lucky number. on Everymorefrom 2020, so it is Marjorieand on the plate before that, Folklorewas the thirteenth issue Epiphanya song about Grandpa Dean who was in the army.
on Folklore there was also a name song on which the Swifties could sink their teeth, Betty. He had a complicated summer romance with ‘James’ and there was another woman, ‘Inez’. Maybe it also had to do with the song Dorothea that on Folklore state, there it concerned a winter love. Would there be a triangular or quadrilateral relationship that transcends the seasons?
It can’t be crazy enough for a Swiftie. In that sense, they are reminiscent of that Bob Dylan fan who went through his garbage, trying to find out what ‘His Bobness’ meant anyway.
The fact that Taylor Swift – named after singer James Taylor – is releasing new work at a rapid pace is also good news for the Swifties. They can hardly get satiated and the group of hardcore fans just keeps on growing. It doesn’t matter what genre it is anymore, country, folk or indie pop. With the recently released album, midnight, she smashed all sales records. Ten of her songs were in the US top ten at the same time.
Marjorie was not a hit for Taylor Swift. The music critics did praise the song and praised the song as a highlight in her oeuvre. Magazine Rollingstone called it “a brilliant and devastating piece of craftsmanship, an instant classic in the Swift canon.”
And then there were the Swifties, and their look on Marjorie. Why would the song be about Taylor’s grandmother? Surely there were hard-hitting references to a mystery from the past. To another Marjorie, Marjorie West, a 4-year-old girl who disappeared in 1938 during a picnic in the woods. The last to see her was her sister Dorothea, also the title of a song by Swift. As further evidence, the number No body, no crime staged, because no body of this Marjorie was ever found.
What Taylor Swift of these findings of the Swifties finds, let’s guess. Otherwise, watch the video clip Marjorie. It is a four-minute visual rhyme, in which Marjorie Finlay strolls past as a Jackie Kennedy lookalike. Full of life, but no longer alive.
John & Paul