“Haunted” is the twelfth song on Taylor Swift’s 2010 album Speak Now. It is perhaps the album’s weakest song, although in fairness, this is like being the slowest sprinter in the 100m finals of the Olympics. By 2010, 20-year old Swift had already released two wildly popular, ubiquitous albums, won four Grammys, and broken virtually every charting record that contained any two of the words “youngest,” “woman,” and “country.” With this success, she had officially outgrown the “dorky, earnest, precocious underdog” persona that had previously won her so much adoration, and the backlash had started to emerge. “Taylor Swift is just a random teenager who the music industry decided to make famous,” whispered the haters (probably while talking over a football game). “She was fun for a while but we’re bored of her and ready for the next thing. Plus her collaborators probably wrote all her good songs for her.”1 She responded by dropping Speak Now, fourteen songs written by her alone, collectively one of the greatest musical creations by a teenager this side of Mozart. It features her most ambitious writing to date, with nuanced characters grappling with complex questions about love, but also about friendship, fame, and the subjectivity of memory and authorship. The album is full of self-aware, anxious narrators reflecting on the way they are remembering specific stories as they tell them, from “Mine” (“Do you remember we were sitting there by the water?”), to “Long Live” (“I said ‘Remember this moment’”), to “The Story of Us.” (“The story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now.”) Swift was already somewhat obsessed with this theme from her very first song (“when you think Tim McGraw I hope you think of me”) but she runs absolutely wild with it on Speak Now. And of course, it’s all layered on top of her characteristically surgical, weapons-grade musical catharsis.
“Haunted” is a weak point though. Even in her new era, the song’s Linkin Park-style goth/emo-rock influences were a bit of a stretch for someone who had spent the previous year touring with a sequined guitar and showing up to award shows in horse-drawn carriages. And on an album obsessed with memory and how our past shapes the way we see our present, “Haunted” is frustratingly disinterested with the specifics of what exactly is haunting the narrator, instead treating the word as a throwaway that was close enough to rhyming with “wanted” for her to complete the chorus and move on.
Happily, this is not the only time Taylor has written about ghosts and being haunted by them. Here are five other songs that engage with the paranormal in a more satisfying way:
5. Bad Blood: “Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes/ you say sorry just for show/ if you live like that, you live with ghosts.”
Okay I lied this one is waaaaaaay worse than “Haunted.” First of all, on a purely structural level, rhyming “holes,” “show,” and “ghosts” is appallingly sloppy. Invoking the metaphor of gun violence to depict Katy Perry’s poaching of a Taylor Nation backup dancer is pretty gross, but immediately abandoning it and following it up with two lines that have nothing to do with it or each other is just confusing. And of course, we are left wondering what it means to “live with ghosts” in this context. Is the ghost an abstract manifestation of guilt and shame? Or is it Taylor? Is this a threat that if Taylor doesn’t get a real apology she’ll… move in? Utter nonsense. I also didn’t care for the pyrotechnics at this point in the show. They were scary.
4. Beautiful Ghosts
I think it’s best if we just pretend the 2019 Cats movie never happened. It’s better for everyone involved, very much including Swift. I’ve never listened to this song once and frankly I don’t plan to.
4. Ready For It: “Knew he was a killer first time that I saw him/ Wonder how many girls he had loved and left haunted/ But if he's a ghost, then I can be a phantom/Holdin' him for ransom”
Obviously Taylor Swift should never rap. There’s just no need. Rhymes remain sloppy, although “phantom” and “ransom” works okay. I do like the general vibe of Taylor identifying a nefarious womanizer and setting out to destroy him at his own game. But we’re still mixing too many metaphors here. The guy is a killer, but then also a ghost who haunts people (which seems very different from a killer, because now he’s dead and his victims are alive), whereas she’s a phantom (a ghost) who kidnaps people? Do phantoms kidnap? Or is it just that she’s going to drive him insane? T song is incredible live.
3. Would’ve Could’ve, Should’ve: “Now that I’m grown, I’m scared of ghosts/ Memories feel like weapons”
Now we’re getting somewhere. A fear of ghosts is something children usually outgrow, so it’s a very elegant subversion of expectation to have her develop it as she grows into adulthood instead. Also nice to tie ghosts to memories to weapons, which are three completely different concepts that nevertheless work together in a coherent simile, and which illustrate the way her regret for this failed relationship causes her physical pain.
2. My Tears Ricochet: “You know I didn’t want to have to haunt you/ But what a ghostly scene/ You wear the same jewels that I gave you, as you bury me”
This song is sung from the perspective of a ghost, haunting her murderer/undertaker at her own funeral. It commits to this bit completely, without ever changing voice or setting. And for most of the song, it’s just the ghost singing, over a trio of shrill falsetto voices harmonizing to make chord progressions by singing “hoooooooo” over and over. It’s a ghost song, sung by a ghost, with a ghost choir backing her up. What more could we want?
1. The Archer- “I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost/ The room is on fire, invisible smoke/ And all of my heroes die all alone/ Help me hold onto you”
I’m not sure I understand what any of this means exactly, but in context, it conveys a certain kind of desperate anxiety that makes this song special. She’s going a bit insane, making the room burst into flames that only she can see, and she’s realizing that the way she used to tell stories has made her think in a way that makes it hard for her to hold onto someone. But she’s desperate for help trying to find a new mode of self-mythology that will let her hold on. She’s pacing like a ghost, because SHE’S HAUNTING HERSELF!!!! She’s more haunted than she ever could have been on “Haunted.”
Next Week on Ghost Runner, Do Not Short Sell Eras Tour Tickets
Or at least this is what she said the haters said in her 2019 Rolling Stone interview. She does not cite a specific source. But I trust her.