We’re off to Rhode Island by way of St. Louis in this episode! We’re breaking down Taylor Swift’s ‘the last great american dynasty’, a track from 2020’s folklore and the final song she submitted for induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Uncle Jerry explains how his opinion on this poem changed from his first few readings, and Angela talks through her thoughts on the five submitted songs as a whole and why she thinks Taylor chose them.

Works Cited:

Blue Blood – Craig Unger

A Rose for Emily – William Faulkner

Rebekah Harkness’ Starfish Brooch

The Outrageous Life of Rebekah Harkness, Taylor Swift’s High-Society Muse – Elise Taylor

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald – Aff Link

The 100 Best Songs of 2020 – Pitchfork

Jacob’s Pillow

the last great american dynasty lyric video

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In this episode, we are covering the fourth song that Taylor Swift submitted to be considered for induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame—Blank Space. This 1989 track was one of her first pop hits, and Uncle Jerry finds the humorous and feminist lenses the poem was written through to be interesting to dissect. We’ll wrap the conversation up and talk about the songs as a whole collection next week.

Works Cited:

Tabula Rasa

Dactyl

Iamb

Yellow Rose of Texas

The Ballad of Jed Clampett

Gilligan’s Island Theme Song

Ballad Meter

The Gallic Wars

The Twelve Caesars – Suetonius – Aff Link

The Madwoman in the Attic – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar – Aff Link

Jane Eyre: Deluxe Painted Edition – Charlotte Bronte – Aff Link

The Yellow Wallpaper

Blank Space Music Video

Black Space Voice Memo

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We’re back and we’re kicking 2026 off with the three remaining tracks from Taylor’s submission to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Spoiler alert: she was inducted! We’ll talk more about that in the final of these three episodes, but today we are focused on Anti-Hero. Uncle Jerry wonders about Taylor’s psychological status when writing this song and Angela has an A-ha! moment about how the music cues us to maybe feel differently than the lyrics alone would make us feel.

Works Cited:

First Person Deixis

Charles Barkley Nike Commercial

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Brigid Kaelin on Instagram

Taylor talking about Anti-Hero

Anti-Hero Music Video

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Happy New Year! With New Year’s Day on our episode release day, it only felt right to cover this masterpiece from Reputation. Uncle Jerry unknowingly connects this song with many others, blowing Angela’s mind once again. 

We’re taking a short break after this episode, but we’ll see you back here in a few weeks with more poetry!

Works Cited:

Nine Princes in Amber – Roger Zelazny – Aff Link

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens – Aff Link

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway – Aff Link

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning – John Donne

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Merry Christmas! Sorry for the sad song choice, but it just felt right. We’re trudging down the road not taken with evermore’s ‘tis the damn season. Uncle Jerry isn’t so sure about this one at first, but he comes around by the end. 

Works Cited:

Trope

Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

The Family Man (2000)

Frank Capra

Autofiction

Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger – Aff Link

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Intertextuality

Fire and Ice – Robert Frost

Mending Wall – Robert Frost

Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe – Aff Link

You Can’t Go Home Again – Thomas Wolfe – Aff Link

Tis The Damn Season – Lyric Video

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This is one of our most requested episodes, and here it is, just in time for the holidays! Uncle Jerry picked up on something that Angela had never noticed in the poem, and they get into a bit of the Tay-lore about what inspired The Tortured Poets Department. 

Works Cited:

e.e. cummings

The Fates of Greek Mythology

Just Kids – Patti Smith – Aff Link

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do – Neil Sedaka

Water Lilies – Claude Monet

T.S. Eliot

Misery (1990)

Synecdoche

Epistrophe

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After all the talk about Romanticism in the last episode, we’re taking it to the New Romantics this week. Uncle Jerry teaches us all about the sociocultural movement of the late 1970s and 1980s called New Romanticism, featuring The Blitz Kids, the London club scene, and all the fun and freedom of the era.

Works Cited:

Neoclassicism vs. Romanticism

David Bowie

Boy George

Annie Lennox

The Blitz Kids

Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics – Dylan Jones – Aff Link

Spandau Ballet

Steve Strange

Best of New Romantics – Spotify Playlist

Road to Ruin – The Ramones

Heartbreak Is the National Anthem – Rob Sheffield – Aff Link

Adam Ant

Taylor Swift’s Manuscripts – Natali Barbani

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We are letting Taylor Swift take us to the lakes today! These are the lyrics Angela used to convince Uncle Jerry to do this podcast, and his analysis does not disappoint. Come with us to learn all about Romanticism, The Lakes Poets, and how Taylor expertly weaves those two into this poem.

Works Cited:

A Brief Guide to Romanticism

The Lake Poets

Lyrical Ballads – William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Aff Link

Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen – Aff Link

Romanticism vs. Neoclassicism

The Last of the Mohicans – 1992

William Wordsworth

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Dorothy Wordsworth

Dove Cottage

Robert Southey

Thomas De Quincy

John Keats

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Tales from Shakespeare – Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

John Ruskin

Harriet Martineau

The Lake Isle of Innisfree – William Butler Yeats

Sonnets from the Portuguese 20: Beloved, my Beloved, when I think – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Full Book Aff Link

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love – Christopher Marlowe

Hartley Coleridge 

Poetic Inversion

Aurora Leigh – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley – Aff Link

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – William Wordsworth

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We are finally covering a song from Speak Now! I’m so sorry to all the Speak Now stans that it took this long, but we got here. Uncle Jerry takes us through Taylor’s word choice throughout Enchanted, and how it reveals the specific fairy tale inspiration behind the song. Angela explains the lore of this being Taylor’s only completely self-written album and the moment that inspired the song. 

Works Cited:

Trochee / Trochaic Meter

Smiling Faces Sometimes – The Undisputed Truth

We Wear the Mask – Paul Laurence Dunbar

Caesura

Mending Wall – Robert Frost

Indirect Discourse

Metonymy

Some Enchanted Evening – South Pacific

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In this episode, we dig into one of most requested songs of late, The Black Dog. Taylor Swift mentioned in an interview that no one really understood this song, so we got Uncle Jerry on the case. Tune in to hear his take!

Works Cited:

Roland Barthes – The Death of The Author

She Walks in Beauty – Lord Byron

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Aff Link

The Malleus Maleficarum – Heinrich Kramer, James Sprenger – Aff Link

For The Love of London Pubs – Doug Harper, Vic Norman, Andie Lafrentz – Aff Link

The Pub: A Cultural Institution – Pete Brown – Aff Link

Polysyndeton

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck – Aff Link

To a Mouse – Robert Burns

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