Author's Note

Across many songs by one of the most popular artists of our time, a curious pattern seems to emerge : what if each song were secretly built around the central idea of a guest philosopher — a pop translation of a major philosophical thesis?

Once you start looking, the parallels appear almost systematic. So systematic, in fact, that it becomes difficult to understand how they could have gone unnoticed for so long.

Over the coming months — and likely years — we will reveal these correspondences one by one. It may take some time: we have already identified nearly two hundred of them, far too many to be comfortably dismissed as coincidence.

Every investigation begins with a clue.
So let’s start with this one:
“When I was fifteen and putting together my first album, I wanted to recreate the experience I used to have for my fans in a reimagined approach. I decided to encode the lyrics with hidden messages.”
— Taylor Swift, The Washington Post, October 20, 2022

Whether this was intentional… or not… is ultimately up to you.
Or perhaps we are simply reading all too well.

Each investigation explores a song through the lens of a philosopher: a red scarf as Heidegger’s ontology, a stairwell as Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, a desperate race to get out the woods as Heraclitus, a getaway car as Machiavelli, a slammed door as Wittgenstein, or a shade of lipstick as Deleuze.

Not everyone will appreciate this approach. But should a skeptic attempt to object — especially over dinner — you will find here enough conceptual ammunition to respond with confidence, if not with restraint.

Along the way, you will be guided by Professor Malek Merrywell, holder of a Ph.D. in Tetratrichotemnology from MIT and Chair of Applied Obscurantism at Harvard University, where he has spent over twenty years refining the art of making simple ideas unnecessarily complex.

Fortunately, his insights are immediately translated by his assistant, Gaston Blunder — disciple of George Carlin and patron saint of well-timed punchlines.

Each file also includes a letter from the philosopher to a Swiftie, a questionnaire nobody asked for (and nobody strictly needs), and, occasionally, unexpected encounters between Taylor and various philosophers in Ubers across the world.

Have a good trip.

And enjoy the investigation.