{Taylor Swift

You Belong With Me

M.Raj

a

Lyrics and Visuals

She says: “She wears a short skirt, I wear a t – shirt.”Taylor looks in the mirror, upset about the way she looks. She wants to be loved for the way she is, therefore when the lyrics are about not having the right ‘look’ we see a visual representation of her as she is looking in the mirror.

She says: “Hey what you doing with a girl like that.” Straight away we see him with a girl

Then the scene cuts to her face. She looks upset because her lover is with another girl. The purpose of this is to make Taylor look like a sad heartbroken girl. Because her fans are mostly teenage girls this allows Taylor’s fans to relate with her as they too would be facing such problems and feelings of not being loved. This is also part of the star construction that most artists and record labels hope to achieve, through exploring and exploiting such issues that teenagers, especially the girls face, clearly Taylor has created a platform whereby her fans can come and relate to such problems and leave feeling comforted as these things happen to celebrities as well.

Music and Visuals

Throughout the whole song she acts with the lyrics, but when the chorus comes in, she dances to the beat of the music to add entertainment to the video.

Here, Taylor is swinging her hair in time with the chorus

The music genre is a hybrid consisting of a merge of pop and country. It contains conventions of pop music for example, it follows the structure to pop music, also it has an accompanying beat throughout and is aimed at teens.

Although country isn’t explicitly showed in the video, i.e. they are not in a rural place, there are some instruments that indicate that this is country music, for example the guitar and banjo are used throughout the son, these instruments are typical of the country genre.

A convention of country music is that it has a strong narrative aspect. Clearly in this song it tells a story through the lyrics and the music used to enhance this message.

Country music has changed over the years, adopting a more modern style, mixing with other genres in order to attract a larger and more diverse audience. Examples of artists are Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran

Genre Characteristics

To sum up this song, Taylor loves the boy but he doesn’t love her back. She is jealous and upset of the guys girlfriend. The guy breaks up with his girl and she is there to make him realize that he actually likes her

She looks modern, this goes well for her image and it reaches out to more fans because this is how a typical teenage girl may dress at a party

Notion Of Looking

She looks into her lovers window to see what he is doing

She looks into the mirror to see why her lover doesn't like her back. She believes it’s the way she dresses

The guy looks at her when she is unaware. Because she is unaware and he is smiling, this shows that he likes her, he is watching her. So you can see the ‘notion of looking’ is frequent throughout the video.

The music video helps sell the artists image. Taylor plays two characters in the video and both characters wear different clothes. The change of clothes allows the fans to see more of the artist and like them more for what they are wearing. The image of a female artist especially is important because most female artists in the mainstream music industry sell their bodies. Their image and fashion sense makes money for the industry and constructs the ‘star’. Also the fans like and expect such things from their idols

Also, through the narrative and the message of the song, Taylor Swift Is being promoted and an image is being created of her so that fans can relate.

Selling The Artist

There may be many references to other songs and or other things within this music video. But because this is a country style song, I am not familiar with this genre and the intertextuality it may have. Moreover, the song contains a narrative aspect, this may be the reason why there is less or no references to other things. However, the story itself could be a reference to many other things as the narrative is so typical in teen movies, movies like ‘High school musical’ for example.

Intertextuality