Of course, the character of Betty was first developed by Stooshe…
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[6.75]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I grew up with Taylor Swift; I’ve never known a time where her albums didn’t soundtrack my life and growth. The innocence of Fearless, Speak Now and Red helped me understand love and identity; 1989 and its mega-hits soundtracked my freshman year of college tasting independence and romance; Reputation and its vitriol soundtracked my tumultuous senior year, being outed to my parents, and my first break-up; Lover and its maturity came out a year after I graduated. I can’t help, then, but listen to Folklore in the context of another life juncture: becoming a “real” adult who can’t easily access childhood and adolescence anymore, and who instead remembers the feeling of it through nostalgia and stories. “Betty,” in particular, is a story about reminiscing of childhood mistakes. James, the protagonist in Betty’s love triangle, is “only seventeen,” and has made a mess of one his first loves. Taylor is accessing this childhood naiveté and intensity of feeling through storytelling, but because she’s singing the story as an adult, she is able to layer in complex feelings — longing, heartbreak, regret, and the possibility of redemption and forgiveness — that sound beyond James’s years. The effect is arresting: as an adult who has begun to have time and perspective to understand my young life so far, I’m only now beginning to understand how these feelings have manifested in my own life. Leave it to Taylor to portray that process in a song. “Betty,” along with Folklore, will be music that I remember as helping me continuously evolve and also understand myself when I was undergoing massive changes, and music that, when the world was on fire, was a source of calm and stability when there was none to be found.
[8]
Alfred Soto: By now critics have written thousands of words about the storytelling: writing from the point of view of the other gender (as if writers in every genre haven’t been doing it for a hundred years), the tonal complexity (as if this should surprise us given the source). I want to praise the craft: the stresses on first syllables (“ri-din’ on my skate-board…”), the way the song comes to a stop at its chorus, as if to courteously allow the audience time to catch up. Yes, Taylor Swift wrote well in 2008. She’s writing better.
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: It’s a well-written story song of the kind at which Swift excels, from my favorite Swift album in years — but the faux-Americana production is like an oily film on top of a dipping sauce. And frankly, I don’t need to hear her singing yet another song about teenagers.
[4]
Tobi Tella: A seeming leftover from the Old Taylor, the harmonica and guitar are welcome in the cohesive, lo-fi pretending-not-to-be-pop production of Folklore. The intentional immaturity is a great move for her, honestly; we’ve seen over the years that there’s always been a love for… silly lyrics, and writing as a 17-year-old gets all those out while still crafting something meaningful. It’s broad and goofy, but I can’t pretend hearing that hackneyed key change for the first time didn’t feel amazing.
[8]
Juana Giaimo: “Betty” is alright. It’s probably one of the the most delicate country songs Taylor has ever written, but when I compare it to the rest of Folklore it sounds quite plain. Although it’s about a painful situation, it has a warm and bright feeling which I enjoy. It sounds as if the song still retains some of that adolescent innocence — note that she sings “I’m only seventeen” in present tense and not in past tense. Still, I don’t think I’ll get used to the harmonica.
[7]
Alex Clifton: It sounds like Dylan (the HARMONICA!!!) and is ambiguously gay, so it’s not hard for me to love “Betty.” I do not care if the narrator is a persona or this counts as queerbaiting. I am absolutely living for it. It’s really lovely hearing Taylor slip into an actual different persona. “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do” were snide joke-personas, meta-commentary on how the media viewed her as a man-eater or a villain. This is far more of a creative stretch for Taylor, and I think it pays off. It’s a vivid and interesting story, regardless of the gender of the speaker. In addition, hearing Taylor Swift sing “it’s like I couldn’t breathe” about a girl means so much more to me than I can say. I finally get my queer wish-fulfillment song where I, too, can be a love interest for a pretty singer who wants to win me back in front of all my stupid friends.
[9]
Michael Hong: “Betty” isn’t quite as apologetic as some would have you believe. At no point does Taylor Swift as “James” or whatever, actually sing the words, “I’m sorry.” She excuses with jealousy over a chaste act, insults Betty’s friends, and the best she can muster is a “you know I miss you.” The final chorus is one of the best executions of a key change in recent memory, a complete change in mood that coincides with future meeting present, Swift singing as if she’s already been forgiven. At 30, she understands people and relationships much better than she did at 18, writing something that’s ultimately human and real, the sort of fucked-up speech you could imagine a man giving instead of an actual apology.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Whenever people talk abut how extraordinary a songwriter Taylor Swift is I feel like one of those obnoxious “read another book!” irony bros who descend on people reading YA. She’s not the only lyricist to be overpraised — Chris Stapleton is perhaps her counterpart in country — but maybe the one with the greatest gap between praise and reality, the most exponential of grading curves. “Betty” certainly isn’t awful; it’s just mundane. Writing from the perspective of a guy? Alight upon any Kate Bush album, or any given female novelist. Swift gives James a generosity and interiority that the average teenage boy lacks — the average actual James, asked to write about his actual Betty, would produce a blackbear screed. This means “Betty” is nowhere as creepy as it may have been from a man’s keyboard — the potentially stalky aspect of crashing Betty’s party and doorstep is played down, the assumption the guy’s the cause of and solution to her “broken wings” is the sole trace of male ego, and even the careful talking around cheating, the decisions that preceded “days turned into nights,” registers less. But this also makes “Betty” unconvincing as character writing: Taylor-as-James is indistinguishable from Taylor-as-Taylor. (Which may be the point, I realize.) The details, supposedly paid attention to, are alternately mundane and cliche; the money lines are borrowed (here, from Sam Cooke and Simon & Garfunkel). The “what if I showed up at your party”/”psyche, I actually did!” twist at the end is the stockest of stock — if it doesn’t have a name, I propose Vertical Horizoning — which lessens the effect. “Cardigan”/”car again” is the kind of rhyme Folklore may well have been written around, but too much of “Betty” is less craft than draft. As for the music, it’s even more of the beige filler it really seemed like Swift had finally torn herself from, except this time paired with a Charlotte Russe version of a Dylan harmonica and a chorus of soporific, unchanging “Tom’s Diner” singsong. The melody just drones, and perhaps if you’re being generous you could say it’s meant to resemble the drone tone of the apology a 17-year-old boy might make. But plenty of generosity has been extended already. In its league — teenage love songs for the Sarah Dessen set — “Betty” is decent, perhaps good. But the critical world’s elevated Taylor Swift to different standards; perhaps they should actually hold her to them.
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