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Analysis and Interpretation of “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” by Taylor

Swift

This essay will be focused on the analysis and interpretation of the song “Miss

Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” written by Taylor Swift for her album Lover,

published in August 2019 under Republic Records.

Taylor Swift is an American singer and songwriter born in Pennsylvania in 1989. The

artist made her debut in 2006 in the music industry with her country album Taylor Swift.

During the early days of her career, Swift’s public image played to an ‘all-American, white,

good girl whose innocence has been proven’ (Pollock, 2014: 31), making her United States’

own American Sweetheart. In her early music, Swift relays in imagery to portray the vision

of American girlhood; as an example, in her music video for the song “You Belong With

Me”, the singer tells an unrequited love story about two high school teenagers, featuring

clichés such as the football player in love with the cheerleader and the nerdy wallflower who

gets the boy (Swift, 2009).

As her music career went on, Swift distanced herself from the innocent, country-girl

image to expand her musical horizons. In 2019, Taylor Swift released her seventh studio

album Lover featuring songs such as “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” (Swift,

2019). In this track, Swift goes back to her roots by writing about a high school romance

using once again American iconography, such as Homecoming, American football, and Prom

amongst other traditions.

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However, this song can be interpreted as a metaphor for the American political

environment of the time. In 2016, the Republican Donald Trump won the election against the

Democrats led by Hillary Clinton. During his candidacy and posterior presidency, Donald

Trump’s discourse became harsher, building arguments based on threats and violent speeches

directed at racial, ethnic, and religious minorities who became targets of his verbal attacks

(Nacos, Shapiro, Bloch-Elkon, 2020: 2). With his punitive rhetoric, Trump managed to

distinguish between his ‘loyal ingroup’ and the ‘disloyal outgroup’, polarising those who

subscribed to his same ideas and using as scapegoats those who did not (Nacos, Shapiro,

Bloch-Elkon, 2020: 2).

Moreover, to understand the metaphoric sense of the song, the lyrics must be

analysed. Swift writes “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” from a first-person

perspective. In the first verse, line 2, she references the age of 16, the age when she released

her first self-titled album. As mentioned before, during 2006 she was presented to the media

and the public as the ‘girl next door’, an innocent, all-American girl (Pollock, 2014: 31),

which also included not speaking up about politics, as she touched upon in an interview for

TIME in 2012: ‘I follow it, and I try to keep myself as educated and informed as possible.

But I don’t talk about politics because it might influence other people’ (Macsai, 2012). In this

sense, Swift might be referencing her love for her country and culture in the lyrics ‘I’m

crazier for you/ than I was at 16’ (Swift, 2019: lines 1-2). Is in this verse where the

songwriter establishes the metaphor, reiterating that the first-person perspective might be her

as the lines ‘lost in a film scene/ waving homecoming queens, marching band playing/ I’m

lost in the lights’ (Swift, 2019: l. 1-3) allude to her rise to fame.
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In that same first verse, Swift sings ‘American glory faded before me’ (Swift, 2019:

l.4), which can be understood as the disappointment the singer might have felt about the new

Republican presidency led by Donald Trump which was preceded by the Democrat Obama’s,

whose party she seems to align with, thus, leaving behind a time of splendour. Swift

commented against Trump in 2019 in an interview for The Guardian, where she stated ‘We’re

a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent,

debate. I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy’ (Snapes, 2019). Furthermore, she

acknowledged the division the country was experiencing, saying Trump was ‘gaslighting the

American public into being like, ‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’’ (Snapes,

2019). In the second verse, Swift wrote ‘Boys will be boys then, where are the wise men?’

(Swift, 2019: l.26), a dig seemingly directed at Trump and his demagogy, which can also be

used to explain the verse ‘I see the high fives between the bad guys’ (Swift, 2019: l.22).

In this song we can also find lyrics that could metaphorically represent the loss of the

Democratic party, for example ‘I saw the scoreboard/And ran for my life’ (Swift, 2018: l.

7-8), referencing the tally of votes instead of the scoreboards used in sports; ‘My team is

losing, battered and bruising’ (Swift, 2019: l. 21) might also have a double meaning

depending on the lens with which it is interpreted, as it can refer to the team being the

Democratic party, or the high school sports team Miss Americana and her lover root for.

Lastly, Swift uses the line ‘We’re so sad, we paint the town blue’ (Swift, 2019: l.19,

37, 56) repeatedly in the chorus. This lyric can also be read with a double meaning as the

colour blue is used as a synonym for ‘sad’ and is typically associated with that same feeling;

furthermore, the colour blue is also representative of the Democratic party.

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After the album's release in 2019, Taylor Swift confirmed that the song can be

interpreted in two ways: the literal meaning of a high school romance or as a metaphor for the

political climate in 2016 when she told Rolling Stone, ‘I wrote it a couple of months after

midterm elections, and I wanted to take the idea of politics and pick a metaphorical place for

that to exist. And so I was thinking about a traditional American high school’ (Hiat, 2019).

The singer also explains ‘[...] in our political landscape [people] are just feeling like we need

to huddle up under the bleachers and figure out a plan to make things better.’ (Hiat, 2019).

In conclusion, Taylor Swift’s song ‘Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince’ can

be interpreted as a political message to shed light on the American political climate and

express her disapproval of the Republican presidency represented by Donald Trump from

2016 until 2020.

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Biography

Hiat, B. (2019). ‘Taylor Swift: The Rolling Stone Interview’. Rolling Stone. Available at
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/taylor-swift-rolling-stone-interview-8807
94/ (Accessed on: 5 March 2023).

Nacos, B. L., Shapiro, R. Y., Bloch-Elkon, Y. (2020). ‘Donald Trump: Aggressive Rhetoric and
Political Violence’, Perspectives on Terrorism. Vol. 15, No. 5, p.2.

Macsai, D. (2012). ‘Taylor Swift on Going Pop, Ignoring the Gossip and the Best (Worst) Nickname
She’s Ever Had’. TIME. Available at
https://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/19/taylor-swift-on-going-pop-ignoring-the-gossip-and
-the-best-worst-nickname-shes-ever-had/#ixzz29lV0bNx5 (Accessed on: 4 March 2023).

Pollock, V. (2014). Forever Adolescence: Taylor Swift, Eroticized Innocence, and Performing
Normativity. Georgia State University.

Snapes, L. (2019). ‘Taylor Swift: Trump thinks his presidency is an autocracy’. The Guardian.
Available at
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/23/taylor-swift-trump-thinks-his-presidency-au
tocracy (Accessed on: 5 March 2023).

Swift, T. (2009). Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me. Available at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw (Accessed on: 4 March 2023).

Swift, T. (2019). Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince. Lover. United States: Republic Records.