Modernity
Modernity as the cultural-historical register the speaker pushes against - the modern, technologically driven, surveilled, criticism-saturated world that the Romantic poets first fled from in their century, and that recurs across Taylor's writing as the world she names, fights with, or escapes. Distinct from Digital Life (the lived phenomenology of tech): Modernity is the conceptual frame; Digital Life is the phones and screens themselves. The motif most often surfaces alongside cell phones, hunters, cynical clones, and the namedropping spectacle of public criticism.
The world built by industrialisation and technology - what the speaker is escaping from when she retreats into nature, the Romantic past, or a more intimate version of herself. The figure carries the historical weight of the Romantic poets' first flight from mechanised society, recast in contemporary terms.
Appears in 5 songs
“These hunters with cell phones”
Cell phones represent the intrusion of modern technology into the speaker's life, the tools used by critics and 'cynical clones' to pursue and tear down artists. The technology stands in opposition to the natural, simple world of the lakes.
“And we see you over there on the Internet”
“But you say it in a tweet, that's a cop-out”
“'Cause we were like the mall before the Internet, it was the one place to be”
“I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now”
“Friends don't try to trick you, get you on the phone and mind-twist you”