Taylor Swift is in a pale pink onesie when she gets the call to say that Reputation – the divisive follow-up album to her pop perfect awards sweeper 1989 – has received no Grammy nominations. After a minute, loaded pause Swift’s response comes, more to herself than anyone else: “I’ll just have to make a better record.”
Swift’s willingness to draw back the curtain generates grand appeal for fans and inquisitive folk alike.
It’s a statement loaded with repressed vulnerability (the blotches on the singer’s cheeks are telling), but does an admirable job of staving off further signs of defeat. Swift smoothly, quickly turns this setback into an opportunity to grow. This kind of inward retaliation is the result of years of public scrutiny, and the kind of fame that comes with compromised privacy and a decent amount of personal demons, all of which Wilson (best known for her knotty but lauded abortion documentary After Tiller) uses as narrative milestones in this purposefully unpolished study.
With its hasty style of tagalong reporting intercut with slick concert footage, Miss Americana isn’t a sophisticated documentary, but Swift’s willingness to draw back the curtain generates grand appeal for fans and inquisitive folk alike (and earned the opening night spot at Sundance, a glamorous curio against the usual mumblecore offerings).
Any controversy that Swift has endured in recent years is acknowledged: body issues, her public dispute with Kanye West (including footage of the rapper’s Glastonbury set featuring a communal chant of “Fuck Taylor Swift”), and her absence of a political stance during the 2016 presidential election.
To hear Swift speak first-hand is certainly engaging – she is an entertainer – but nothing new seems to break through her barriers. Her armour is understandable (the line “I could build a castle, out of all the bricks they threw at me” from her song ‘New Romantics’ springs to mind) but shields us from what exists a few layers underneath what we’re given. Swift is only 30 years old, meaning that we may find a deeper, more nuanced documentary in later years. For now, Miss Americana feels like an amplified account of reality that will inspire fans but leave those less invested still curious.
