Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift wonders why you have to be so mean. Not you, personally, but the person she's talking to in her latest single, "Mean." How do I know she's talking to someone in particular, instead of just kind of asking the question to mean people at large? Because I read liner notes to her Speak Now album very carefully. And here's what she has to say in the prologue that leads me to believe what I believe: "Each is written with a specific person in mind, telling them what I meant to tell them in person." Then as an example, she says, "To a mean man I used to be afraid of." There is all kind of speculation on who that mean man is, but all I know for sure is what I hear in the lyrics. That it's about a man who uses words like knives, has a voice like nails on a chalkboard, who points out her flaws and is at once a liar and pathetic and alone in life. She paints an ugly picture, but it's a quietly beautiful song.
