Taylor Swift’s Eras are Peak Cheese Metaphor

Editor’s note: Taylor Swift is not performing at the 2024 Super Bowl, but you wouldn’t know it for all the attention she is getting. She will be at the game, watching her boyfriend Travis Kelce, and everything she does including what she eats and drinks will likely be televised. Rumor has it she likes goat cheese. But maybe some cheese dip is in order?

Say Cheese Taylor Swift — Say Cheese Taylor

Welcome back to Popular Cultures, a cheese round up series inspired by all things popular and cultural. You have now entered the Taylor Swift Era of cheese, which I’d be tempted to say was “a long time coming,” but really, it’s not at all. To be fair, in the first installment of the series, in which I outlined how various cheeses are your “Friends,” I did ask, regarding the possibility of a Taylor Swift Eras-themed roundup: “Are you ready for it?” And that was all the warning you were getting.

Whether or not you wanted her to, Taylor Swift has crossed your social threshold one way or another in the past year, either via endless Eras Tour videos on Instagram, as “Time Magazine’s” Person of the Year, or lately, coming to a football arena near you. And, if you somehow managed to avoid all of that, here she is now, invading your cheese media.

“Cheesy” is often used derogatorily to refer to an excessive display of emotion. But is that really such a bad thing? Taylor Swift proves, as many of us here know, you can never have too much cheese/emotion. Frequently mining her own heartbreak and insecurity as the basis for emotionally expressive song lyrics, to the degree which some — but to clarify my position here, not I — may qualify as cheesy, she leveraged that cheese to the tune of a billion dollars. So who’s cheesin’ now, haters?

1. “Fearless” is Mozzarella

Yes, there’s an album before “Fearless,” but in faithfulness to the Eras Tour zeitgeist, we’re also skipping it here. (But obviously, her self-titled debut album is cheese curds.) Released when she was only 20, “Fearless” propelled Swift into country stardom with her upbeat and earnest approach to young love. Not to overcomplicate things by mixing popular culture references here, but at that still tender age, there’s “not much of a rind” on her. There’s no rind at all, to be honest. Enduringly popular, however, and as America’s most consumed cheese, Swift’s “Fearless” era is represented by a fresh, rindless, but nonetheless beloved cheese: mozzarella.

2. “Speak Now” is Bloomy Rind

In “Speak Now,” Tay confronted skeptics who questioned her writing ability by making an album where she was the sole songwriter. We’ll call this move for what it is: blooming. We’re starting to get a bit of a rind, albeit a delicate, bloomy one. The content is starting to get a little richer as well. Nostalgic, dreamy ballads and typical young love scenarios are well met with a little revenge-fantasy and self-congratulatory edge, like a whiff of mushroom funk on an otherwise buttery cheese. As this is Swift in her country music heyday, we’ll look to the south for a little enriched, double cream inspiration: long live Sweet Grass Dairy’s Green Hill, a winning double cream bloomy rind from Georgia. (Silver Medal Winner 2022 NYICC)

3. “Red” is Gouda

While still marketed as country, “Red” is considered the Swift album where she starts to bridge her country roots with her pop ambition. A transitional cheese for a transitional album, we know all too well that sweet gouda also has the power to appeal to multiple audiences, grocery store cheese consumers and hardcore quesophiles both. Columbia Cheese OG Kristal (NYICC 2022 Gold), a Belgian beauty, also fits the necessary wardrobe choice with its lipstick-red, waxy exterior.

4. “1989” is Cheddar

Consider the process of cheddaring, whereby curds are stacked and cut, and restacked and cut, etc., expelling all the whey, and you might find a parallel with how Taylor Swift remixed and refashioned herself as a pop artist, shedding her country persona and bursting into the mainstream with “1989.” (Also with the cheddar metaphor, at this point she is making a tremendous amount of money.) Doubling down on her complete transition from country to pop, Swift also moved to New York City during “1989’s” creation process — hence the opening track “Welcome to New York” — and so in its honor, “1989’s” Big Cheddah is one from the Big Apple: Murray’s Stockinghall Cheddar. (Not to get ahead of ourselves eras-wise, but Murray’s can also be found on Bleecker Street at the corner of none other than Cornelia Street.)

5. “Reputation” is Ash-Ripened

Look what you made me do. Rising from the ashes from the media and social media backlash following Tay’s feud with Kim and Kanye, “Reputation”-era Taylor is a darker, take-no-prisoners Taylor. Not only are ash-ripened cheeses obviously “Reputation” girlies for their goth exteriors, ash-ripening is a centuries-old process used in the preservation of milk whilst it awaits cheesemaking. One could argue that “Reputation” was also Swift’s means of preserving her sense of self by killing off her previous, squeaky-clean image à la, “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh! ‘Cause she’s dead!” Dressed in black for old Taylor’s funeral, Capriole Goat Cheese’s Wabash Cannonball is giving “Reputation.”

6. “Lover” is Alpine-Style

On the cover, “Lover” contains some of Swift’s dreamiest, cotton-candy imagery, but written as she approached 30, with nearly 15 years in the music business behind her, “Lover” also demonstrates some of Swift’s most complex, structured songwriting. And, oh hey, there’s a perfect cheese for that: Alp Blossom (NYICC 2022 Double Gold). Coated with dried wildflowers, underneath its fanciful exterior, Alp Blossom is nevertheless a bold, meaty, and savory cheese with bite, and, it must be said, excellent loverability…I mean, meltability.

7. “Folklore” is Tomme

Released as a surprise album during the height of the pandemic in 2020, In “Folklore,” Swift goes indie folk, ushering in what one might call her farmhouse era. A type of French farmhouse cheese, tommes are small format cheeses typically made with skimmed milk, ideal for Swift’s acoustic, stripped down approach here. Rustic and earthy with a hint of teenage-love-triangle- sweetness, Vermont Shepherd’s farmhouse Verano gets “Folklore” honors.

8. “Evermore” is Spruce-Wrapped

While the rest of us were spending the end of 2020 doing puzzles and trying to figure out what to do with our sourdough discard, Taylor Swift went ahead and made yet another album. “Evermore,” was somewhat of a sequel to “Folklore,” often described as the winter album to Folklore’s summer. (Verano, above, translates to “summer,” by the way, lest you think I haven’t taken this project way too seriously.) Nothing is more cottage-core in the cheese realm than rich and woodsy, winter-milk, spruce-wrapped cheeses such as Jasper Hill favorite, Harbison. (‘Tis the damn season.)

9. “Midnights” is Blue Cheese

Come at me if you must, but Mightnights’ cover font is clearly penicillium roqueforti in color. But let’s parse this out a little more, shall we, since Midnights’ primary thematic element is the midnight tendency to overthink. This is the kind of stuff that keeps you from falling asleep at night, and I was never going to settle for just a simple color scheme in this roundup, so here goes: Blue cheese has sting. Midnights has sting: it is Swift’s sweariest album by far. Blue cheese is also rich and sweet at its core. In Midnights, Taylor offers up some of her most mature, contented, self-satisfied lyrics. Blue cheese is also highly technical, as is Midnights: guys, she pulls off quadruple rhymes on several lyrical occasions. Not to mention “Anti-Hero?” It is a theme for blue cheese lovers if ever there was one. Purple Haze and Midnight Moon were also runners up for this honor, based on relevant wordplay, but for me it had to be blue, and one with songstress vibes at that: Von Trapp Farmstead Mad River Blue.