Taylor Swift Chooses Chaos

Across five years of tireless activity, Taylor Swift has repeatedly envisioned herself in the shoes of doomed women in history and literature while coping with stress and public-relations disasters. Her folklore-era studies of tragic characters seemed to wonder whether there’s a Grey Gardens in her own future. Last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, which recounted Swift’s breakups with rocker beau Matty Healy and actor/co-writer Joe Alwyn, bristled at expectations and disappeared into fantasy. She played a gun moll on the run; she was a diabolical mathematician. The pithy “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” suggested she’d rather keep to herself and terrify neighborhood children like To Kill a Mockingbird’s Boo Radley than observe any cookie-cutter standards of living. But lately, she’s been getting her way in a year of overdue resolutions: She bought the masters for her first six albums and bagged a football husband.