Taylor Swift/Headscratchers

""It's at this point that you start to wonder if Taylor Swift even knows how Romeo and Juliet ends!""
 * I may be the only person this bothers, but...when you're entering freshman year in high school, aren't you fourteen? I suppose she could've just started later, but it seems to be a generalized statement.
 * It depends on when your birthday is. Like, mine is in November so I started 9th grade at age 14 and then turned 15 during the year. Someone born in the summer or spring months could conceivably have turned 15 before the start of the school year.
 * It could also depend on the school district in question; for example, the cutoff date in my school district was around September 30th. My birthday being in June, I was a fourteen-year old throughout my entire freshman year. Having a birthday during summer break also meant none of my classmates ever wished me a happy birthday, but that's another matter.
 * Too little, too late, I know, but happy birthday.
 * Taylor's birthday is in December, so she almost certainly missed her district's cutoff and started her freshman year of high school at 15.
 * Not necessarily. My birthday's in December, and I started freshman year when I was 13. Then again, it may differ from state to state, so you're probably right.
 * Also, some schools only have three years of high school 10, 11, and 12 and 9th grade in considered still middle school. Though, I just realized, the lyrics say something about being there for four years so this may be kind of obsolete.
 * Maybe she started high school when she was 14, but the events of the song took place after her 15th birthday.
 * But she mentions that it's the first day of school in the opening lines of the song.
 * Or it could be meant less than literally; assuming you start high school on the normal track, then you will be fifteen by the end of the year, even if you're fourteen when you start.
 * I'm just going to say what everyone is thinking here. "Love Story". Romeo and Juliet. The Fridge Logic of the song when one actually thinks of what happens in the end of the play.
 * There's "Romeo and Juliet" the play, and then there's "Romeo and Juliet" the archetype of young teenage lovers. Good luck putting the genie back in that bottle.
 * Fridge Brilliance: The song is written as though Taylor Swift didn't know how the play ends... neither did Juliet. For all we know, they both die after the song ends. I think it works better that way.
 * What's even worse about that song? The Scarlet Letter. Has she read The Scarlet Letter? Has she read the back of The Scarlet Letter? Has she ever heard even the slightest thing about the content of The Scarlet Letter? Why the hell would you want to compare yourself to The Scarlet Letter? It's not romantic. It has nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet. It doesn't even flow well lyrically. It just comes across as her trying to look smart and cultured and failing, badly.
 * Love Story always came off as a parody to me, since both Romeo and Juliet and The Scarlet Letter are constantly misunderstood as romance stories, or their plots are used and altered to make romance stories. You see it all the time with fanfiction and pretty much any other version of the story that isn't word-for-word from the stories themselves, though R&J is especially guilty of this. I thought Taylor was mocking the people who think of them that way. Almost every R&J story you see subverts the Downer Ending to make them live happily ever after.
 * The Nostalgia Chick couldn't put it better:


 * Okay, so in "Mine", she talks about being a "flight risk with a fear of falling", and how she's the "bad" girl compared to the guy "in college with a part-time job waiting tables"... then goes on and calls herself a "careless man's careful daughter". Does that make any sense at all to anyone? She's a... careful flight risk?
 * Yeah, I do not get that either.
 * Her father inflicted her with some crippling mental disorder like Super OCD so she's careful and a weirdo?
 * Think of it in terms of romance. Her father was presumably not good at relationships and she picked up on that fact, so because she doesn't want to be like him she's careful not to let herself get emotionally involved in relationships (a careless man's careful daughter). She cuts out and runs before there's enough investment on either side to risk a broken heart (a flight risk with a fear of falling).