Taylor Swift’s ‘Champagne Problems’ is one of the smartest songs I’ve heard in a long time
Whenever Taylor Swift releases a new album, there is an immediate and inevitable buzz surrounding Who is Who in her lyrics — a game of Clue for her fans and the internet, writ large, to compete in. (Mr. Lautner in the Ballroom with the Candlestick.)
One of the songs causing a stir on Swift’s most recent release — a release just five months on the heels of her last album, Folklore — is “Champagne Problems.” On the surface, the second song on Evermore tells the story of a broken engagement, which is where, naturally, the guessing games begin.
What does the song mean? Is she engaged? Or as the lyrics lay out — and even spicier for internet sleuths — is she NOT ENGAGED?!
But I would like to take the rhetoric surrounding this song in another direction. Over the course of her career, Swift has made an impressive journey into one of the most self-aware celebrities. Self-awareness isn’t an inherently “good” trait, and for someone who has been open about her struggles with mental health, I want to make sure not to over-glorify a trait that can often lead to over-analyzing and heightened scrutiny of oneself.
That being said, “Champagne Problems” plays as one of the smartest and most interesting treatises on privilege, self-awareness, and who gets to suffer and how much. There fewer than 300 words in total in “Champagne Problems,” but each one of them packs a punch and has something to say about where Swift’s mind is now residing.
The phrase ‘Champagne problems’ is a more lyrical way of saying ‘first world problems,’ and it’s quite telling that we are now at the point in Swift’s career that she is even self-aware enough to label one of her songs as such. While many of us have always had time to indulge the stories told in earlier Swift songs like “Love Story” and “Black Space,” there was not always the winking acknowledgment that these songs were coming from an undoubtedly privileged source, and very often reaching an audience that shared in that privilege — that first world of problems.
What ‘Champagne Problems’ does is not just make that winking acknowledgement though, with the phrase being used throughout the song, it goes much further — and to a much more sophisticated question. Swift has begun to unpack her privilege in recent years, and what she’s doing now is reflecting on a question that comes out of that process. a question that many of us are facing now as well, maybe more so than ever in the current moment: I am cognizant of the fact that my problems not only look different than the problems of many other people in my county, state, country, but I also am aware that, truthfully, they do often pale in comparison to the problems that others have. How do I now reckon with my problems — that ones that do still exist — in the light of that knowledge?
For the vast majority of people reading this, you have had a harder year in 2020 than you have quite possibly had in your entire life. At the same time, there is certainly someone who has had it worse.
Swift lays into this exact dichotomy with the repeated use of the phrase ‘Champagne problems’ in the lyrics.
The first time she uses the phrase, it comes when all the listener knows is that the singer has left another person ‘standing crestfallen on the landing’ — that certainly seems like a first world problem. In three words “on the landing,” Swift is able to place us in an upper-class world of ballrooms and gowns and landings to stand crestfallen on.
However, just four lines later, she has clarified the picture: the singer has broken off an engagement — something that undoubtedly qualifies as more than just a ‘Champagne problem,’ no matter your class, race, or social standing.
She continues to vacillate between seemingly appropriate uses of the phrase (having to deal with people saying “I told you so” about the broken engagement; first world problem) to legitimately profound issues anyone might face and are far from ‘Champagne problems’ (talking about the loss of decade-long friendships for both sides of a couple that often accompany a broken engagement).
There’s also the double meaning Swift puts into her lyrics in that moment of reflection on “our group of friends; don’t think we’ll say that word again” which hits harder in a time when friendships have been harder than ever to maintain. This lyric really moves in a world in which people have had to shrink their social groups for the greater good of society. (A sentence which feels both too big to be a ‘Champagne problem,’ while also being minuscule in the grand scheme of things; Swift’s exact message in this song.)
The bridge of the song follows this same pattern. The first half is lighter, reminiscing about college; the second half touches briefly on what Swift may see as a nod to her own mental health struggles (“She would’ve made such a lovely bride; what a shamed she’s f***ed in the head”). The ying and yang of what we decide to count as real problems or not, all brought together under the same umbrella of ‘Champagne problems.’
By using this same phrase for every challenge she addresses in the song, Swift puts the onus on the listener to be the decider. Which of her (with Swift acting as the protagonist of the song, but more broadly representing Swift in her day-to-day mega-celebrity life) problems do we deem worthy? Which do we write off as frivolous? Who gets to do the deciding?
For the vast majority of her career, the stories Swift told in her lyrics were swept aside as just this: ‘Champagne problems.’ Of course, this was done by a mostly male music critic landscape, one known for its pretension while also not exactly being the most laden with people who could claim to have anything but Champagne problems of their own.
So, Taylor asks us, who gets to decide?
“You won’t remember all my Champagne problems.”
