I'm Only Me When I'm With You

Taylor Swift has been crowned the queen of all things music. As she slowly takes over the world with her ever growing "squad," it is important to look at what she is selling to her audience. Taylor Swift's music is written by Taylor Swift from real life experiences, and while some of those experiences are about forgetting about the haters, most of them are about love. In one of Taylor's older songs she wrote called "I'm Only Me When I'm With You" it focuses on a love story between a girl and a boy and her dependence on the boy to feel like herself.

Within not only Taylor's songs, but all songs there are myths about love. These myths were identify as a set of Major Mass Media Myths of sex, love, and romance. They are called the 12 Galician myths. And you can bet that these myths are heavily prevalent in all music. In this particular song Taylor paints a picture with this young couple hanging out beneath the stars, and how perfect it is. "Everything I need is right here by my side/ And I know everything about you/ I don't wanna live without you." This encompasses the myth number 10, "that the right mate completes–filling your needs and making your dreams come true." This idea that Taylor is only herself when she is with her boyfriend is supposed to be romantic, because she finally has someone that she doesn't try to hide her tears from and tells her secrets and deepest fears to. It's this idea of completely being yourself with a person that the media romanticizing, and while it is possible the idea that it is so easily achieved can lead people to overestimate how their relationships are supposed to be in real life. This entire song is about how Taylor is "Only Me When I'm With You," and it paints a pretty picture of a relationship where she can be herself.

Because love is supposed to be passionate and worth fighting for, it is also assumed that "bickering and fighting a lot mean that a man and a women really love each other passionate– myth number 8. Taylor claims in her song that her partner "drives her crazy half the time," which of course by this myth's definition means that this love is worth fighting for. This idea that you're so in love with a person that you can't help but fight can often be a problem because with relationships there is a fine line in what is passionate fighting and toxic fighting. I feel as though the media glorifies fighting between couples so much so that it seeps into reality and makes people unaware of what fighting in relationships can actual mean sometimes.
All and All this song is centered around the idea that Taylor is not Taylor without her partner, and that her happiness depends on his. While it is supposed to be a poetic love song declaring how deep her love is, once you add the communications analysis to it, it becomes a little bit sad that someone feels this dependence even though its supposed to be romantic. Would the song be the same if a boy was singing this song about his dependence on his partner? 

works cited 

Bader, A. (2007). "Love will steer the stars" and other improbable feats: Media myths in popular love

     songs. In M.-L. Galician & D. L. Merskin (Eds.), Critical thinking about sex, love, and romance in

     the mass media (pp. 141-160). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.