"A Dustland Fairytale": Why Taylor Swift Should Go To Rehab

This past summer, the Killers song “A Dustland Fairytale” hit the airwaves. I’m not a huge Killers fan, but the imagery in this song is hard to overlook:

The scene sets two white trash kids in a 1960's trailer park, an “American Prince” and a “Cinderella in a party dress”. She’s looking for her prince charming, and finds him with his “smooth brown hair and foolish eyes”. They fall in love. She says “she always knew he would come around”. They are poor, but they’ve got faith (“God gives us hope”). Happy ending, cue credits, start writing acceptance speech for Kanye to cut...

Not so fast: “I saw the ending when I turned the page”. Trailer park Romeo takes their money and runs off, so much for prince charming. We hear about a place where “the dreams are high”, but "the good girls die”. Singer Brandon Flowers asks Cinderella, “is there still magic in the midnight sun?” He admonishes the dejected princess, “I wouldn’t dream so high”.

Reality, cold and true. Flowers reminds us that fairytales are just well-conceived fiction.

Look at it from the other perspective: everyone has heard Taylor Swift’s ballads about fairytales finishes (“Love Story”, “You Belong With Me”). Yawn. This coming from a person whose only adversity in life comes when the air is too humid for her hair. It’s pretty easy to write about happy endings when your entire life has been a fairytale. Talent (check). Looks (check, albeit, sort of like an alien). Fame, fortune, and respect (check). She’s the one in a bajillion.

Taylor shouldn’t be allowed to write about fairytales till she’s seen it from the other side. Let her have a terrible relationship. Let her fade into ambiguity for a while. Let her get friendly with Lindsay Lohan at a coke party and find herself in rehab. Give her ANY real glimpse of REALITY. Would she be singing the same tune?

Point is, don’t get our hopes up, Tay Tay. Fairytales are often criticized for building people up for something that just does not happen, and this is no different. I’m not saying happy endings don’t happen, just that we should consider our sources.

Depressing? Maybe. More realistic? Rock on. You got to grow up sometime.

"A Dustland Fairytale"