When it comes to Taylor Swift’s songwriting, Scarlet Keys can show you incredible things. On May 1 Keys will lead a Masterclass called The Songwriting Secrets of Taylor Swift, a two-hour session that serves as a bite-size online version of the popular course she teaches at the Berklee College of Music campus in Boston.
Keys first became attuned to Taylor Swift’s music after hearing her on the radio around the time of her second album. As a mom, the song “The Best Day” from Fearless was a stand-out. It wasn’t until Keys witnessed her daughter using music to cope with friendship breakup where she saw the real power of Taylor’s songwriting.
“On my daughter’s first day of middle school, her best friend was like, ‘I need my space.’ And I was like, ‘oh, not the space!’ And of course, it was devastating,” says Keys. “And then every morning I would hear Taylor Swift’s song, ‘Mean,’ and I would see how Taylor was, in a sense, taking care of all these little girls and giving voice to their emotions. I was attached from that point.”
“Taylor Swift is literally using all the classical developmental techniques and all of the rhetorical devices from literature and writing hit after hit after hit,” says Keys. “I mean, she’s using these techniques so well and effectively that it makes it way more fun to learn these techniques from an artist that you’re in love with.”