Cassandra

Pobody’s nerfect. And nobody likes the bearer of bad news. So it is only logical that people should hate Cassandra when she delivered accurate prophecies for doom. Perfectly accurate; perfectly unbelieved. Apollo is a douche.

Cassandra is a fascinating figure so it comes as no surprise that two of my beloved artists should choose her as a muse. One, ABBA. Two, Taylor Swift. Interestingly, ABBA’s Cassandra, written by two men, was an apology to her because they hadn’t believed her. Taylor’s Cassandra, written by a woman who’s in her tortured poet era, is an angry I Told You So. The men talked to her; the woman identified with her.

The lovely part is they could have been talking about the same story is how well both have written their poems. A woman – not necessarily the Oracle Cassandra, of course, that would be too easy – was warning people about something but no one would believe her. She was alone in her ‘tower, weaving nightmares, twisting all my smiles into snarls’, viewed from the outside by people who were ‘hiding their shame behind hollow laughter, while you are crying alone in your bed’. 

The parallels you can draw between the two songs are beautiful. ABBA talked about how ‘down in the street, they’re all singing and shouting, staying alive though the city is dead’ which Taylor would parallel with, ‘in the streets, there’s a raging riot’. Of course, the Woman was right in the Warning she gave to the people. And when the prophecy was fulfilled, Taylor would sadly croon, ‘When the truth comes out, it’s quiet.’ This would be echoed in ABBA’s ‘some of us wanted, but none of us would listen to words of warning. And on the darkest of nights, nobody knew how to fight, and we were caught in our sleep’. Taylor here would mournfully conclude, ‘I regret to say: do you believe me now?’

Of course, the stories are different. ABBA’s is closer to the Greek myth probably and talks about the Trojan people not heeding the warnings of Cassandra, that when the Greek warriors emerged from the Horse, they were caught unawares and defeated. If it parallels a real-life modern situation, all the better. Taylor sees herself as Cassandra and talks about how people would not believe her when she spoke out about bullies, that she was instead vilified for it by the media and netizens; and similar to, but not entirely alike, when the truth came out, it was quiet. It was quiet in Old Troy because the old Trojans were dead. It was quiet in Taylor’s world because much like Cassandra, no one could believe her, even when she was proven right.

My sister Feli says I should mention her friend Cassandra in this blog. Cassandra is a fellow Swiftie who has been fortunate enough to have her name in a Swift Song, the bitch. I kid. She's really a good egg. And how lucky, though! When TTPD came out and she saw her name in the track list, she told Feli about it. And I remember thinking, ugh why couldn’t my namesake have been a doomsday prophet too that Taylor could identify with? Esther was just another Persian Queen Taylor probably does not identify much with. A great pity, if you ask me.

Well, pobody’s nerfect!