Big Red Machine's Renegade with Taylor Swift Explores Love and Anxiety

On July 2, 2021, Big Red Machine unveiled their third single track of this year, "Renegade," from their upcoming album. This time, their album features a very surprising collaborator, Taylor Swift.

Brainchild of The National's Aaron Dessner, and Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, Big Red Machine adopts Taylor Swift's newfound inclination towards Indie music and uses it for a harrowing tale of love within the barriers of anxiety and depression.

It is not surprising to see Swift collaborating with Dessner and Vernon, considering the fact that they have all collaborated previously on Swift's pandemic sister albums, Folklore and Evermore. In fact, according to Dessner, the idea to collaborate with Swift stemmed from working together on her albums.

Recalling the experience of working with Swift, Dessner says, "After we finished Evermore, she wrote Renegade."

Comparing the creative process to "getting hit by a bolt of lightning," Dessner praised Swift's musical ingenuity. He further added, "I relate to music emotionally, so with her incredible acumen, her way of tracing music, her storytelling abilities and her sense of melody, there's something that really clicks."

Renegade is alight with bright compositions with an edge of Big Red Machine's experimentalism and that is what, ultimately, shields the song from becoming a pit of misery.

Swift and later Vernon, with their harmony, try to plead with an imaginary lover to fix their act so they could love them. That plea turns into a sharp rebuttal as she sings, "You fire off missiles because you hate yourself," as if to reassure herself, she asks them outright this time, "But do you know you're demolishing me?"

That is what is special about "Renegade," it is not meant to be the next bop, or a musical masterpiece, hooking its claws into awards and accolades. but, is rather a lament, from someone who is tired of feeling empathetic in an exhausting relationship with someone who is suffering internally.

"Renegade," for better or worse, is an anthem for anyone who has been at the receiving end of such a relationship, not necessarily having to be romantic in nature. It is also an interesting choice of collaboration, especially considering the assumptions about Swift going back to her pop roots for a while with the re-release of Fearless, and the announcement of Red. This collaboration as well as the release of "Gasoline," with Haim proves that Taylor Swift is not abandoning the Indie genre anytime soon, much to our relief.

References

Avclub.com (July 2, 2021). Dealing with someone emotionally unavailable? Taylor Swift has a new song for that.

Raya Mehnaz likes to critically analyse anything regarding pop culture, and when she's not doing that, she likes to live life dangerously — one House MD episode at a time. Send help at: fb.com/raya.mehnaz