Self-translation, rewriting or self-censorship? The amendment of a misogynistic lyric in Taylor Swift’s song ‘Better Than Revenge’

Abstract

In 2023, American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released a re-recorded version of her 2010 song ‘Better than Revenge,’ altering a lyric that originally disparaged a woman because of her sexuality. Through an analysis of the popularisation of feminist discourse in recent years and its direct impact in Swift’s feminist stance, the study aims to understand the motivations and effects of the amendment, questioning whether it is an act of (self-) censorship influenced by ideological and perhaps even commercial factors. To this end, the research engages with concepts such as Canlı’s (2018) intralingual self-translation, Lefevere’s (2017[1992]) rewriting, and Pesen’s (2019) relyricizing. The results open a discussion on the implications of rewriting history, while they also highlight the relevance of translation in music as a mechanism for negotiating identities (Susam-Saraeva, 2018) and for artistic appropriation.