What did silent film star Clara Bow, who was once called “Hollywood’s tortured outsider,” have in common with Taylor Swift? That’s the question we’ve been asking ever since Swift announced the tracklist for her latest album, The poet group was tortured, whose final song is titled “Clara Bow.”
Swift, whose 11th studio album drops April 19, poetically answers that question. Draw a line between Bow’s silent film era stardom and his peak Stevie NicksFollowing the popularity of Fleetwood Mac, Swift later sang that she would one day be similarly mythologized, before being replaced by the It girl of the next generation. Swift sings about the pressure weighing on all three characters: “Win for glory, give it all/ Promise to be brilliant/ The crown is tainted, but you’re the real queen/ Flesh and blood among the machines war/ You are the new one our God worships/ Promised to be brilliant.”
The song’s final verse was written by Swift and frequent collaborators Aaron Dessner, she breaks new lyrical ground—singing her full name in a song for the first time. Swift imagines a future in which people tell a new star that she resembles Swift, just as she herself is compared to Bow and Nicks. “From this angle, you look like Taylor Swift, we love it,” she sings. “You have advantages she never had / The future is bright, brilliant.”
The song’s cyclical theme is reminiscent of Swift Red vault song “Nothing New,” in which she and Phoebe Bridge sing about the passage of time as it relates to their public image. “I know one day I’ll meet her, it’s a fever dream / The radiance you only have at 17,” the two sing about their imagined successor. “She’ll know the way and then she’ll say she got the map from me / I’ll say I’m happy for her, then I’ll cry myself to sleep.”
Before humming about Bow and Nicks—a reference that she has alluded to during pre-release promotion—Swift has been known to reference real-life figures in her lyrics, from the tumultuous Old Hollywood couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “… Ready for It?” to eccentric socialite Rebekah Harkness, who lived in the Rhode Island mansion now owned by Swift, during “The Last Great American Dynasty.”
However, her connection to Brooklyn-born Bow takes a bit of parsing to understand. Bow grew up in “the most devastating poverty known at the time,” David Sten, Author of the year 1988 Clara Bow: Running wild, previously told the BBC. She found her ticket out of her troubled childhood, ruled by an abusive father and mother, who was diagnosed with epileptic psychosis, when she sent her photos to magazine contest “Fame and Fortune” in 1921 at age 16. After winning the prize, Bow began appearing in films—making 57 films in a decade, 46 silent films and 11 feature films. speak. “In any other age,” said Judith Mackrell, The author of Flappers: Six women of a dangerous generation, “She would have ended up living on the streets or in a factory, but the existence of cinema as a mass industry gave her the chance to rebuild her life.”
Bow would appear in many successful films, including the 1926 films. mantra, 1927 Wing, became the first Academy Award winner for best picture in 1929 Wild party—her first walkie-talkie. But that was 1927 It, an adaptation of the short novel by Elinor Glyn, in which Bow plays Betty Lou, a salesgirl who dreams of falling in love with her employer, which earned the star the “It girl” brand.
“She was America’s first sex symbol,” Stenn said. The Washington Post. “Women want to be her and men want to be with her. She has a warmth and vulnerability that attracts people.” Bow cultivated what some might today call a social relationship with her biggest fans. “She really comes alive in front of the camera,” Mackrell told the BBC. “When you watch her, you feel as if she’s doing something very natural for you, so you’re in a relationship with her. It may be an illusion, but it is a very powerful illusion.”
