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Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024)

“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” is track ten on Taylor’s eleventh studio album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024). Written by Taylor alone, the lyrics were inspired by her bitter feelings towards stardom. She compares her perceived image to a wicked witch and a trapped circus animal, detailing how her upbringing in the public eye contributes to her viscous nature.

Background and Recording

Taylor started working on THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT immediately after she submitted her tenth studio album, Midnights in 2022. She started working on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” specifically while she visited New Orleans that December. She spent her 33th birthday on December 13 at the city’s Esplanade Studios. Kevin Louis, one of the musicians who worked on the song (as well as “Fresh Out the Slammer” and “Florida!!!“), wrote: “For Taylor Swift’s 33rd birthday, she had the cats come to the studio and record a few tunes.”

The album’s conception took place when Taylor’s personal life was once again a widely covered topic in the press after her split from her boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, and subsequent short-lived relationship with Matty Healy. Taylor described the creation of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT as her “lifeline” during this time:

«TORTURED POETS is an album that I think, more than any of my albums that I’ve ever made, I needed to make it. It was really a lifeline for me, just the things I was going through, and the things I was writing about. It kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life. And I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I’d needed it on TORTURED POETS.»

Taylor Swift

She continued working on the album in secrecy throughout the US leg of “The Eras Tour” in 2023.

Lyrical Theme

In “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” Taylor discusses reaching pop stardom as a teenager and its impact on her self image. She created the song in a bitter state, saying that as a public figure, “the world has this sense of ownership,” and how people are quick to judge and critique her behavior. She wrote the song alone on piano. In a voice note sent to producer Jack Antonoff after finishing a first draft, she plainly stated, “Yeah, just a song about being crazy.” Upon the release of the song in April 2024, Taylor elaborated:

«I felt bitter about all the things we do to our artists as a society and culture. There’s a lot about this particular concept on THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. What do we do to our writers, and our artists, and our creatives? We put them through hell. We watch what they create, then we judge it. We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens. The world has this sense of ownership, and not just a right, but they feel they have a 'responsibility' to judge you, and to critique you, and to weigh in. And, you know, that can really toy with you.»

Taylor Swift

Taylor details how she had to conform herself to a culture in which she was brought up: “You taught me, you caged me, and then you called me crazy.” The song starts with her confronting her critics and, in the chorus, imagines herself as a witch that unleashes her anger onto a town. In the next verse, Taylor recounts having been raised in an “asylum” and expresses how she becomes cold-hearted in the face of speculation on her personal life

The title of the song also possibly references the 1966 film and 1962 play by Edward Albee, named Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

Production

Produced by Taylor and Jack Antonoff, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” is one of several songs on the album that features Southern Gothic-inspired stylings that incorporate dense echo and strings.

Live Performances

Starting with the European leg, which kicked off in May 2024, Taylor added “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” to the regular setlist for her sixth headlining tour, “The Eras Tour” (2023-2024). She performed the song while standing atop a glass-plated square block that moved across the stage. The Scotsman described that she “actually [levitated] down our street”, ranking it the best number of the concert because it had the “biggest singalong of the night”. Billboard considered the track a “live standout” among the set list’s newly-added songs, opining that it was exemplary of Taylor’s description of the TORTURED POETS act as “Female Rage: the Musical”.

Critical Reception

“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” received mixed reviews, with several critics remarking that the song had a heavy tone that made it hard to listen to. In The New York Times, Jon Pareles lamented that the track lacked the “playful but self-questioning touch” of “Anti-Hero“, making it “pretty much just sad or angry.” On a positive side, PopMatters‘ Jeffrey Davies deemed the track the album’s best, writing that it demonstrates a “vicious cycle” of Taylor’s detractors “still [providing] her with enough ammunition for new material”. Laura Snapes from The Guardian thought that the “vengeful wrath” of the song contains some of Swift’s most cutting lyrics and deemed it a “deservedly bitter, barbed update of the cutesier and more cloying ‘Anti-Hero'”. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Ryan Fish ranked “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” fourth out of the 31 tracks on the album, deeming the portrayal of Taylor’s “witchy persona” compelling and saying that the production has a hook “[needing] to be shouted by a crowd in a stadium”.

Commercial Performance

When THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT was released, tracks from the album occupied the Top 14 of the US Billboard Hot 100; “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” debuted at a peak of No. 9 on the chart, where Taylor became the first artist to monopolize the Top 14. In Australia, the song also reached No. 9 on the ARIA Singles Chart and made her the artist with the most entries in a single week with 29. Elsewhere, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Global 200 and reached the Top 10 in Canada and New Zealand and the Top 25 in Singapore (14), the Philippines (20), Portugal (22),Luxembourg (23), Switzerland (23), and Belgium (25).

Lyrics

Official Version

First Draft Phone Memo

Official Version

First Draft Phone Memo

Artist

Taylor Swift

Album

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

Released

April 19, 2024

Recorded

December 2022–2023

Studios

Conway (Los Angeles)
Electric Lady (New York City)
Esplanade (New Oreleans)
Long Pond (Hudson Valley)
Hutchinson Sound (Brooklyn)
Big Mercy (Brookyln)
Pleasure Hill (Portland)
Audu Music Studio (Brooklyn)
Sterling Sound (Edgewater)

Genre

Alternative

Length

5:34

Label

Republic Records

Songwriter

Taylor Swift

Producers

Jack Antonoff
Taylor Swift