For as long as I can remember, Taylor Swift has always been a favorite artist of mine. The first favorite song that I ever remember having was “I Knew You Were Trouble”- a single off of her album Red, because it used to play on my school bus all the time in second and third grade. This inspired me to check out a bunch of her other songs and music videos, and throughout elementary and middle school I always appreciated her and her music. This appreciation only furthered throughout high school and quarantine, when I re-discovered how much I loved her music, especially with her albums Lover, folklore, and evermore. Taylor Swift is one of the most influential pop stars and modern artists. She has created, influenced, and pushed many young people’s love and appreciation for music, as well as different physical mediums such as vinyl records. While there are many themes prevalent in Swift’s music that I enjoy, there are two that really stick out to me. One is the upbeat ‘style’ of whatever genre of music she’s currently making- whether it’s deep country, upbeat pop, or ‘clean’ indie rock. The second is her very sharp and even witty storytelling that is told through her songs; whether it’s about the boy who doesn’t requite ‘this love’ she has for him, the relationship that took a rocky road to ‘wonderland’, or all of the ‘wildest dreams’ she has had with her friends. All of these themes are perfectly shown in Taylor Swift’s album ‘1989’. I would argue that ‘1989’ is a perfect modern pop album and in my opinion, it’s probably Taylor Swift’s best pop record. My favorite song that reflects this is the deluxe track “New Romantics”. For many reasons, it is my personal favorite track on the album, but also the one that best reflects Swift’s perfection in pop. It also is a great example of her ability to tell stories in her music, especially because of her constant comparisons to both classic literature and metaphors, as well as modern items and events. ‘New Romantics’ has some of the catchiest and best pop production that I have heard, especially from a modern pop track. No matter where I am when I listen to it, I just want to get up and dance. Full of figures of speech, particularly similes and metaphors, this song also has some of the strongest storytelling in Swift’s discography. “'Cause baby, I could build a castle/Out of all the bricks they threw at me,” is a perfect way of saying “I can take my hate and make it into something great (like a castle!)”. “We team up/ Then switch sides like a record changer/ The rumors are terrible and cruel/ But honey, most of them are true,” is also a cute lyric Swift uses to tell about fake friendships that start off as true and the hidden truth in cruel rumors. ‘New Romantics’ is such a cute and catchy pop song. It’s perfectly written and produced in such a catchy way, that holds true to certain ‘80s synth-pop classics but is still modern, fun, and original. It’s my favorite song on Taylor Swift’s pop album, ‘1989’.

The COVID-19 pandemic left me bored, isolated, and even feeling miserable. Spending a year at home, surrounded by the same 3 people while learning and only talking to others through a screen is not an ideal way to spend your sophomore year of high school. These conditions worsened the depression and anxieties that I already had and left me wanting some form of escapism, and with many of my creative outlets unavailable because of the COVID-19 lockdowns, I needed something simple to do. On one of these days, I turned on my TV and opened Netflix. I scrolled through what seemed like my never-ending watchlist and ended up turning on a movie. It’s a less popular indie film that I haven’t heard many people discuss but it’s also a movie that I consider to have had a great impact on my life; Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja”. In this movie, an American corporation creates 37 “super pigs” to be sent to farms all across the world, with the intentions of seeing which grow and develop the best, eventually to be slaughtered and eaten. Flash forward some time and we see a South Korean farmer’s daughter, Mija, playing with her best friend, Okja. Okja is her super pig, a giant, walking, manatee-like creature, and coincidentally the one that developed the best and is to be sent back to America immediately. When it is learned that Okja will be sent away from her home and back to America, she escapes and has 4 different groups chase after her, Mija, an animal liberation group, the representatives from the American corporation, and a crazy TV scientist who wants to use Okja for viewership. While the plot may sound somewhat simple, it plays out to be extremely devastating, especially with its near-perfect executions. The direction is great and only cemented Bong Joon-Ho as one of my favorite directors. I think that the acting works perfectly for the movie and while some of the performances are over the top, they’re purposefully so. And I think that the writing of this movie is extraordinary and probably its strong suit. It creates sharp satire and political commentary, which is also present in writer-director Bong Joon-Ho’s other works, that is also hard not to make an animal lover like myself not only be way more invested in the plot but also way more susceptible to cry their eyes out. I adore and highly recommend this movie, but why do I consider it to be the one that has impacted me the most? After all, I'm probably the biggest movie nerd that I know, and there are at least 100 different answers that I could’ve easily chosen. Well, I consider Okja to be the “movie that got me into movies”. While I had watched and been interested in movies to a certain degree before this is the movie that really made me the film nerd I am today. After seeing this, I watched probably double the number of movies that I had seen in my lifetime before; from popular, well-known films I probably should’ve watched years before, to low-budget indie films I probably wouldn’t have heard of otherwise and ended up loving. For the past 2 years or so, my biggest interest has been film, and it’s all because of this movie. Not only that, but watching and focusing my interest on film is the escapism that I needed with the COVID-19 lockdowns affecting me the way that they were, and watching this movie at that time in my life sparked that love exactly when I needed it to.

Oscar Wilde is a 19th-century Irish poet, playwright, and novelist. Best known for witty commentary in his satirical plays, fathering the literary aesthetic movement, and his controversially flamboyant personality and style, his first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in April of 1891. Originally a novella published in a monthly literary magazine, The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered one of the greatest classics of all time, as well as one of the best and most well-known entries in the gothic literature movement. If I could choose just one book for everybody in the world to read, it would be Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The book follows the narcissistic and flamboyant Dorian Gray, who comes across a portrait of himself painted by the artsy and philosophical Basil Hallward. Identically beautiful, Dorian becomes infatuated with the portrait and eventually sells his soul so instead of aging, the portrait’s beauty diminishes instead. Now with immortal beauty, Dorian lives a life of sin without worry while the portrait becomes uglified. The book was followed by immediate controversy for its homosexual and immoral themes and subtexts and was even used as evidence in Wilde's later trials for (what at the time was) indecent behavior. But it eventually garnered a following and the respect that it deserved as a philosophical and gothic classic. The Picture Of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite pieces of writing. I also think that the legacy that both the book and its author, Oscar Wilde, left is a very influential and unique one, hard to find in many other classics. If it were up to me, I would have everybody familiarize themselves with Oscar Wilde and his writings, especially his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The legacy these writings left is unique to literature, and an important one that everybody should learn about. Wilde’s writing is also incredibly smart, and a great introduction to poetry and other classics, which is why I think everybody should read The Picture of Dorian Gray.