Much Better or Revenge
It is easy to see a parallel between the Jonas Brother’s “Much Better” and Taylor Swift’s “Better than Revenge”. Both songs have a clear tone of resentment yet give off an air of aloofness and superiority. They are both clearly angry at someone for something but act as if they are over it and “not bitter” as mentioned in “Much Better”. It can be inferred that the songs are referring to one another due to their similar themes and tone as well as their use of similar words and phrases. They also allude to one another on several occasions through the song giving the listener a clearer picture of the story being told. “Much Better” was written followed by Swift’s “Better than Revenge” but they are both talking about the
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Finally, the allusions used by both the Jonas Brother and Swift drive the parallels further and give the listeners a clearer picture. In the lines “Now I’m done with superstars” and “and all the tears on her guitar” The Jonas Brothers allude to swift. Both of these allusions make it abundantly clear that he is referring to Swift. First she is one of the biggest pop superstars of the moment and an artist just like him. Secondly, one of Swift’s break out songs was titled “Teardrops on my Guitar”. As well as making it explicitly obvious who he is speaking of, the use of this allusion implies that she is always crying about someone and being overly dramatic. This places the blame on Swift because it portrays her as the “crazy ex girlfriend” . In the case of “Better than Revenge” Swift first uses “The story starts when it was hot and it was summer” which refers to the start of their relationship in the month of June. Then she uses the line “She’s an actress” which refers to Camilla Belle, the person responsible for running her relationship. Belle is a well known actress that co-stared with Joe Jonas on the set of his music video “Love Bug”. Finally she says “But no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity” which means that no matter how proper she dresses or how classy she looks she will never be a good person or redeem for what she did. This line serves a double purpose as it also implies that the girl she is mentioning in her song is Belle because she a reputation in Hollywood for her love of vintage dresses and