The Last Great American Dynasty

It's almost like a song would come out like a lightning bolt. It's exhilarating. The shared focus, the clarity of her [Swift's] ideas, and the way she structures things, it's all there. But I think she works really hard when she's working, and then she tweaks. She keeps going, so sometimes things would evolve or change. By the time she actually sings it, she's really inside of it. She doesn't do very many vocal takes before she nails it.

— Dessner on Swift's songwriting, Vulture[1]

Aiming for an uptempo and enticing sound, Dessner composed the instrumentals of "The Last Great American Dynasty" inspired by the electric guitars in Radiohead's 2007 album, In Rainbows. He sent the music sample to Swift, who was isolating herself due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; she liked the sound, and wrote the lyrics to it in under the time Dessner would go out for a run and return.[1] The lyrics were inspired by American socialite Rebekah Harkness, whom Swift wanted to write about ever since she bought the Holiday House in 2013.[2]

In a 2020 Entertainment Weekly interview, Swift revealed that she first learned about Harkness from the real estate agent who walked her through the property. Consequently, the singer started reading a lot about Harkness' life and found her stories interesting. It led to the development of parallels between Harkness and herself, both of them "being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about". Swift stated she was looking for a chance to write about Harkness, and finally found it when she heard the instrumental track that Dessner sent. Swift employed a narrative device in the song's lyrics commonly found in country music, which she described as: "the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me". You bring it personal for the last verse".[2]

"The Last Great American Dynasty" is an indie pop tune that embraces a glitchy, alternative production, making use of classical instruments like slide guitar, viola, violins and drums.[1][3] Swift's vocal range in the song spans between E₃ to B₄.[4] The song is written in the key of G major and has a fast tempo of 148 beats per minute.[5]

The song chronicles the life of Rebekah Harkness (pictured above), who owned Standard Oil, founded Harkness Ballet, and resided in Swift's Watch Hill residence.

Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That's how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that.

— Swift on the inspiration behind "The Last Great American Dynasty", Rolling Stone[6]

"The Last Great American Dynasty" narrates the story and satirizes the vilification of American socialite and composer Rebekah Harkness, who previously inhabited Swift's Rhode Island mansion—the Holiday House.[7][8] Written in a townsfolk third-person narrative, it details the following: Rebekah West, a middle-class divorcée from St. Louis, married William "Bill" Harkness in 1947, who was the heir to Standard Oil, an oil-refining company that was the 19th-century's first and largest multinational corporation in the world. The couple bought a seaside estate in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and nicknamed it "Holiday House". Bill died of heart attack in 1954, for which Rebekah was blamed by the town. After her then-husband's death, Rebekah inherited his enormous wealth and became one of the wealthiest women in the US.[9][10][11][12]

Rebekah invited "big names" and her "bitch pack"—a group of female city friends—to the house, and spent the new money by throwing numerous high-class events and "outrageous" parties; Watch Hill scorned her for causing the downfall of the Harkness family, calling her the maddest and the "most shameless" woman in the town's history. Pursuing her passion for arts, Rebekah founded a professional ballet company in 1964, called the Harkness Ballet. Further details narrated in the song include how she gambled with Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, "filled" her swimming pool with champagne, when in fact, she used champagne only to clean the pool, and stole a neighbor's dog and dyed it lime green because of a feud, whereas in reality, it was a cat instead of a dog, which implies the inaccuracy of gossips—one of many lyrical motifs present in Folklore. The lyric "she had a marvelous time ruining everything" refers to the hate she received from the town and tabloids, and how Rebekah is infamous for "not fitting in".[1][9][11][12]

In the song's bridge, Swift reveals her purchase of the Holiday House after 50 years of its vacancy, and in the final chorus, she shifts to first-person narrative, proclaiming herself "the loudest woman" the town has ever seen, and correlates between her celebrity life and Rebekah's controversies. Swift resonates her highly criticized moves with elements of Rebekah's story, and concludes the song with an outro of "I had a marvelous time ruining everything". Mainstream media has linked several moments of Swift's unfavorable press to that of Rebekah's, including the scrutiny the singer faces because of her highly publicized romantic life, her friends "squad" of popular celebrities, the Fourth of July parties she threw at the Holiday House, Watch Hill residents' concerns about the attention Swift brings to the community, and the governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, suggesting a tax on secondary homes costlier than $1 million, which was famously dubbed "the Taylor Swift tax".[11][9] "The Last Great American Dynasty" is thematically feminist,[13] and thus considered to be a prequel to the twelfth Folklore track, "Mad Woman".[14][15]

Hannah Mylrea of NME lauded "The Last Great American Dynasty" for its brooding instrumentals, Swift's peculiar vocals, and storytelling style reminiscent of works by Mary Chapin Carpenter and Bob Dylan, and pitted it as "a contender for the best Taylor Swift song ever written".[16] Noting its historical details, Americana imagery and "Fitzgerald-esque" lines, Pitchfork writer Julian Mapes hailed the song as "the all-timer, the instant classic" that celebrates society-defying women, and stated that the lyrics "play out in your mind like a storybook", but successfully point out society's reception of assertive women. Mapes also hailed the production as "textural and tastefully majestic".[14] Finding the song's lyricism as the most impressive storytelling from all of Folklore, Mikael Wood of The Los Angeles Times named the song the most humorous of all tracks, ranking it the album's third best song. Wood described it "a detailed portrait of the real-life woman who owned Swift's Rhode Island mansion—and evidently scandalized the town's gentry—decades before the singer did".[17]

PopMatters critic Michael Sumsion labelled the song a shrewd comparison that upgrades a small-town tale into a "towering myth".[18] Callie Ahlgrim of Insider asserted the twist in the song's bridge as "poetic genius". She further compared the final chorus tuning back to the present, underlining the parallels between Rebekah and Swift, to the bridge of Swift's 2008 hit, "Love Story", where Romeo proposes.[19] Chris Willman of Variety opined that Swift has "a grand old time" identifying herself with women who lived decades before her.[15] In congruence, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone wrote that the song satirizes the upper-class environment of "Starlight", the fifteenth track on Swift's 2012 album Red, and matched the similarities between the songs—the usage of the word "marvelous" and the muses being people who lived decades before Swift's birth.[7]

A highlight from her summer quarantine album Folklore that traces the glamorous, troubled life of 20th-century heiress Rebekah Harkness [...] With the intrigue of a story song and the intimacy of a biography, Swift delves into socialite anthropology and returns with an epitaph for a woman she'll never meet. The real magic is the winking humility of the image in the mirror: a woman criticized endlessly for being too rich and too gauche who knows that living well is still the best revenge.

— Anna Gaca, music critic, "The 100 Best Songs of 2020", Pitchfork[20]

Uproxx writer Philip Cosores regarded "The Last Great American Dynasty" as entrenched in Swift's trademark "melodic warmth" and "vivid details", and complimented Dessner's slow-burning production.[21] Olivia Ovenden of Esquire picked the song as the album's highlight, and commended it for "seamlessly" blending indie sounds with Swift's pop prowess.[3] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times commented that the subject of the song, Harkness, is "a classic Swift heroine", who is purposeful, disruptive and misunderstood.[22] Jonathan Keefe, writing for Slant, thought the song highlights how Swift's "widening worldview" has enchanced her songwriting skills.[23] Caleb Campbell, writing for Under The Radar, found Swift seeing herself in the misogynistic tabloid gossip that afflicted Harkness, but shunning out the "diaristic, reputation-obsessed" semblance of her older catalogue.[24]

Katie Moulton, writing for Consequence of Sound, summarized that the song is a result of Swift's imagination expanding, as she is "consciously trying to write from perspectives not her own".[25] Nick Levine of The Telegraph pondered whether Swift is only acknowledging tensions with Watch Hill locals in the song, or if she is designating herself the successor to Harkness, and picked "The Last Great American Dynasty" as an album standout for exemplifying why Swift is one of the great songwriters of her generation.[26] Billboard listed "The Last Great American Dynasty" as one of its 20 picks for 2020 Song of the Summer, and remarked that the song gives-off "a more summery vibe" despite the generally "chillier" atmosphere of Folklore.[27]

Upon release of Folklore, "The Last Great American Dynasty" reached top-20 in many countries worldwide. In the US, all of the album's sixteen tracks debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously, with "The Last Great American Dynasty" at number 13—the fourth highest-peaking song from the album, behind "Cardigan" (number 1), "The 1" (number 4) and "Exile" (number 6), and one of its five top-20 hits.[33] The song further debuted at number 42 on the Billboard Digital Song Sales chart.[34] In Canada and New Zealand, the song peaked at number 13 on both of the Canadian Hot 100 and New Zealand Top 40 Singles charts, respectively.

In Australia, the song debuted at number 7 on the ARIA Singles Chart; along with four other tracks from Folklore that landed in the top-10, giving the album five top-10 hits in the country.[35] The album spawned five top-ten debuts in Malaysia as well, where "The Last Great American Dynasty" peaked at number 10 on the RIM Singles chart.[36] On the Singapore Top 30 Digital Streaming chart, "The Last Great American Dynasty" peaked at number 9, marking the fourth top-10 hit from Folklore in the country. The song further arrived at numbers 56, 81 and 89 on Ö3 Austria Top 40, Portugal's AFP Top 200 Singles and Sweden's Sverigetopplistan, respectively.

The song ignited a phenomenon of viral memes on the internet, with the phrase "there goes the last great American dynasty" being applied to several fictional families or friends that appear in films and television shows, such as the The Twilight Saga, High School Musical, Succession, Gilmore Girls, Schitt's Creek, This Is Us and Jersey Shore, Disney Channel releases like Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, and Camp Rock, food chains like Taco Bell and California Pizza Kitchen, and video game arcade Blockbuster.[37][38][39]

On September 8, 2020, a fan on Twitter proposed the idea for a film inspired by "The Last Great American Dynasty", with a cast featuring Blake Lively as Rebekah, Ryan Reynolds as Bill and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as the neighbor, to which the three actors responded affirmatively. Swift extended her support to the idea, along with Gigi Hadid.[40][41][42]

British musician Steven Wilson (of Porcupine Tree) performed a cover version of "The Last Great American Dynasty" as part of his The Future Bites sessions video series in December 2020.[43][44]

Credits adapted from the album's liner notes.[45]

• List of top 10 singles in 2020 (Australia)