Exactly 60 years ago, Bob Dylan released "Desolation Row." The unusually long, 11-and-a-half-minute song evokes the tragic fate of Ophelia, the doomed lover from Hamlet. In William Shakespeare's most famous play, Hamlet's madness drives Ophelia to her watery death. "On her 22 birthday, she already is an old maid," the American troubadour laments. In the midst of the strange procession that drifts down "Desolation Row," the future Nobel Prize laureate places the late Ophelia somewhere between the Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Albert Einstein: "To her, death is quite romantic," he insists, in his iconic nasally voice.
More than half a century later, times have changed. The most talked-about pen in popular music now belongs to Taylor Swift. She, too, has reflected on Ophelia's fate and takes pride in having escaped it. This sentiment runs through "The Fate of Ophelia," the song that opens her 12 album, The Life of a Showgirl, released with much fanfare on October 3.