In order to understand the Taylor Swift Phenomenon, do I have to understand how it’s possible to be a fan of a musician without being a fan of, or even having any familiarity at all with, their work?
Eh, I think Foo Fighters are pretty bland, but I also think Dave Grohl seems kind of awesome.
Yeah, he did a good HBO series called Sonic Highways, visiting and playing in famous studios around the country.
Eh, I’m sure there’s plenty of people who’d say they’re a fan of Dolly Parton (to use an internet-ready example) despite not listening to her, based on her other works and deeds. In the case of Swift though, she hasn’t really done anything much political recently. Rather the GOP is losing their shit over what she might do and is trying to get ahead of it.
I think this is what gets republicans in a tizzy:
As amusing as it is to watch MAGA lose their collective minds, the commentary (not from you, but generally) that suggests all she has ever done is tell people to vote is not correct. She has said and done plenty to let us know where she stands. She hasn’t said much recently and we don’t know how much she will want to do, but MAGA are not wrong that Swift (and Kelce) are their enemy.
She called Marsha Blackburn (her home state senator) “Trump in a wig” in 2018. Blackburn still won then, but in 2024, Blackburn is justifiably afraid of her.
In that case, I take back some of the things I thought about her.
Never doubted she’s a good little songwriter, and even though her taste in NFL teams is wretched, she can be allowed.
Good for her, and I await her next syllable eagerly. I hope it is a powerful one, and strong enough to influence those who may be of voting age.
Such profound condescension tells me very little about its target, but a great deal about the condescender.
I just watched most of “Miss Americana”, a behind-the-scenes documentary on Swift and damn, she was a better lyricist at 13 than I’ll ever be. Talented af.
I’m not the only one who hears “Phenomenon “ and has that old Sesame Street tune in their heads, right? On that note, I’m slightly surprised that she’s never been on Sesame Street.
No, you’re not.
Three minutes. Exemplary work, soldier.
I know I’m a few weeks behind, but I just wanted to mention (it looks like it has at least once in this thread) that there’s a whole sub-culture of Swifties who are into ‘Gaylor’ (gay lore?)- basically, scouring every piece of Swift product to find hidden clues that she is secretly gay.
Swift has no intention of disabusing anyone of this notion, because it keeps eyeballs and $$ on her. The biggest fail of this NYT op-ed is that it doesn’t at all mention the gaylor concept at all.
So, anyway, there’s lots of actual context in the Swift-verse for an article like this. Swift absolutely ‘cares’ about it as it’s 100% good marketing, and she very intentionally has never claimed to be straight (some would say that that’s just more evidence that she’s queer!). @Ann_Hedonia reflects my take on this, along with generous sprinkles of “queer folk longing for representation” and "she speaks to me so strongly, she must be ‘one of us’ ".
This seems to address it?
I ask her, why get louder about LGBTQ rights now? “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” she says. “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of. It’s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze. Because my mistakes are very loud. When I make a mistake, it echoes through the canyons of the world. It’s clickbait, and it’s a part of my life story, and it’s a part of my career arc.”
As noted in the post above, she has denied being LGBT. Normally it would be nobody’s business, but of course it would be disingenuous in her case to suggest that people should not care about her sexuality when so much of her writing communicates her personal experiences. And clearly (if she were exclusively gay, at least) it would make much of her songwriting a sham. Was she in a sexual relationship with Karlie Kloss? Who cares, there’s no bright line between straight and bi. But it’s utterly implausible that all of her claimed heterosexual relationships have been shams.
Business acumen and good marketing does not imply that someone is selling something that is not real. We don’t assume that Apple’s success is because they are good at fooling people into buying a shitty product.
I think Swift (who was born in middle class Pennsylvania, not rural Tennessee) was attracted to country music because it values earnest sincerity over being cool. And that’s exactly her nature. She believed there were a lot of young people who that would appeal to, and sold herself along with her music aggressively as an early adopter of social media - and she was right. But her business acumen doesn’t imply that she was selling something that wasn’t real.
When she transitioned out of country to pop megastardom and hanging out with supermodels and moving more into the world of the uber-cool, it was with this persona of being slightly goofy. She questions herself and mocks herself constantly, and this is even more endearing. She has been a genius in marketing who she is, but I think the reason it has worked so well is because that’s really who she is. Not in the sense that her life as gorgeous billionaire megastar is just like anyone else, that’s silly. But people love her beyond just her musical talent for the straightforward reason that she’s fundamentally a kind honest person doing her best, and we generally prefer people who are not raging assholes. Apple became a trillion dollar company by selling boxes that contained iPhones, not by tricking people into buying crap. Her talent is certainly not manufactured, and I don’t believe that her persona is manufactured either.
This is such a good summary.
Cite below, queued up past the end of the music.
We might be seeing the beginning of a backlash. Her announcement of a new album during her acceptance speech at the Grammys felt both manufactured and disrespectful to the other artists there. To the extent I’m willing to read the camera shots of their reactions, they were generally NOT happy.
I am and have been a huge fan of Taylor, but it doesn’t have to be about her ALL THE TIME - especially coming directly after Olivia Rodrigo’s performance.
I mean, she just won an award. It absolutely is about her at that moment. I don’t see any issue with talking about a new album release during your acceptance speech. That’s just people looking for something to bitch about, in my opinion.
It was her (as she stated) 13th Grammy. Her website crashed earlier today because the Swifties thought she was going to announce her next (Taylor version) album - likely Reputation. She easily could have done it post-Grammys. The two young women referenced in my original post on the topic IMMEDIATELY quit watching the show and got on their phones to look for the album cover. It was, IMHO, an “It’s all about me!” moment and that’s disrespectful at an event meant to celebrate the industry and artists as a whole.
FWIW, she also failed to acknowledge her fellow nominees. “It’s such an honor to get this award given the amazing work my fellow nominees did” is de rigueur.