I think her personal business is none of mine. I enjoy some of her music and have a HELL of a lot of respect for her after this latest court garbage where she stood up to a money-seeking asshole who grabbed her ass publicly.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with her. She is just an A-list celebrity, a musical force for well over a decade and an outstanding businesswoman. That is an extremely rare combination. The only other people that come close are Dolly Parton and Madonna. Taylor Swift didn’t just give the major labels the finger, she kicked them in the nuts and then knocked them out with a roundhouse kick. She knew that pop stars like her tend to get really screwed financially by the major labels so she faced them head on, including Apple, and won.
I am not part of her target demographic but my daughters are and I am a casual fan. She is just a savvy businesswoman disguised as a pop star. She is incredibly talented musically as well but so are lots of other people. That is not what makes her special. She started out as a country singer and then made a casual transition to pop when she found out that would be more lucrative (that type of transition alone is very hard to pull off for most stars but she made it look seamless).
As to the relationship and borderline personality comments, I think those are completely out of place. She certainly isn’t borderline. She is just a tough negotiator with the big labels but she treats her staff very well. There is no law that anyone has to settle into a bland suburban lifestyle with kids by a certain age. She can be very choosy because she is richer and more successful than almost anyone. Oprah has never been married either.
Maybe she will find the love of her life or maybe she will never find a match. That can be tough for unusually successful people. Either way, I say good for her.
This.
What makes anyone think a songwriter’s (or any artist) work is strictly autobiographical?
When Bob Marley wrote “I shot the Sheriff” did anyone really think he did not shoot the deputy?
mc
Well that went a different direction than I was expecting.
Her country-pop stuff when she was younger was a mindless, guilty pleasure. I know she’s mega famous now, but I can’t remember any songs from the past several years. I checked out her recent Look What You Made Me Do video and it’s self-indulgent, producer-driven garbage. No idea if she’s a satanic witch, or whatever this thread is about, but I just wanted to drop her greatest contribution to pop history:
She is just misunderstood.
Her new single, “Skullfucking Maggot Shit Boyfriend” is headed toward the top of the charts.
Taylor Swift Unveils Even Darker Persona With New Single ‘Skullfucking Maggot Shit Boyfriend’
I may be a feminist, but I do not hold to the idea that every mention of a woman’s looks is inherently sexual. Swift is an artist who in part sells herself by her looks. I did not refer to her sexually, nor did I objectify or dehumanize her, given the rest of my post.
I also reject the idea that her having been sexually assaulted has any bearing on whether what I said was or was not acceptable. If I did something offensive, it’s offensive no matter what. If it’s not offensive, her being assaulted doesn’t change that.
I can say this much: I did not at any point think of her sexually when writing what I wrote. I simply voiced an aesthetic preference. If that was offensive, I apologize.
But I do not agree with the implied logic used here.
Sure, whatever you say…
Oh, isn’t it?
Since your comment on her looks was a complete non sequitur to the rest of the post, the rest of your post is irrelevant. Yes, you did.
It doesn’t make it more offensive, just more ironic.
Sure, just voicing an “an aesthetic preference” for the looks of a young woman, nothing sexual going on here, people!
“I’m sorry if you were offended”? Really?
See, doubling down on your right to make “aesthetic” judgements of young women in irrelevant threads makes me doubt the sincerity of your feminism…
Look, we all say inappropriate things, I myself have no doubt many times in the past, even the recent past, done the same in CS threads about singers and actresses. But if someone called me on it, I’d like to think I’d say “You know what, my bad, her looks aren’t really relevant to a discussion of her personality. I’ll try to do better,” not launch a spirited attempt to defend commenting on a young lady’s looks as completely asexual, and hence justified, to all and sundry.
So you’re saying he did shoot the deputy?
I shudder to think what kind of trouble Eric Clapton must be in then.
As I note with ALL celebrities, I don’t know Taylor Swift. I don’t read gossip magazines or web sites, so I know of her only what I see in TV and what I hear in her songs (many of which I like). I don’t love or hate Taylor Swift as a human being.
Is she toxic? No idea. But when you hear song after song after song about what an asshole each of her boyfriends is… It’s only natural to start wondering if maybe, just maybe, the problem is HER rather than them.
Well, that’s one possibility, yeah. There’s a truism in life; if you look around and all you see are assholes, you’re looking in the mirror.
But that’s assuming all the songs are true and spoken from the heart, which is, again, a coin flip proposition at best. Swift is not just a manufactured pop star, but one who’s been manufactured from late grade school, and her marketing savvy (by “Her” I mean both her and the folks who work for her) is absolutely second to none. They fully understand who is buying her music, why they’re buying her music, and how to sell Taylor Swift as a brand. It’s far, far past the music now. As the Kardashians prove, you technically don’t even need to be a musician to get rich off branding; Swift just happens to be in the musician stream.
One has to at least consider the possibility that the “All my boyfriends are horrible” thing is partially, or maybe even mostly, just branding. Swift’s primary audience is made of of young girls. (While this is only anecdotal, I cannot help but notice that the few grown women I know who are big Taylor Swift fans are immature, unsuccessful at forming relationships, and career-stunted.) Songs about mean boyfriends speak to 14-year-old girls. Such girls also live and die by social media, and Swift’s social media work kicks the shit out of most large corporations; the Swift empire is arguably the best social media company in the world.
Songs about love and heartbreak are what made her, and if she suddenly started writing lyrics like REM or The Tragically Hip or PJ Harvey, her audience wouldn’t know what the hell to make of that. Her much-made-fun-of “darker Taylor” thing alone was a bit offputting to some fans, but it’ll work; it’s a perfectly natural progression, as her fan base is aging with her; she’ll be 30 in a couple of years, and her average fan is going to college now and is ready for some edgier shit. (My kids, girls of 13 and 12, don’t find her terribly interesting; some of her songs are catchy to them but they are a bit behind the main coterie of Swift fans.*)
So if you proceed on the (correct) assumption that “Taylor Swift” is largely a brand of products and not a person, why are all the songs bitchy I-hate-my-boyfriend tunes? Because that sells, baby. For all we know Taylor Swift has secretly been married for five years. That doesn’t sell iTunes downloads, though.
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- But my 13-year-old likes Katy Perry, who’s older than Taylor Swift, so, go figure.
When I heard that song, I assumed it was about exes re-hooking up, not about a current relationship. And, as mentioned, they both have been getting together with other people in that song.
Ouch. I can only speak for myself, but I think Taylor Swift is great.
Signed,
Woman in mid forties, married with kids for close to two decades with two professional degrees and juggling three professional jobs.
Regarding the “It’s all marketing” talk, if you’re presenting yourself as X then it seem fair for people to take you at your word that you’re X. Particularly when X isn’t anything especially great. It’s one thing if someone publicly pretends to love dogs and privately kicks puppies and another if someone publicly claims to kick puppies but their fans say “Oh, but that’s just PR – I bet in private they really love dogs”. The behavior being discussed is more on the “kicks puppies in public” end of the spectrum (metaphorically speaking; I’m not actually rating it against kicking puppies). If good people intentionally present themselves as petty or “toxic” or as assholes for the sake of publicity, then one can safely question how “good” they actually are. Again, generally speaking – you can all decide for yourselves how much Swift’s public behavior qualifies. I just don’t think “It’s all PR” really carries the wash.
Likewise, the definition of celebrity includes interest in the private lives (or “PR presented private life” if you insist) of the people in question. Swift makes a big deal of including her non-musical world in her publicity via social media and public appearances, etc. That’s an intentional facet of her marketing. Public interest in someone’s private life is what makes a celebrity a celebrity and not a no-news workhorse style artist. So condemning people for showing interest in a celebrity’s private life is pretty silly.
the Jonas Brothers were all about “I love mommy, God, and Jesus” until the day they called it quits, then in interviews shortly afterward were saying they “weren’t particularly religious” (among other things.) Their entire image was a fabrication.
All fair points. As I said, I don’t REALLY know Taylor Swift or any other currently popular singer. When Bob Dylan wrote a song, we assumed (not always correctly) that it was autobiographical or that it came from his heart.
Is that true of Taylor Swift? I dunno. I only know she and her marketers have always told us (or strongly suggested) that each of her angry “I hate my ex-boyfriend” songs was really about this-or-that famous guy she dated. Is that true? Again, no clue. Maybe they were all written by other people, and she’s just singing them and pretending they’re true stories.
Regardless, if you pretend your songs are autobiographical, people are going to read things into them.
Yes, which is why I continued to say that it was particularly egregious if you’re presenting yourself negatively.
If someone presents themselves as saintly but then reveals that they were actually doing lines of coke off hookers, no one doubts that they were doing lines of coke. If someone presents themselves as hating black people and raping cheerleaders, it’s a much harder sell to say “Haha, that was all just marketing. I actually love everyone and wouldn’t hurt a fly.” At the very least, it calls into question why a supposedly wonderful person was happy marketing themselves as an asshole for profit.
I find the “Taylor Swift” is toxic conversation bizarre. The evidence seems to be that she does standard celebrity stuff, and that she writes songs about bad boyfriends sometimes (but not always). I think Occam’s razor says that the bad boyfriend songs are exaggerations that she thinks will appeal to her fans rather than a direct confession of her inner soul, and that the gossip about her is standard celebrity gossip instead of completely 100% accurate.
For example, I will agree that ‘blank space’ sounds like it’s describing a woman with uncontrolled Borderline Personality Disorder tearing through her partners’ lives. But to conclude that it must be autobiographical is about as insane as the woman in the song; there’s a long tradition of songwriters exaggerating characteristics, writing about other people, and otherwise not writing about their own issues, and she’s even said that the song is a parody of what the press says about her. It makes about as much sense to conclude Paul Di’Anno used to stalk women through the streets to murder them, then Bruce Dickinson took over the killings in the 80s - after all, Iron Maiden has multiple songs on that topic.
For the record, I really do not think that Bob Marley shot the deputy.
I really think that comparing ‘my ex was bad to me’ songs with ‘hating black people and raping cheerleaders’ is a bit of a stretch. As far as I’m aware, ‘hating black people and raping cheerleaders’ is not a typical topic for pop songs, but songs about ex-'s are.
Yeah, I also addressed that in my initial post and noted that I was speaking metaphorically to make my example clearer and wasn’t actually equating one to the other.
You’re reading too much into it.