A Swiftie, Well Sort-of by Angela Rieck

I am an admirer of Taylor Swift. Having said that I don’t appreciate her music like my daughter does. I have never been a listener of pop music and her music is written for a different generation. 

It goes without saying that she is wildly successful and the first musician to become a billionaire from her music alone. Her music speaks to her generation. To her fans, she chronicles her life in ways that they can relate to. She reminds me of a musician’s version of the popular young adult novelist, Judy Blume. Judy Blume (who, surprisingly, is one of the most banned writers today) has been able to write to adolescent girls in their language. Taylor Swift can relate to her generation in the same way. Her triumphs are their triumphs her mistakes are their mistakes. Her songs are a diary of her life.

But Taylor Swift has paid a high price for her music. She’s regularly mocked because of her lyrics. While male artists can date frequently, make mistakes, and instigate bad behavior, Taylor Swift is criticized for the same. Despite the sheer amount of her success, the most important thing about Taylor Swift seems to be whom she dates. 

Despite the criticism, she soldiers on. And her material is why she is so beloved. Her audience can relate to Taylor Swift’s struggles. And Taylor Swift is very considerate of her fans. She takes good care of them, taking selfies with them, surprising some at gatherings, and they relate to her as if she were their best friend, and they love her for it. She has over 95 million followers on X (twitter).

As she’s grown, so has her music and a whole new group of people have joined the Swifties crowd.  

Even Taylor’s toughest critics concede that she is a hard worker. She spent years learning the craft of songwriting. Her current tour, the Eras Tour, is her sixth concert tour. It began in March 2023 and will not end until December 2024. One hundred and fifty-two shows are scheduled across five continents. To date, she has recorded and released over 250 songs.

I admire that despite most musicians, she is not afraid to risk her popularity for causes that are important to her. After being sexually assaulted, she became focused on protecting women’s rights. She’s equally dedicated to the LBGTQIA+ community and equal rights in general. Many musicians and celebrities are afraid that their popularity will suffer if they speak out, but she has shown herself to be both an effective spokesperson for the rights of others and willing to take risks.

But what I most admire about her is her business savvy. She is one of the few women who understands her power and knows how to use it. That is something that most women are unable to do. In my generation, women who knew and exercised their power were considered uppity (that is the best word that I can use because we know the actual language is profane). Yet, she has and will continue to take on the highly misogynistic music industry in favor of artists’ rights. Overall, the industry makes most of its money off women, yet it is run by men. But nothing is more misogynistic than some lyrics that are recorded and popularized, especially in hip-hop and rap genres.

In one well-known incident, she criticized Kanye West who released a misogynistic song, Famous, claiming he made her famous by humiliating her at the Video Music Awards when she was 19. She spoke out and advised artists never to let someone else take credit for their work. She made herself famous by her hard work and talent, not because of an inappropriate comment by a rapper.

HBO Documentary Films tells the story of another instance where she was willing to use her power to address a situation where she felt taken advantage of. The saga began when, at 15, she signed a contract for six record albums. According to the contract, she owned the rights to her music and the record label owned her masters. (Masters are the recordings that are released on albums.) Eventually, she feared that her masters would be manipulated by a particular businessman who she believed had orchestrated several events that were detrimental to her career. 

Before he purchased them, she had tried to purchase her masters from the original record label. But their offer, that she had to produce an album for every master album she wanted to purchase, sounded like indentured servitude. She left that label, and the original record label sold her masters to the one man she feared.  

But she was not about to back down and feel sorry for herself. Instead, she enlisted the support of her Swifties and asked them to let the owners of the masters know how they felt. It worked because she was allowed to perform her songs at a music award event that the masters’ owners had initially prohibited. 

Then, she decided to (legally) re-record all six albums after her original contract expired. This is an undertaking that no artist has ever attempted, much less while they were on tour, but she was willing to do it so that she could own her work. 

Taylor Swift is a strong role model for her generation, especially women, and I wish her continued success. So, I guess that makes me kind of a Swiftie.