For a while I’ve wanted to write my feelings on the “Taylor Swift Effect” in a cohesive way. But I’ve been hesitant for reasons that should be obvious. For one, our culture has been completely inundated with Taylor content for the past year. Even I am tired of it. You likely have read one or more articles about her, watched dozens of videos, and come across many others on social media giving their strongly held opinions, whether they are Swifties or anti-Swift. But you haven’t heard my opinion, and I hope that I can provide something unique to the landscape. Secondly, many readers probably think we should be talking about more important things than a pop culture icon. But the very nature of this blog explains how cultural forces like Taylor Swift are more important to our current times than one might think.
I’ve been told that my “obsession” with Taylor Swift is annoying, frivolous, absurd, and more of that ilk. I’ve been criticized for the amount of money I’ve spent on Taylor Swift tickets, paraphernalia, etc., as if those people actually know how much money I’ve spent. For some context, I can guarantee you that my $150 Eras Tour ticket pales in comparison to the average amount of money the American male spends on college football every year. I could also compare the amount of time and energy I spend thinking and talking about Taylor Swift to the amount of time and energy someone spends talking about their favorite sports team. You see what I’m getting at? More than twice, I’ve been asked by someone what the craze is all about. The truth is, if you haven’t gotten it by now, you probably never will.
Like many other millennial Swifties out there, I have followed Taylor since her humble beginnings as the opener to the opener for country singers. I remember hearing her at an outdoor pavilion country concert when I was 12 years old. She opened for American Idol winner Kellie Pickler, who then opened for Brad Paisley. At the time I was so excited for Kellie Pickler. But I remember being very underwhelmed by Taylor’s performance. As a singer myself, it was obvious that her vocals were shaky, and she seemed nervous. I had no idea who she was, but I didn’t really think she’d make it based on what I saw. At the same time, I admired her courage. There was no one else on that stage except her and her guitar. At 17 years old, she bopped around the stage in a little black dress, her natural golden curls dancing with her, doing the best she knew how. At 17, I barely knew who I was. As an aspiring performer, it was very inspiring.
But you might be surprised to know that I haven’t been a die-hard Swiftie for her entire career. As an original fan of her country-ish style, I fell out of fan-ship with the release of her 1989 album, not loving the new pop sounds or mainstream themes. I, like many others, thought songs like “Blank Space” and “Shake It Off” were silly and inconsequential. And then she dropped off the grid for a few years. After that she came out with the shocking and bold album, Reputation, which I really didn’t like. I thought her themes of anger and revenge were immature. But I wasn’t really paying attention. At the time I had no idea about the most recent controversy with Kanye West/Kim Kardashian and Scooter Braun and how her pain from that deeply affected her song writing. I think the issues I had with her song’s themes at that time in my life (during my college days), say more about me than they do about her. Now I blast the songs “I Did Something Bad” and “Look What You Made Me Do” proudly, because I’ve been through my own hurt from betrayal and being stabbed in the back by people I trusted. Now I see the painful irony in “Blank Space” after having been judged and misunderstood for my relationships with men. I now see how “Shake it off” is somewhat an anthem for Swifties; we stand in solidarity with Taylor for her misrepresentation in the media because, especially as women, we know what it feels like to be underrated and forced into a box by society. For that reason, we keep cruising—we can’t stop and won’t stop grooving to the beat.
I really reconnected with Taylor when she came out with folkore in 2020. I remember sitting in bed with the lights off at 12am the night she released the album as a surprise, and I held my breath for three minutes as I listened to the first song. In that moment, I knew on a deep level somehow that this album would break me open emotionally. And it did. In the thick of a global pandemic, stuck in my small, apartment bedroom with little but myself and my thoughts, listening to this emotionally vulnerable masterpiece that explores the innermost human condition was the first time I really saw myself. It was the first time I saw my deepest insecurities, fears, hurt, and anger reflected back at me. And it was the first time I didn’t feel crazy for feeling those things. Someone understood me, and by the looks of it, I was not alone in feeling deeply understood. Hordes of introspective, sensitive, creative, and feeling-type girls like me came to the surface and unashamedly revealed ourselves. Taylor gave us the affirmation we needed to be ourselves, and I can say, at least for myself, that I am never going back to the way things were before. The album affected me so much that I got one of the lyrics tattooed on my body. “Are there still beautiful things?” is from a song called “seven,” where Taylor reminisces on the simplicity and freedom of childhood, longing to be able to see beauty in the world again after being tainted by the painful realities we experience with growing older. With vivid imagery she paints a picture of childhood memories, flashes and snippets of a bygone time that remind me so much of my own, bringing me to tears every time I listen to it (or sing it). This song touched my nostalgic, melancholic soul in a way I don’t even want to try to express with words. It’s just something that is meant to be felt.
And isn’t that the point of art? Experiencing it cannot be explained. It must be felt by the individual. It is so personal and subjective that no one can neatly tie a bow around it and say definitively: this is what this piece of art means, beyond a shadow of a doubt. We experience art through the lens of our personal, embodied experiences. We never leave ourselves at the door. I’m going to call out my lovely mother to give an explanation: every time she hears a new song by Taylor Swift, my mom asks me, “who is she singing about?” and almost every time, my answer is the same. “It could be about (insert male name) or (insert female name), or it could be about no one person at all. She could have made it up.” What I really mean to say is, she is singing about whatever your imagination tells you she is. Because that’s what we do when we experience art—we fill in the blanks where our imagination sees fit. I find it so interesting, yet so logical, that the way we relate to Taylor Swift’s diverse array of music reflects the way we live our lives. I think it says important things about what we value and hold most dearly.
I always knew Taylor was a genius, but the release of folkore helped me see that she had transcended the title of “entertainer” and become a true artist. There is nothing wrong with being an entertainer (we all love and need to be entertained), but she became something more curious, and, dare I say, more prophetic. She had broken a cage that had been placed around her and created something so antithetical to her pop culture persona. This move was so profound to me as someone who constantly seeks to be my own person, to defy societal norms and do things that others don’t think I can or should do. In a way, it is the story of all women. In 2024, we are still fighting for the freedom to explore and be our true selves.
Taylor Swift has become such a large pop culture icon that her lore transcends even herself. There are subgroups of fans who create fan fiction about Taylor’s personal life and the hidden meanings in her songs and social media posts. I’ll be honest, I think most of it is probably false, and the lore sometimes turns into a dissociation from reality. But it’s nonetheless fascinating to see how the idea of Taylor Swift has surpassed the person herself. I have never been keenly interested in her personal life (I think she would probably appreciate that). I prefer to focus on her music. That alone has given me a profound sense of love and adoration for her, even though I know she is so much more than her music. Her music, in its diversity of genre, theme, lyricism, etc., has allowed me to explore the complexity and multiplicity of being a human trying to survive in an existentially anxious world.
What’s especially interesting to me, as a theologian and avid churchgoer, is that in a western society that is growing increasingly secular, Taylor Swift has become somewhat an idol for the un-churched. A messiah for the lost who are searching for the meaning of life. There is even a moment in her Eras Tour concert where Taylor is high up on a pedestal and raises her hands to the sky, singing “Lord, save me, my drug is my baby,” with a choir of harmonies behind her, and her fans have taken it upon themselves to scream “take me to church!” in that moment. It’s a tradition that all of us know. Something about Taylor’s performance makes us feel like we’ve been to church, for real. Taylor and her fans have created a tight-knit, supportive community, united by key tenets evident in the themes of Taylor’s music and life, not unlike what church desires to be for its parishioners. Going to the Eras Tour concert was a spiritual experience for me. There was a collective energy in the stadium that I’ve never felt before, certainly never at church, unfortunately. It was bright and warm and filled with so much love and positivity. I felt a part of something so significant and pure. All the girls and women come from different backgrounds and share different views on life, but those differences didn’t matter in that space. Everyone was so kind and genuine; we were all in solidarity with each other. Strangers would come up to me, complimenting my outfit and asking to trade a friendship bracelet with me. On my dresser currently sits several bracelets made by strangers, and somewhere in the world some girl has a bracelet made by me with love. I really believe that, for the unchurched, being a Swiftie has given us the sense of belonging that church has not been able to provide.
And it is not just a force that exists in a vacuum, existing only to serve itself. Taylor’s effect moves us to effect social change. Several months ago, an influential female engineer was convinced by an influential Taylor Swift fan on Twitter to partner with Swifties to sell her 10 Taylor Swift tickets at face value, and we promised to raise $5k for the Against Malaria Foundation in return. In two hours, Swifties raised over $10k. In one week, we raised $23k. People don’t joke that Taylor could win the US presidency for no reason.
I realize that we are all guilty of a dangerous idolization, all the while knowing that Taylor is merely human like the rest of us. Though she is a true “mastermind” of our society, and perhaps even a prophet holding a mirror up to ourselves, she is not a savior. However, I’d dare to say that while it is not her who saves us, her legacy does. It is the shared experience that exists beyond her, of joining together around a collective purpose and constantly being inspired to create beautiful things.
I imagine that many Swifties will have no idea what I’ve been talking about throughout this blog; this will not resonate with them. For many others, they will understand it at their core. And I think that is my final take on the Taylor Swift effect. She has been so many things to so many girls and women (and a striking number of men, too) across generations and around the world. But the one thing that we all have in common is that we’ll scream her music at the top of our lungs any chance we get. There is something so culturally revealing about that, although I’m not yet certain what it reveals. Perhaps it reflects our cultural yearnings in our present age. Maybe what we yearn for is to simply be more human. In a world of death, destruction, greed, hatred, spurred on by advancing, isolating technology and existential dread of the apocalypse of the world, perhaps so many of us are searching again for the simple joys of being human, things that humans have been doing since the beginning of time—to dance, to sing, to laugh, to embrace one another, to cry, to “scream ferociously,” so long as we’re doing it together. I’ve always liked to think that’s why we were all placed on this baffling earth together living these baffling existences, so that no one goes through it alone.