It’s simple. She cornered the market for pop music and dominated popular culture - our most lucrative export - by the time she was twenty years old. That’s impossible.
No one does that. Madonna and her “fempire” did not.
Taylor Swift did it and with less pretense.
It’s a momentous achievement.
There was backlash. She wrote a hit song about it.
Haters gonna hate, right?
During this time, she also grew up.
She became strong woman with opinions. People saw her as cute and a little “ditzy” but a wholesome country music phenomenon. She dated a lot and took a lot of flak.
Unlike Miley Cyrus, Taylor needed no styrofoam finger to announce her full-fledged womanhood, not that I am overtly critical of Miley. But it was staged controversy for the sake of controversy.
Taylor wrote a parody song about the hypocrisy of questioning a woman’s dance card.
She performed it in the opening monologue when she hosted SNL.
It was hilarious. She roasted the haters. She was maybe 18–19 at the time.
Then, she conquered pop music charts and started to have political opinions. After extensive discussions about the risks to her career, she decided to express those opinions.
People who don’t like those opinions, and understand her impact on popular culture, especially Gen Z who are headed to the polls for the first time this year, orchestrated a backlash.
She does not respond with hostility. She just writes another hit song about it.
She also treats her fans well. She has invited groups of her biggest supporters on social media to her home where she treated them to a “just us girls” weekend or evening of brownies and diet soda.
She has a good heart and she sees her fans as friends.
For me, it’s not obsession, but I admire her for many reasons.
She’s already up there with Oprah, Ellen, Madonna, Cher or even Dolly Parton - or any other woman who became a media magnate and a major player as an unofficial spokesperson for many in her generation.
Will her music win the Nobel Prize in Literature like Bob Dylan?
No. But she writes fun, optimistic and fresh music that people love.
And they spend lot of money. I know a woman from my yoga class who treated her daughter to decent seats at a Taylor Swift concert. No VIP, but good seats.
The price? $1,000 for just the tickets.
(Some of that is the ridiculous fees Ticketmaster charges, but still…).
I am a 57 year old white male. I never listened to Taylor until I saw the You Need to Calm Down video. It was groundbreaking. I thought, wow. We should take her seriously.
She has something to say. She says it well.
Then, I watched her Netflix documentary.
Impressive, strong and fully a woman.
(Image purchased from a Stock photo site).
NOTE: I do not pander to trolls ever. I delete, mute, block and sometimes report without mercy. You don’t have to love Taylor Swift, but if you use my comment feed to promote assinine conspiracy theories on par with QAnon, those comments will not survive for long.
Please don’t waste your time.
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