When Complacency Meets Mediocrity: the Harsh Truth About Taylor Swift
You are under spells, people!
Yesterday, I was having dinner with a friend. He’s a huge swiftie, and despite me being highly against her, it never really impacted our friendship. I love my best friend, even if our choice of Main Pop Girls are largely different. He enjoys Taylor Swift, I enjoy Ariana Grande. He doesn’t like Sabrina, I adored Short and Sweet; He says 143 by Katy Perry wasn’t that bad, I say it was a huge day for gay people who can’t read. At the end of the day, we’re both blasting Boy Crazy by Kesha. When we have dinner together, all we talk about is pop culture.
We couldn’t stop talking about Taylor Swift, because with every praise he has is met with subtle, yet, fair criticism of her on my part. I’m not a Taylor Swift hater, I am consistently alienated by her. Nothing about her brand appeals to me; not the songs, the merch, or the life that comes with being affiliated with the clean cut branding she occasionally strives for. I’m too messy for something as simple as the antithesis of Anti-hero, my life is too convoluted for elementary lyrics that so many women consider as ‘poetry.’ I don’t relate to All Too Well, but I do relate to Virgin by Flowerface. I don’t see myself in Nothing New, but I do in Are You Satisfied by MARINA.
I’m not a snob, I also enjoy Marvel movies; But I know most of them are exposition-heavy, low-stakes action slop. quantity over quality, comfort over growth. Swift is the Marvel of music the way Marvel is the Mcdonald’s of movies: omnipresent, formulaic, beloved, but rarely pushing the art forward. Big macs are all made the same. Marvel movies are all filmed behind a green screen. And we are coming up on 12 Taylor Swift albums that say nothing relevant to the conversation pop music is currently having.
The Tortured Poets Department was not even the biggest album last year, sure, it was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy’s, but it was overshadowed by Brat, Short and Sweet, Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Cowboy Carter, Eternal Sunshine, Hit Me Hard and Soft, and much more. Every album mentioned brought something new to the conversation on what the future of pop music would look like, sound like, and be like, every one of them, except Tortured Poets; which was like Midnights, which was like Folklore.
The announcement of The Life of A Showgirl left a bitter taste in my mouth, making one thing certain: Taylor Swift may be the McDonald’s of music. But pop’s future? It’s being cooked up elsewhere.
My main problem is the co-opting of the showgirl aesthetic, especially following the success of the Pamela Anderson film ‘The Last Showgirl.’ The film follows Anderson as a showgirl in Vegas, performing in her last show, since the art of being a showgirl is a dying breed of art. The movie is a cautionary tale on what happens when you dedicate yourself to something obsolete. Where desirability is a double edged sword; and casting Anderson, a woman whose career was both made and destroyed by the objectification of her body makes the film brilliant. Because Pamela Anderson had to reinvent herself, she had to discover who she was outside of being objectified.
Taylor Swift’s use of “showgirl” imagery skips that history, that weight. Where The Last Showgirl meditates on obsolescence and reinvention, Swift’s “Life of a Showgirl” branding turns it into shallow aesthetic cosplay. She borrows the feathers and sequins, but not the struggle or meaning behind them. It’s artistically shallow. It took Taylor Swift twenty years to brand herself as sexy; there was nothing sexy about her music or brand before, because she was never treated as an object of sexual consumption. The only physical quality people have consistently projected onto her is her whiteness. And when whiteness is your only objectified trait, dressing it up in the feathers of a dying art form doesn’t feel like homage. It feels like performance without substance.
Her branding up until now was very “I’m not like other girls. Other girls had to show skin. Other girls wore cat ears, baby-doll dresses, high ponytails, and schoolgirl uniforms. I am different: an intellectual, a poet.” Meanwhile, those very women she set herself apart from were the ones forced to survive objectification, to be discarded and reinvent themselves in an industry that treats women as disposable.
And when that has never been your story — when you’ve built your career on not being sexualized — but you later borrow the aesthetic of women who lived that struggle just to market yourself? That isn’t reinvention. That’s laziness. In fact, Little Mix’s JADE is coming out with an album with the very same concept (That’s Showbiz, Baby!) in September, Miley Cyrus did the music for The Last Showgirl and then based her new album (Something Beautiful) around the work she did for that film. Why are we reinventing the wheel?
The Last Showgirl is a heartbreaking film, while the Life of a Showgirl is about Swift’s time during the Eras tour, essentially, the most successful she’s ever been. It’s showing the biggest disconnect Swift has with the historical context of showgirls. In fact, if the art of a showgirl is obsolete, then why are we making a pop album? Last year was the biggest year for pop music.
And here comes the second problem with Taylor Swift, that so many other people tend to ignore out of convenience; the disconnect between the general public and her. The general public; who’s living paycheck to paycheck, unable to pay off debt, having their rights in jeopardy, and witnessing a genocide with no end in sight.
Swift’s flying monkeys love to bring up how she is a lyrical, musical genius. Yet, they infantilize her in the same breath. No one is forcing almost 40 year old Swift to be buddy-buddy with Trumpie and ‘modern Nazi’ Brittany Mahones. No one is forcing her to date, live with, fuck, or be with Travis Kelce, who said that meeting the president is a great honor not even a full calendar year ago. Taylor Swift is a billionaire, if she’s a genius like her fans claim, then she knows what she’s doing, and is choosing to associate herself with white supremacists. She does not have a gun to her head. She cannot be a ‘girl boss’ and completely helpless at the same time.
I have never understood the idea of celebrating someone’s business dealings, especially regarding her buying her masters back. When did this business deal become a household problem? Why are working class swifties upset that Swift isn’t getting maximum profit every time one of her original albums is being streamed? Aren’t they aware that her net worth is 1.6 billion dollars? It feels like a scam to care about this, when she has enough money to live her life over and over again. She was getting money from the original albums. Then she made variants of the other albums, therefore getting double the profit.
Her merch is so poorly made, it’s Shein material, and it always ends up in some landfill because it is mass produced. It’s not just the private plane use, she is a climate terrorist. Financially preying on her fanbase by banking on nostalgia for a tour. Is this why she had to sue Olivia Rodrigo?
“Taylor Swift cannot talk about Palestine or anything political because of the terrorist threat from her concert in Vienna” Yes, and? Ariana Grande actually survived a terror attack from her concert and is still outspoken about Palestine. (You look at the ME! music video and realize it’s the poor man’s No Tears Left to Cry).
Or, “But she endorsed Harris!” Yes — because she had to. Beyond that one safe gesture, she’s been silent on everything: ICE raids, abortion bans, police brutality, school shootings. The very issues her fanbase is living through.
“But Trump hates swift” have you ever heard of Latinos for Trump? Gays for Trump? Women for Trump?
“But the Miss Americana documentary-” from when she was dating Activist and Actor Joe Alwyn? We went from her crying about gay rights to announcing her album on a podcast called “Bussin with the Boys’ which could be mistaken for a segment on the Charlie Kirk show.
And if you dare to point this hypocrisy out, suddenly you’re “misogynistic.” Criticizing a billionaire blonde, blue-eyed woman who takes 13-minute private jet flights is framed as an attack on all women. Meanwhile, when a fan died of heat exhaustion during her Eras Tour stop in Brazil, due to the negligence of her team and the stadium, Swift’s empire kept moving with little more than a PR band-aid. Yeah, life’s pretty tough for someone who has Tree Paine cleaning up after her.
And when I brought this up to my friend, his response was “I don’t really care if she doesn’t talk about politics.”
So I asked him if he voted in this recent election at all.
His answer? No. guess his vote apparently didn’t matter in the swing state of Florida. Swift’s silence doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it breeds silence in the people who worship her. If the biggest pop star in the world doesn’t model political engagement, why should her fans? It’s easier to stay enchanted, to stay under the spell. And of course, it isn’t every swiftie, I know people who like Taylor Swift and are politically active, and care about the state of the world, and are active critics of her. But there’s too many complacent swifties. A lot of them are white.
And swifties don’t necessarily phase me in the slightest, they are just music’s Disney Adults.
I mean, the album color is orange, that’s like if Pantone decided that this year's color was 15-1237 TCX. A.K.A: Apricot Tan. Nothing here is a mistake.
I genuinely will never understand how so many swifties can performatively repost the newest Impact post on their Instagram stories, and then the next post will be about how excited they are for this new album. I want to blame the lack of media literacy that hasn’t been taught over the years, or maybe the rise in egotistical behavior within Gen Z as a generation. But really, I blame comfort. I think people are too comfortable with the current administration, they’re too comfortable with the genocide of palestine, too comfortable with the new gestapo tearing latino families apart, too comfortable with the revisions on gay and reproductive rights, too comfortable with trans murders, too comfortable with school shootings; too comfortable to believe that the leproads won’t eventually eat their faces too.
It’s why we keep settling for this saltine music. Created by saltine people. Pushing saltine ideals. Like selling 1800s easter day bonnets outside of their boutiques because hey, Taylor Swift wants to go back to the 1830’s (but she has to clarify she would like to without the racism…which doesn’t exist) reminds me too much of 1965 by Jessie Murph; who wants you to love her like it was the time period where domestic violence was the norm.
“But Taylor Swift wrote *insert song*” …you know what that sounds like?
“I know Kanye West is a bad person, but he dropped Graduation”
I’m sick. I’m sick and tired of the mountain of excuses we give to mediocrity while we bash and expect more from people who aren't like everyone else. Generational talents are not only overlooked because of mediocrity, but because more is expected of them to stand out. Chappell Roan is a better lyricist, Ariana Grande is a better vocalist, Olivia Rodrigo is a better performer. Sabrina Carpenter has more of the sex appeal that Taylor is trying to strive for, which is probably why they’re collaborating together (tell me, does this and this look alike at all?) and it’s a disservice to Beyoncé to call Taylor the ‘White Beyoncé’ because the only thing Taylor is, is white. Virtually, the only thing Taylor has going for her is 20 years of experience and Jack Antonoff. I don’t know how many times black and latino female music fans have to tell swifties about Swift's wrongdoings. Taylor Swift fatigue is real. And I'm still at the restaurant waiting for everyone else to realize that fact too.
Because at the end of the day, there’s music fans, and then there’s Swifties.
