How Taylor Swift is Letting Down the Next Generation of Swifties
Graphics by Téa Sklar
Alright, Swifties, put the guns down. This article is not about me going out of my way to bash Taylor Swift. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. For the most part.
We all heard The Life of a Showgirl. A lot of people would consider it a displeasure to listen to. Those people are mainly fans who have grown up around her, seen Taylor in every era, and been in the trenches battling on the front lines for her. I am one of those people!
I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan for over a decade. On my 6th birthday, I hopped in an illegally marked cab to go see her at Macy’s in NYC for the release of her ‘Wonderstruck’ perfume. Clambering onto my mom’s shoulder, I saw a glimpse of her beautiful blonde hair, and my world was altered. From there on, Taylor had yet another wildly dedicated fan.
She was the voice of a generation for young women. Never gave a fuck about what people thought, NEVER lived her life for any man, and did whatever she wanted. Or at least, that’s the Taylor I saw for most of my life. But then her fans started to get older. Maybe some of those fans had kids who are raising their children on her music, just like they were. And we noticed some patterns as the albums went on. So that’s what I’m here to talk about.
The decline started, I’d say, after she broke up with Joe Alwyn. He was famously her ‘private but not secret’ relationship. The entire Reputation album was written with him in mind. It was sweet and simple, whilst maintaining the hardcore and rock aesthetic that she achieved throughout that era of her career. It was some of her best songwriting, leading into the perfect albums: Lover, Folklore, and Evermore. The trifecta of her discography. Lyrical masterpieces. A perfect example of said mastery at work:
“I made you my temple, my mural, my sky.
Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life.” -tolerate it (evermore)
From writing like THAT, to now this:
“Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see,
His love was the key that opened my thighs.” -Wood (The Life of a Showgirl)
Like, what the hell can happen between boyfriends to make your words fall so flat?
And I get that different men can lead to different inspirations for songwriting. But finishing the album, I felt empty. Like her music would never be the same after this. As if Travis Kelce had fully submerged his claws into her shoulders, he took her intelligence with a pen when he took the last piece of her from her die-hard fans.
That’s what gets me about this album. It’s so unlike Taylor and everything she had ever stood for. One of her biggest character faults is that, as she started getting torn down by more men, she started molding her personality to the guys she was seeing at that time period. She’s had a very rough and public dating history. When every guy you’ve ever been spotted with becomes a major headline, I can imagine how stressful that can be. But it leads me to wonder what shifted that she started to change the fabric of who she is for these men? Who was the catalyst for this change?
Could it have been John Mayer? Joe Jonas, Harry Styles, Taylor Lautner? We won’t ever really know. But I would do anything to ask her what happened. I hadn’t been worried about her writing at all since the Joe split. Travis, however, is something… different. There is simply no nicer way for me to put that.
He irks the shit out of me. Him on the sidelines with his coach, the way he interacts with people in general, how much their family has been profiting off of him dating her, and the haste of their engagement. It all throws me off. People like to think I am this way because he’s a Chiefs player (go Bills!), and that’s not it. It is a big factor, and I won’t lie, it’s why I started off not liking him in the first place. But the more you look at this guy on a real level, the shittier he gets.
Analyzing celebrities and artists is so bad, but I’m protective of Taylor. She got me through the biggest hardships of my life. When I had to pack up my life and move halfway across the country, Taylor was there. Quarantine, I got two of my top five albums of all time. Going through horrible moments in childhood, my mom and I would blast ‘Mean’ in the car and scream it around Wichita, Kansas. The way she was never afraid to speak her mind or speak up for people who couldn’t do so themselves was inspiring. It’s why I wanted to become a writer. Yet here I am, writing about my childhood idol in a way that I never thought I would be.
My heart breaks listening to this album. Seeing the way she had to simplify her words for her CTE-ridden man is nothing short of tragic. Sad, not beautiful, and tragic. ( ← Another great song she wrote before the world ever started caring about Travis!)
But here’s the thing: in my mind, this isn’t even as bad as she will get. They’re getting married. She talks about having kids with him. There is an extremely high chance that we will get less and less music and more of her becoming a trad-housewife in Kansas City, like he wants. That is what really scares me. Even imagining losing someone who has been this formative to my sense of womanhood is a frightening thing to think about. Her music has always said something that I’ve never been able to describe articulately. She has a gift, whether you like it or not. What will young women do if we lose that? My future daughters might not have a Taylor Swift, and that is the most devastating part.
Taylor, if you can hear me, please stand the hell up and come back to us.