A young woman that people can’t stop talking about or listening to, seven Grammys, 30 million albums and counting and more breakup stories that she would probably like, that is Taylor Swift. These numbers only tell part of her story.
Her talent is so obvious. Her first album Taylor Swift established her as a country music star. The 1989 crossed over into pop cementing her world domination. On 2012’s Red, she stepped into pop. The album 1989 debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with the largest sales week for an album since 2002.
While her music has evolved dramatically over the years, she has only made slight, safe tweaks to her public image. In 2017, Swift took the rest of the year by storm, with a not-so-traditional album rollout for Reputation. She totally changed her style with the snake-centric presentation of her new Reputation era. It might be a creative risk for the country-turned-pop star [1].
Many fans of Taylor Swift said she made great music and had cultivated an image that appeals to a broad range of people. “I listen to Taylor Swift is because the lyrics she wrote are very awesome. And I was not interested Taylor Swift when I first listen to her songs because it was a little girl who was playing the guitar all the time, but after listening to the 1898 and Reputation, I think she is really a music star,” a fan of Taylor Swift, student Zhou Haolin said.
Of course, maturity mixed with fame brought more complicated problem and different kinds of enemies. Her first public enemy was Kanye West. In 2009, Swift, a giant in the country music world, but an emergent star in pop, won the MTV Video Music Awards Video of the Year Award for You Belong With Me. West is outraged and he interrupted her acceptance speech, grabbing the microphone from her to explain that “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time” for Single Ladies. However, Swift’s popularity throughout
the United States was unaffected after this event and she becomes more and more famous. The VMAs moment turned Swift into a lightning rod for debates around feminism, race and politics. It also taught her how to turn controversy to her favour, playing aggressor, victim and leader as it suited her best [2].
Swift uses her life experiences as an inspiration in her work. She frequently criticizes ex-boyfriends in her songs. Facing these criticism of her song writing, Swift in response this during her Speak Now World Tour and she says: “for a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that’s taking something that potentially should be celebrated—a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way—that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist.” This is her own way of living and we cannot judge but I think this is a good way to express yourself about writing songs of your ex-boyfriend. A comment of her songwriting downplayed by The Village Voice: “Being told What Songs Mean is like having a really pushy professor. And it imperils a true appreciation of Swift’s talent, which is not confessional, but dramatic.” The singer herself said that not all songs are real, sometimes based on observation. New York Magazine believes the media scrutiny over her decision to “mine her personal life for music … is sexist, in as much as it’s not asked of her male peers”.
But Swift’s actual remarks about feminism remained limited. Her “squad” – a group of models and singers who joined her for sleepovers and on stage – became a byword for showy exclusivity. When Swift martialed her troops in the video for Bad Blood, a diss track about Katy Perry supposedly “stealing” her dancers, it highlighted the darker side of this allegiance [3].
All in all, although we can’t deny there are some controversies about Taylor Swift, she spent a decade trying to show that she is talented and brilliant. Michelle Obama described her as a singer who “has rocketed to the top of the music industry but still keeps her feet on the ground, someone who has shattered every expectation of what a 22-year-old can accomplish”.
Swift insists that “I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free”. Given the passionate response to the way she ripped apart her own image in the campy “Blank Space” video and went a little more lyrically vicious with “Bad Blood,” her fans may have long been hungry for an “evil” Swift, one that owns the public perceptions and projections of a calculated figure [4]. “As for the album Reputation, some people criticize her of being too mean and care much about the outside people criticize her. But I think if we take account of everything she has suffered and when we take those facts in to consideration and look at this album again, I think that is a good way of expressing herself and there are few people can do better than this,” the fan Zhou Haolin said.
As Swift pushing forth into her Reputation era, leaning into a darker side might be the biggest test of her artistic capabilities yet. Will her fan be cheerful on her new direction? Or will her followers mourn the loss of “the old Taylor” she finally killed off?
Comments and Interview (edit by the blogger):
Location: Xiamen University Malaysia
Interviewee: Zhou Haolin(student)–a fan of Taylor swift
This video includes four parts:
- Introduction of Taylor Swift
- Interview of Taylor Swift
- Comments of Taylor Swift from music expert and artists
- Interview of her fan–Zhou Haolin
Sources:
- P. (2017, August 24). Taylor Swift: Everything That’s Happened Since Her ‘1989’ Era. Retrieved January 08, 2018, from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/taylor-swift-everything-thats-happened-since-her-1989-era-w499375
- Spanos, B. (2017, August 25). Are Fans Ready for Taylor Swift’s Darkest Era Yet? Retrieved January 08, 2018, from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/taylor-swifts-look-what-you-made-me-do-her-new-dark-side-w499473
- Kreps, D. (2017, December 31). On the Charts: Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ Returns to Number One. Retrieved January 08, 2018, from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/charts-taylor-swifts-reputation-returns-to-number-one-w514835
- Taylor Swift. (2018, January 04). Retrieved January 08, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift
Music Beckons Us 