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The Linguistic Evolution of Taylor Swift

If Taylor Swift shifts her accent in her transition from country to pop, does she lose the personal authenticity important to country music?

With the surprise midsummer release of Folklore , it seems that Taylor Swift has finally put out an indie record much cooler than her others , one that even a Pitchfork editor could love . The critically acclaimed, aptly named Folklore feels like a cozy, autumnal, cardigan-wearing kind of album, homing in on the telling and retelling of stories of heartbreak and longing through the lyricism of language at the heart of Swift’s songwriting.

It appears to be a tentative new step toward a more subdued, contemplative form of music, in the decade-long, genre-bending career of one of the most successful—yet also much criticized—artists of this era. Despite the awards and fan adoration, Taylor Swift is also an artist who has been beset with a mess of contradictory criticisms , at once derided for revealing too much about her personal life in her music, and at the same time dismissed as nothing more than a manufactured, blank space of an inauthentic pop star.

Until recently, in fact, even her supporters sometimes drew attention not to her creative skill in songwriting but to her work ethic or marketing savvy, as if to damn with faint praise. If the new sounds of  Folklore are part of a struggle for musical legitimacy, the album’s success might shine a light on why it has taken so long for critics to take Swift seriously. Why is it that some of them can never accept that Taylor Swift might have something worthy to say?

Perhaps the answer lies in how the disparate threads of language, accent, and the public image of authenticity and identity all get tangled up in that particularly confessional genre that gave Taylor Swift her start at the tender age of fifteen: country music.

Although it seems obvious that musicians, like the rest of us, likely enjoy a variety of genres , it still comes as a surprise when they successfully cross over to a different kind of music. Switching styles, whether in music or the way you speak, can be viewed with suspicion, and stepping outside the norm can be stigmatized.

The accent on singing

Taylor Swift, by some accounts a music nerd herself, famously made the move from country to pop, and took many of country’s songwriting and stylistic traditions with her. This naturally has played a part in how she and her music have been received by a wider audience, but it hasn’t always been positive. She first established a strong public persona as a real, relatable girl with a growing and evolving sense of self who just happened to be a country star. But country’s complex relationship with the ideas of realness, authenticity, and identity through personal storytelling was perhaps hard to translate to modern pop, a seemingly artificial genre. What’s more, the lived experience that’s grist for Swift’s songwriting now includes success, wealth, and privilege. Though her personal storytelling can seem far removed from what many of us may experience, there’s clearly something at the heart of those stories that we can still relate to.

Linguistically, this contradiction is evident in Swift’s code switching from one musical genre to another. Code switching occurs when a speaker straddling different speech communities changes from standard or expected languages, dialects, or even accents in some contexts to more marked ones in the same language in other contexts. Since many regional or class-based accents can be stigmatized for such unknowable things as education level and intelligence (or even the potential to be a supervillain ), it might seem strange that people switch from standard to nonstandard ways of speaking, even unconsciously. But it’s exceptionally common, and most curiously so when it comes to music.

The reasons for doing this, and the choices of code switching that speakers make, are almost always socially motivated, according to linguist Carol Myers-Scotton. Code switching is “a creative act, part of the negotiation of a public face.” It’s a way to signal which cultural group you identify with—where you want to belong. It can also signal a disruption of what’s seen as acceptable and normal—which, for instance, is what some musical genres, like rock ‘n’ roll and hip-hop, are all about.

Many linguists, such as Peter Trudgill, have long noted how the accent of modern pop music is generally American , no matter where a music artist hails from. So Adele’s natural Cockney accent when speaking melts into fluid, American tones when singing, which is largely regarded by most people as unremarkable and normal. In “Prestige Dialect and the Pop Singer,” linguist S. J. Sackett notes that a kind of pseudo-southern American accent has become the standard “prestige” pop music accent, perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, its anti-establishment, working-class associations.

Meanwhile, indie rock groups like the Arctic Monkeys, singing in their own native Sheffield accents , might seem more marked. Yet choosing to sing against the musical tide, in a nonstandard accent, can signal independence and authenticity.

The genre of country music, in differentiating itself from pop, abounds in the stronger regional accents of the American South, not just from natives such as Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn but even a Canadian like Shania Twain or  the Swedish Americana group First Aid Kit .

Swift follows in a long line of singing like you belong. The southern accent is clearly evident in her early singles, such as “ Our Song ,” written when she was fourteen , where you can hear marked phonetic features of Southern American English from the very first word. The diphthong in the pronoun “I” [aɪ], in “I was riding shotgun,” sounds more like the monophthong “ah” [a:]. There’s also the lack of rhotic “r” in words like “car” and “heart,” and grammatical variation such as the lack of verb agreement in “your mama don’t know.” In the penultimate line, “I grabbed a pen and an old napkin,” the famous southern “pin-pen” merger reveals itself, as “pen” and “napkin” are rhymed.

In Swift’s crossover single “22,” the genre is pure pop, but the southern accent is still a force to be reckoned with: The “e” of “twenty” sounds more like “twinny” and the “two” sounds more like “tew.” However, whether Swift code-switches because of the musical genre in which she’s singing, or because she may have only  acquired her accent after moving to the South as a young teen , she largely loses the more marked linguistic elements in transitioning into a pop artist, with an appropriately general American accent.

In fact, Swift ironically refers to the oddity of the accent change in the bewildering lineup of her personas in the music video “Look What You Made Me Do.” Her upbeat country music persona exclaims only a brief “y’all!” “Oh, stop acting like you’re so nice, you are so fake,” answers yet another version of herself.

Fake it to make it?

Taylor Swift isn’t alone in being accused of faking an accent. American pop-punk bands like Green Day have been accused of faking British accents in imitation of the Sex Pistols, just as non-American groups (such as the French band Phoenix) put on their best-dressed American accents during performances. Code switching in genres is not uncommon and generally passes unnoticed, especially if listeners never get a chance to hear an artist’s normal speaking voice—unless that voice sings in a new genre where a different accent might be the norm.

An accent is seen as such an integral part of a speaker’s identity that when it changes, it can open up accusations of being fake and inauthentic, even though artists need to evolve and create in new ways. Although this might be a desirable trait in an actor, who conveys other people’s stories through their own body, for an artist who purports to tell their own lived experience through narrative songwriting, it can call into question their integrity or intentions in terms of the grubby necessities of making a living.

This is a complicating factor particularly when it comes to country music.

Aaron A. Fox opens up his essay on the discourse of country music by asking: “Is country music for real?” […] A unique, if elusive core of ‘authenticity’ tantalises country’s supporters and infuriates its critics”; yet to quote Simon Frith, “music can not be true or false, it can only refer to conventions of truth or falsity.” The only way we can talk about the time we spend in our lives is really through narrative, and these stories about our lives are constructed and shaped by our culture and language—never the absolute truth, but a continually evolving retelling of our past, present, and futures.

In lay terms, country music is obsessed with the idea of authenticity, perhaps more so than other genres, not only because of its musicality (the skill involved in playing acoustic instruments, for example) but also because of its storytelling: Artists are supposed to write and perform songs about their own life experiences. Country songs are ideally biographical, “the real lives of real people.” The kind of language they use is therefore crucial.

As Fox notes, the thematic concerns of country music, of loss and desire, of heartbreak and heartache, are intensely private experiences, but they are laid starkly bare and made public in song, ready to be consumed by the public. The language of these songs takes the plain, everyday, down-home ways of speaking that ordinary, often working-class people use, and intensifies them into an unnatural, poetic, metaphorical state, with a “dense, pervasive use of puns, clichés and word-play.”

Dolly Parton’s “Bargain Store,” for example, uses her own dialect both lyrically and in performance to recast her life of poverty and her broken heart, things that people often keep private.

My life is likened to a bargain store And I may have just what you’re lookin’ for If you don’t mind the fact that all the merchandise is used But with a little mending, it could be as good as new

Pamela Fox also considers how the autobiographical country song is different for women . Far from a masculine or chauvinistic perspective of a hard-drinking, hard-worn life of labor and lost loves, successful women in country such as Lynn, Parton, and Tammy Wynette have public identities positioned as overcoming an earlier life of hardship and poverty, particularly family origins in coal mining, sharecropping, or cotton picking. This source of authenticity is hard to fake or debate, compared to the assumed emptiness of a comfortable middle-class life.

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And yet, writes Fox, “one cannot remain country for long if one lacks roots (and slowly exchanges ordinary life for an unreal world of excess and continual displacement).” In a way, “success stories rank as distinctly gendered ‘failures’ of country authenticity: as working female celebrities, they forfeit not only their traditional pasts,” but the public respect that comes with the humble domestic or maternal world they sing about, thanks to their new lives of comfort and success. As Dolly Parton put it, “Although I look like a drag queen’s Christmas tree on the outside, I am at heart a simple country woman.”

In a way, Swift’s struggle with the perception of authenticity is just as real and problematic as the one faced by the women in country who came before her, though Swift came from upper-middle-class origins rather than poverty.

The worth of words

In “The Last Great American Dynasty,” Swift pens the story of someone she never knew: the eccentric, wealthy Rebekah Harkness of Rhode Island. As Swift inserts herself into the narrative’s end, it transpires that Harkness owned the house that Swift later bought.

“Fifty years is a long time/Holiday House sat quietly on that beach,” she adds. “Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits/And then it was bought by me.”

Swift’s personal experience is slightly less relatable because it reminds most of us that we can’t simply buy holiday houses on a beach in Rhode Island. And yet, the feelings of being outside of the norm, of not belonging and feeling out of place, of being criticized as mad, are certainly emotional states we all can understand.

In Swift’s evolving songwriting, about other people or herself, the events may be outside our experience, but they can be just as heartfelt through the deft use of language. And in this, we may come to understand just what Taylor Swift’s words are worth.

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Taylor Swift: why academics are studying the pop star

Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star in the world and a seemingly unlikely subject of academic study around Australia and the world. The American superstar made Grammys history this month winning Album of the Year for the fourth time, soon after being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Forbes magazine declared the 34-year-old American the most powerful woman in the entertainment industry and fifth in the world for 2023, stating she is “an advocate for the empowerment of women and a champion for all musicians seeking greater ownership of their work.”

The conference or Swiftposium - hosted by the University of Melbourne in collaboration with the University of Sydney, RMIT University, Curtin University, Auckland University of Technology and Monash University - highlighted how a single artist has impacted contemporary life, with papers exploring Swift’s influence across the intersection of music, economics, business, media studies, health, and societal and cultural impact.

Brittany Spanos, New York University (NYU) Adjunct Instructor and senior writer for Rolling Stone opened the conference, delivering a keynote address examining Swift’s career in relation to the music industry, musicology, feminism and race.

Dr Georgia Carroll presenting the keynote at the Swiftposium. 

Dr Georgia Carroll, a researcher who completed her PhD on fandom and celebrity in the Discipline of Sociology at the University of Sydney delivered the Early Career Researcher keynote on the second day. Dr Carroll’s keynote was titled: “’My pennies made your crown’: Taylor Swift as your Billionaire Best Friend” and explored the intersection of fandom and economic consumption in the Taylor Swift fan community. It examined how Swift encourages individuals to purchase merchandise, multiple versions of her albums, and concert tickets in order to be viewed as the "right" kind of fan and gain her attention. 

Other papers covered topics such as lyrical poetics, cyber-security, AI, mental health, public relations and “Swiftonomics”, referring to the economic impact of Taylor on local and global economies both in terms of her touring and her wider role in the entertainment industry. There was also a stream exploring Swift as a teaching tool in higher education, following recent courses on her and her work at institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University and NYU.

@abcnewsaus How well do you know Taylor Swift and her international impact? Academics from around the world have gathered at the Swiftposium conference in Melbourne to discuss her influence on music, cities, creatives and more.  #TaylorSwift #ErasTour #ErasTourAus #ABCNews ♬ original sound - ABC News Australia

University of Sydney experts from philosophy, sociology, English and psychology share why they are studying the lyrics and music of the American pop star.

Philosophy, forgiveness and Taylor Swift

Associate Professor Luke Russell , lecturer in ethics and critical thinking in the Discipline of Philosophy, said the singer-songwriter has a strong view on forgiveness, a subject he has recently published a book on, Real Forgiveness .  

“I’m a philosopher who writes on the topic of forgiveness," he said. "Taylor Swift holds an interesting and contentious view about forgiveness, a view that she has explained in interviews and has expressed in her songs. 

“Swift rejects the claim that we always ought to offer unconditional forgiveness to those who have wronged us. This puts her in conflict with advocates of unconditional forgiveness, including many Christians and therapists. I think that Swift is right about this, and her insights on this topic can help philosophers to see why sometimes forgiving is the wrong thing to do.” 

Greek philosophy, betrayal and Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift performs in Nashville, May 5, 2023 Photo: George Walker IV, AP/AAP Photos

Dr Emily Hulme is a lecturer in Ancient Greek philosophy in the Discipline of Philosophy. Her research interests include Plato’s epistemology and ethics, philosophy of language from Parmenides to the Stoics, and arguments concerning the status of women in the ancient world. Dr Hulme said:

“I work in Greek philosophy, a philosophical tradition where reflection on art and emotions is understood to be a key part of our development as humans. We can learn a lot about ourselves through emotionally engaging with art that pulls no punches in talking about vulnerability, trust, and betrayal. And Taylor Swift has a lot of songs that fit that bill.” 

Sociology, identity, and Taylor Swift

Dr Georgia Carroll a researcher who completed her PhD in fandom in the Discipline of Sociology at the University of Sydney said:  “I wrote my PhD on Taylor Swift and her fandom because as a long-time Swiftie, I knew that there was something special about the relationship she shares with her fans. Many of Taylor's fans feel as though they have grown up alongside her, built a real connection with her, and that her music has served as a kind of overarching soundtrack to their lives. 

“As sociologists, we strive to understand society and its intersection with culture, identity, social relationships, and power structures, and celebrity fandom is a perfect window into all of those things.”  

English poetry, Shakespeare and Taylor Swift

Professor Liam Semler , is a Shakespeare scholar and teaches Early Modern Literature in the Discipline of English. He has a new paper on teaching Shakespeare’s sonnets using the lyrics from Taylor Swift’s album Midnights. He also teaches a unit called Shakespeare and Modernity, using Taylor Swift’s lyrics. Professor Semler said: “As the marketing for Midnights as a concept album started to permeate popular culture, I felt there was a fascinating, but not explicit, array of parallels to early modern sonnet sequences. 

“There are plenty of songs on the album that work well in class and connect to thematic and poetic elements relevant to Shakespeare’s sonnets. In my unit ‘Shakespeare and Modernity,’ Swift is part of a multidimensional picture as we explore the design principles and thematics of sonnet collections, including the literary work of Jen Bervin and Luke Kennard who rewrite the sonnets in fresh and provocative ways.” 

Psychology, archetypes and Taylor Swift

Kayla Greenstien, a PhD candidate in psychology said: “I study the theoretical orientations behind psychedelic therapies, including Jungian archetypes and using myths to explore deeper truths about human experiences. 

“After seeing Eras Tour footage on TikTok, I started thinking about Taylor Swift's entire artistic output as a form of uniquely modern mythopoeticism. There's a lot we can learn about archetypal experiences and who's voice they represent from looking at Swift's work through this lens.” 

Top Photo: Taylor Swift performs at the Monumental stadium during her Eras Tour concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko/AAP Photos)

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The Science of Taylor Swift and Other Improbable Stories

The beginning of april always generates a slew of research papers from scientists who should know better. here is this year's round up..

Taylor Swift's songs are well known for their description of various roller coaster relationships. These relationships have evolved during Swift's long career as a pop superstar. But how have the sentiments conveyed in Swift's songs changed in this time, and what light can science throw on this important issue?

Now Megan Mansfield and Darryl Seligman from the University of Chicago have an answer of sorts. "We show, for the first time, how Swift’s lyrical and melodic structure have evolved in their representation of emotions over a timescale of τ ∼ 14 yr," they say.

Their results could be useful for Swift, or indeed anyone, in choosing a partner in the future. "We provide tentative indications that partners with blue eyes and/or bad reputations may lead to overall less positive emotions, while those with green or indigo-colored eyes may produce more positive emotions and stronger relationships," says Mansfield and Seligman.

However, they also include a disclaimer: "We stress that these trends are based on small sample sizes, and more data are necessary to validate them."

You have been warned!

Ref: I Knew You Were Trouble: Emotional Trends in the Repertoire of Taylor Swift: arxiv.org/abs/2103.16737

Work Ethics

How productive are you? And how does your assessment of your work ethic compare with your actual productivity?

These are questions pondered by Kaley Brauer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who has been studying how often she and colleagues hit self-imposed deadlines for 559 tasks over the last nine months.

Brauer summarizes her results in just a few key takeaway points. First, she says that writing and coding take about 1.5 times as long as expected — so plan accordingly. She also says that senior researchers are not much better at hitting deadlines than their more junior colleagues. What's more, people don't get better at hitting deadlines over time.

But hers isn't all bad news. She points out that lots of work actually gets done, even if not always on time. "So yes, we only complete some of our planned tasks every week, but also, wow, we complete some of our planned tasks every week! While caring for ourselves and our loved ones!"

Ref: “I’ll Finish It This Week” And Other Lies: arxiv.org/abs/2103.16574

Feline Fact-Finding

Eve Armstrong is a regular paper publisher each April and the author of the now (in)famous paper " A Neural Networks Approach to Predicting How Things Might Have Turned Out Had I Mustered the Nerve to Ask Barry Cottonfield to the Junior Prom Back in 1997 ."

This year she investigates the connection between her cat Chester's behavior, the movement of a laser pointer and a red dot on the wall. The question at the heart of her work is: correlation, causation, or SARS-Cov-2 hallucination?

Ref: My cat Chester's dynamical systems analysyyyyy7777777777777777y7is of the laser pointer and the red dot on the wall: Correlation, causation, or SARS-Cov-2 hallucination? : arxiv.org/abs/2103.17058

Joking Aside

For a survey of science-related pranks and practical jokes, look no further than Douglas Scott's review of the role they have played in science, including his own fruitful collaborations with Ali Frolop (last year's contribution is here ). Scott's paper is an entertaining romp through the history of science from the point of view of practical jokers. He includes anecdotes about Newton, James Maxwell. George Gamow, Patrick Moore and numerous others. It also covers various famous pranks including the Sokal Affair in which a social sciences journal was tricked into publishing a paper consisting of pure gibberish, and a spoof article on ultrashort laser pulses by the authors "Knox, Knox, Hoose & Zare".

The paper finishes with a conclusions section, the entirety of which is reproduced here. "There are no conclusions."

Ref: Science Spoofs, Physics Pranks and Astronomical Antics : arxiv.org/abs/2103.17057

Further reading from this year's selection of papers published on April 1 include:

Using Artificial Intelligence to Shed Light on the Star of Biscuits: The Jaffa Cake: arxiv.org/abs/2103.16575

Preliminary Analysis of Planetary Characteristics, Dynamics, and Climates from the Systems Alliance Planetary Survey Catalogue: arxiv.org/abs/2104.00175

Detection of Rotational Variability in Floofy Objects at Optical Wavelengths: arxiv.org/abs/2103.16636

And finally...

The Swapland: arxiv.org/abs/2103.17198

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Ross Douthat

Taylor swift needs to become other people.

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

The biggest cultural news of the month is that a lot of people are kind of “meh” about Taylor Swift’s latest album (or albums, if you prefer to treat the 31-song release as a twofer). After spending the past few years illustrating how internet-era culture encourages a singular kind of superstardom, to the point where Swift has sometimes felt like the only celebrity singer in the world — or maybe that’s just how it feels when you’re driving a minivan with tween-age daughters making song requests — we’ve maybe, maybe finally hit a point of overextension and oversaturation.

Two takes on this interested me. One is from Damon Linker, who argues that Swift badly needs an editor and that her art is suffering because nobody is manufacturing scarcity, forcing her to kill her darlings and otherwise imposing what the limits of vinyl LP technology used to impose on singer-songwriters — namely, a requirement of curation:

If a band records 20 songs for a project, but only has room for 12 on the final album, decisions need to be made. Which are the 12 best songs — not just in absolute terms, but in terms of the whole (the album) being constructed out of the parts (the songs)? What kind of statement are the artists trying to make? What kind of sound and mood do they want to become immortalized at this moment in their career? Which of these songs do they want to play live dozens of times on their upcoming concert tour? Which song would make for the best opening track, and which the best closer? And how about pacing? How many upbeat tunes, how many ballads, and in which order?

Linker goes on to suggest that this process helps define an artist’s aesthetic, forcing them toward their greatest strengths and their most original material. For this reason, someone like Bruce Springsteen, who recorded many more songs than appeared on his most famous albums, might have been a weaker cultural presence — or so Linker argues — if he had just dumped every song he ever wrote in the laps of his most eager fans. The best work would have been lost inside the pretty good work, and the sense of Springsteen as a very specific kind of rock music legend might have been diminished.

For a very different analysis of Swift, consider these comments on X from Katherine Boyle, an Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalist, repurposing a take she offered in 2023. In our cultural environment, Boyle argues, being prolific is everything: “You can’t cede ground to competitors. You have to keep producing, keep sending a constant wave of stuff, that again, follows a consistent formula which helps your fans anticipate when it’s coming.”

So the fact that Swift constantly “ships” is a feature, not a bug: “A continuous stream of shipping must be maintained,” Boyle says. You can’t worry about having your best material lost in the churn, because the “most successful people in competitive industries win by taking more shots, not fewer. If Taylor writes 31 songs and 3 are memorable, she’s written three epic songs. No one remembers the bad ones, even if there’s more of them on a double album.”

These arguments seem diametrically opposed, but one could synthesize them by saying that Linker could be more correct about art (the requirements of curation might yield a more refined oeuvre) and Boyle could be more correct about commerce (the requirements of the media environment don’t allow the luxury of holding potential hits and bangers back).

Supposing that to be true, what should superstars do when they follow Boyle’s advice and people — well, some people at least, if not the truest fans — suddenly claim to feel exhausted? Or more specifically, what should Swift do if she feels like she needs to ship but the shipping hits a saturation point?

I feel vaguely qualified to address this since I’m not a passionate Swiftie, but I am someone who has been required to listen to almost all of her music, many times over, and taken pleasure from it even though it isn’t always my first choice. Which means I’m the kind of listener who’s most likely to feel the oversaturation first — and I’m inclined to agree with the provisional consensus that the new album underwhelms.

My prescription is that if Swift is going to be this prolific, she needs more leaven in her content. The core of her brand will always be the personal drama of Being Taylor Swift, but that story’s cycle of infatuation, love, rapture, disappointment, pain, revenge has hit a limit of interest in her current work.

One escape from this limit is, of course, to change the story by marrying Travis Kelce and inspiring a new American baby boom. But pending that happy possibility, another way to escape a personal cul-de-sac as an artist is to ship fewer stories about her own ’shipping (if you will) and tell more stories about other people — or more subtly, to expand what Being Taylor Swift means musically to encompass more lives besides her own.

This was of course always the basis of Springsteen’s success — the fact that his music wasn’t dependent on real events in the life of Bruce Springsteen, and instead he inhabited a wide range of characters who were recognizably connected to his brand as a blue-collar balladeer.

Swift’s brand is different and much more authentically autobiographical than The Boss’s; the idea that she’s telling stories about her real self has always been crucial to her appeal. But she has already shown that she can play Swift-adjacent characters in her music, in a way that might be expanded and serve her better than another round of relationship-and-breakup songs.

Here are three examples. “The Lucky One,” from the original cut of the album “Red,” is an autobiographical song in one sense — Swift is singing from a version of her own perspective, as a star disillusioned with the way the culture uses and discards female celebrities. But the core of the song is someone else’s story, a legend in which a famous singer ditches the celebrity life at the height of her fame.

I always assumed that the song was about Bobbie Gentry, a country star who deliberately disappeared from the music industry more than 40 years ago, but the internet suggests other candidates, including Joni Mitchell and Kim Wilde. In any case, it’s a good song, a favorite in our minivan, in which a biography other than Swift’s takes center stage.

Likewise with “The Last Great American Dynasty,” one of my favorites from the pandemic album “Folklore.” Here again there is a personal framing device, since Swift is singing about Rebekah Harkness, a prior owner of the beach house she bought in Rhode Island. But the I-Taylor Swift part of the song is a frame for a more traditional ballad, telling a life story quite different (the claimed affinities notwithstanding) from her own.

Finally, “Ronan,” a song on the second version of “Red,” about a child dying of cancer, told from the perspective of the mother. Not a great song, maybe, but a very good, genuinely moving one, its story is drawn from a personal blog kept by Maya Thompson, whose son Ronan died of a neuroblastoma just before his fourth birthday, in 2011. Swift in most of her music does sadness but she doesn’t do grief, and here she’s imagining herself into a life more distant from her own, in a way that reaches emotional registers that you just can’t hit in songs about breaking up with Matty Healy.

So far in my listening, the song on the new album that seems closet to this becoming-other-people model is “The Bolter,” which may be loosely based on the life of Idina Sackville, an Edwardian-era socialite who earned the nickname in the song’s title for her several marriages.

Is it a good song, too? Does my theory hold? Ask me when my daughters have made me listen to it a few hundred more times.

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Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author, most recently, of “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” @ DouthatNYT • Facebook

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‘Look What You Made Me Do’: A Study on the Individualized Fan Culture of Filipino Taylor Swift Fans

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Tolentino, K. (2019). ‘Look What You Made Me Do’: A Study on the Individualized Fan Culture of Filipino Taylor Swift Fans, Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines Diliman.

“Media provide young people with symbolic resources for constructing or expressing their own identities (Chittenden, 2013).” The study acknowledges the power of media and its contribution to the development of an individual. This includes how fans do not practice fan culture only as a form of hobby, but rather allowing an external force to create an impact in their lives. In particular, this study shows how an international artist, Taylor Swift, was able to reach out to our country, contributing to the prominent fan culture in the Philippines.

In several in-depth interviews with Filipino Taylor Swift fans, the study reveals how the gap between foreign media and fans are bridged through the connection formed through media consumption. With this in mind, the research viewed the personal lives of individual Filipino Taylor Swift fans as they were able to develop self-esteem, identity, and empowerment, through the continuous consumption of Taylor Swift’s content.

Keywords: self-esteem, fan culture, identity, music, Taylor Swift

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The Published Research of Miles W. Mathis

Taylor swift, entertainment -> music performers ... from the research of miles w. mathis.

b. December 13, 1989 West Reading, Pennsylvania,

American singer-songwriter; recognized for her songwriting, musical versatility, artistic reinventions, and influence on the music industry, she is a prominent cultural figure of the 21st century

Blank Space by Miles Mathis First published April 12, 2015

http://mileswmathis.com/swift.pdf NEW PAPER, added 4/13/15, Blank Space. Where I out Taylor Swift and others.

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Magazine Publishes Anonymous Taylor Swift Review, Citing Potential Threats From Fans

Who’s afraid of little old Taylor Swift fans?

Paste Magazine on Friday  published a withering review of “The Tortured Poets Department,” the massive pop star’s latest album. The review was issued with no name attached, and the digital magazine said that this was for the writer’s safety.

“There is no byline on this review due to how, in 2019 when Paste reviewed ‘Lover,’ the writer was sent threats of violence from readers who disagreed with the work,” Paste tweeted , referring to another Swift album. “We care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article.”

“The Tortured Poets Department,” released Friday, has so far received mostly positive reviews from critics, though some have been mixed.  Rolling Stone raved over the “adult heartbreak” of what may be Swift’s “most personal album yet.” On the other hand, The New York Times noted that the singer-songwriter “could use an editor.”

But Paste’s review was especially biting, contending that Swift “can’t help but infantilize” her fans. It takes aim in particular at the album’s “irredeemable, relentlessly cringe” lyrics, at one point quipping: “This is your songwriter of the century? Open the schools.”

Shortly after the review was published, a writer who noted that she had “nothing to do” with the piece tweeted screenshots of disparaging messages she was receiving from Swifties who were convinced that she penned it.

• Kayla Nicole, Travis Kelce's Ex, Slams The 'Constant Vitriol' She's Received Online
• No One Is Safe From Taylor Swift In 'The Tortured Poets Department'
• Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets Department' Leads To Major 'Realization' By Fans

• Manage Account

Def Leppard on the ‘Melodic Mayhem’ of ‘Pyromania’ & Why Taylor Swift Is ‘Bigger Than the Beatles and the Stones Combined’

The classic album's 40th anniversary edition is out now.

By Joe Lynch

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Def Leppard ’s first two albums vaulted five boys from working-class Sheffield, England to the vanguard of the new wave of British heavy metal. On 1983’s Pyromania , the quintet set their sights even higher. “There’s no point in trying to appeal to half the population,” bassist Rick Savage tells Billboard . “Why not appeal to 100% of the population?”

Thirty Years Later, Pete Townshend on Why ‘The Who’s Tommy’ Is Still Capturing Rock n’ Roll’s…

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The album’s blockbuster success — which also eventually included a diamond RIAA certification for over 10 million units shipped — paved the way for the pop-metal crossover of bands like Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses and Poison, and set Def Lep up for a long, fruitful career. In 2022, the still-active band became only the third group to notch a top 10 album on the Billboard 200 in every decade since the ‘80s.

Ahead of the 40th anniversary edition of Pyromania (out April 26), Savage and frontman Joe Elliott hopped on a Zoom call with Billboard to pull back the curtain on the making of the classic — as well as share thoughts on a former CMT Crossroads collaborator who has since become the biggest pop star in the world.

Pyromania had the same producer, Mutt Lange, as the album that came out before it, High ‘n’ Dry . Even so, that one feels a bit rawer compared to Pyromania . Was it a conscious decision to give the album a cleaner production?

Joe Elliott: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. The obvious observations for those two records is that High ‘n’ Dry sounds like a band playing live and Pyromania sounds like a band in the studio — à la Pink Floyd, à la the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper — that sat down to craft some songs. They’re not just, “Okay, hit the record button and play it live.” That’s what High ‘n’ Dry sounds like — even though it actually wasn’t, because we did that in bits and bobs. But it has that impression.

Technology was starting to change. Recording studios in 1981 were pretty much the same as they were in 1979. Recording studios in 1982, ’83, there’s new bits of equipment coming in on a daily basis that can do things: synthesizers, drum machines. Drum machines were a big part of the music industry, with The Human League and New Order. We were using this kind of stuff, but most rock bands weren’t. And the great thing about having Mutt on your side is he’d be very enthusiastic about saying, “Well, why not? Why can’t a rock band…” and then fill in whatever phrase you want. It would be like [why can’t a rock band] “use that technology that these arty pop bands are using within the field of rock and see where it gets you”? We didn’t want to make High ‘n’ Dry 2 .

I was looking through the Billboard archives, and an article from 1984 postulated that a lot of Def Leppard’s appeal was connected to youth. Other metal acts at the time – Ozzy, Motörhead, whatever – were in their thirties, but you guys were a bit younger and maybe more attractive to girls. Is that something you were aware of back in the day?

We want to appeal to as many people as we can. There’s no point in trying to appeal to half the population — why not appeal to 100% of the population? All of a sudden, from Pyromania onwards, so many women and girls came to our shows. And it’s just testament to the actual songs, because they’re the things that get people first interested, and then everything else follows from that.

Elliott : We are a weird band in that respect, because we’ve always wanted to be honest with people. When you are five kids from Sheffield and you want to get up on stage and play rock music, there’s an oomph to it. It’s got a feeling that I don’t think — with the greatest respect to, say, the Human League, when we opened for them one night in their embryonic stage, they’re behind plexiglass sheets with keyboards. It doesn’t really have that Townshend windmill factor to it. It’s always fun to play the rock stuff, you know, “Highway to Hell” or “Tie Your Mother Down.”

But honestly, when we were in the factory rehearsing before we even played our first gig, we’d be talking about music way different than what we were playing. Me and Sav instantly bonded over the fact that we loved Kate Bush. Or the first two Peter Gabriel albums, which we were listening to way more than Motörhead. I don’t think Motörhead ever sat up a rehearsal room and had a discussion about “Wuthering Heights,” whereas we would. We always wanted it to be a glam rock, power guitar thing: Bowie, Slade, Sweet, Queen. That’s the fun element.

Savage : I don’t think so. It kind of happened in reverse. We weren’t really trying to market anything or become influenced by the latest media thing. We just got picked up from it, and we were fortunate in that respect. Before Pyromania was released, we knew that videos were coming to the fore. MTV was getting more and more popular, so it was just an obvious thing to do. We made two videos, one for “Photograph” and one for “Rock of Ages.” That was done in December of ’82, the album didn’t come out till early ‘83.

Elliott : Yeah, there’s no doubt that when we were making the album, the last thing on our mind was worrying about, “Oh, we got to make videos.” The one that really started to get a bit of traction was “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak.” In London, we’d start receiving the odd phone call from management in New York saying, “Oh, yeah, they played ‘Bringin’ on the Heartbreak’ 40 times on MTV last week.” “Okay, interesting.” Then you three weeks later you get another message saying that High ‘n’ Dry started selling again. Three weeks later, you get another message: “Bloody hell, it’s selling 50,000 a week.” By the end of the year, we’re getting this message that it’s gone gold, so we know that this is not going gold because the radio — it’s gone gold because of MTV. We were just getting little messages as we’re [making] the [ Pyromania ] album. It’s like a mosquito in your ear, like, “Yeah, okay, fine.”

As you were saying about youth, because we were all 21, 22 years old, when somebody says, “You got to spend a day in Battersea Power Station shooting videos,” you go, “Great.” We learned after the fact that a lot of seasoned bands from the ‘70s were reluctant to do them, which is why a lot of videos by bands from the ‘70s that were presented in the ‘80s were crap. I think the only band that really grasped the nettle when they came back with a resurgence was Aerosmith. Really, they did a brilliant job with videos. But lots of other bands were like, “I don’t see why we’re having to do this.” We were the next generation, and started to realize, “This is almost as important as making the record.”

Speaking of TV and “Photograph,” fast forward about 25 years. You’re on CMT Crossroads with a very young Taylor Swift singing that song. Did you ever think, “This person is going to become the biggest pop star in the world?”

Savage : She was pretty big then, to be honest. It was unbelievable that somebody had such youth, but almost like an old head on young shoulders when she came to songwriting. It was actually quite eye-opening. It was great fun; it was a bit of a laugh. She’s quite popular now, isn’t she? But trust me, she was pretty popular then as well. I mean, not to the level she’s at now, obviously — but within the country scene she was as big as they came. It was a really great experience working with her and the band. She had a great band back then as well.

What impressed me the most was that when we got to the table of like, which songs we’re going to do, she wanted to do a lot of [ Songs From the ] Sparkle Lounge . I’m thinking, “She’s heard that song?” And then “Two Steps Behind” got pulled out, which wasn’t going to be suggested, but she says, “I want to do that one.”

It’s all very logical and all very organic. It really was. I got to sing “Love Story,” bits from the perspective of a guy. She was really enthusiastic and obviously a big fan. And we became fans of her. I think we’d all be lying if we said we knew she was going to become as big as she has because she’s actually become bigger than anything that’s ever been before. She’s probably bigger than The Beatles and The Stones combined, for her generation of fans. I’ll probably get lynched by some 75-year-old reading this, but it’s all relative.

Today it’s all about the streaming numbers and all that kind of stuff. There’s been a lot of massively successful bands, but she’s taken success to a level that is unheard of. It’s absolutely mad. It’s success beyond anything that anybody could have ever dreamed of, probably her herself. I’ve seen the Eras film and it’s astonishing what she’s done. I hope she works with us again one day. [ Laughs. ]

I’ve read that “Rock of Ages” has a back-masked message of “F—k the Russians” on it. I wanted to ask if that was true, and if so, what inspired that.

Savage : [ Laughs. ]

Savage : The song is so sparse and open. We needed cues as guitar players as to when we’re going to come in because we didn’t have a vocal at the time. It was very easy to get lost in, because we’re just playing it to a drum machine. A lot of the stuff was there as cues to when the next part was coming up, of which “ gunter gleiben glauchen globen ” was one of them. It was much like saying, “1-2-3-4, here comes the bridge” sort of thing. So yeah, there was a load of stuff going down on that particular song, just to keep us interested.

Elliott : Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, this was born out of cabin fever, because this was the first time that we’d been in a studio doing 22-hour days, six days, maybe seven days a week and we’re probably into month six or seven so you start to go a bit ’round the bend. You start doing crazy stuff. People always mock rock bands for being silly, but I’ve read so many articles about what you might call sophisticated artists doing stuff just as stupid because they had cabin fever. The Beatles, Clapton, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, just doing goofy s–t in the studio because it relieves the tension, relieves the boredom.

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