It’s hard to escape Taylor Swift – maybe this is the 10th text you’ve read (or you’re skipping because you just can’t even see her name and face anymore). Fatigue is certainly understandable, but it’s also understandable that more and more people are wondering where her fame actually comes from.
Taylor Swift is nominally more successful than Elvis and the Beatles, and at the same time, in today’s world of pop culture fragmented by the algorithms of streaming platforms, she is one of the last Mohicans of the so-called monoculture – everyone knows her, even if perhaps she doesn’t want to. The fact that it’s impossible to write anything about her without necessarily pissing off some group of people is a testament to her influence.
Attempts to dissect her universal appeal, which cuts across generations (teenage female fans meet equally enthusiastic women their mothers’ age at her concerts) and cultures (she’s sold out in Singapore as well as in the US or Vienna), in the media and on social networks are increasing.
To some extent, Taylor embodies the character of a super-successful woman who remains the girl next door at the same time, and thus appeals to a primarily female audience. Recently, she has even begun to express herself, albeit very tamely, on feminist issues. The popularity of Taylor Swift is undoubtedly related, for example, to the popularity of the movie Barbie and the demand, especially from the younger part of the audience, for the topic of gender inequality and the visibility of women in pop culture in general. Although it is not entirely certain that she can move the discussion on feminist topics on her own, it is still important that she stood up for them.
At the same time, it is also symptomatic to a certain extent – feminism, at least its media-digestible liberal version that calls for representation and empowerment, not so much after those systemic changes, has somehow become a universally acceptable matter. And Taylor Swift’s charm also lies to some extent in universal acceptability.
Sometimes he has an opinion, for example on gender equality, but he doesn’t have many. She is a conventionally beautiful woman, but not overly sexualized. She occasionally experiments in music, but not so much that she’s out of mainstream pop. Taylor Swift’s success lies in her ability to balance this general mediocrity, but she has enough talent not to slip beyond the borders of banality.
The allure of a universality that doesn’t come out of the mainstream but is smart and interesting enough to really appeal to a large number of people is undoubtedly a testament to Taylor Swift’s mastery, even if it’s not necessarily musical mastery, maybe it’s more PR mastery (but it goes separate from contemporary pop?). However, by itself it probably cannot explain its enormous influence on contemporary culture (and, for example, politics, as is currently being discussed in the US before the presidential elections).
Taylor Swift has done what only a select few can do. To become so famous that the common mortal does not even dream about it, but at the same time – seemingly – to remain a person who has emotions, mistakes, ex-boyfriends and inner insecurities.
It didn’t happen by itself. It’s years of hard work that has resulted in what I’m not afraid to call her personal mythology. It has two main components. The world of stories that he tells in his songs, which connect into a complex, carefully constructed fictional world. And a world of fans who embrace these stories as their own and find a home in the Taylor Swift universe.
Her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, is an ideal example of both of these levels – both storytelling and unprecedented fan involvement in their creation.
Like reading a diary or about the power of stories
“The only thing left here is this manuscript/the last souvenir of my trip to your shores/sometimes I’ll read the manuscript/but the story is no longer mine.” This verse ends the very last track on the new album The Tortured Poets Department, characteristically called The Manuscript.
In it, Taylor ostensibly talks about a relationship with an older man, which she now remembers as an adult, but figuratively it can also be understood as a metaphor for writing stories in general. In it, Taylor – quite unusually – sees herself not only as a protagonist, but also as an author. The last album (which was released in two versions on the day of release) basically combines the best of several previous albums on a musical level – the synthpop rhythms of the Midnights album (written by producer Jack Antonoff) and the muted, indie folk melodies of the two “pandemic” albums Folklore and Evermore (where frontman Aaron Dessner of the band The National can be heard more as a producer).
At the same time, it must be said that it does not bring anything fundamentally new. Foreign reviews are quite divided in their assessment of the album, while some point to the clever lyrics, the willingness to take risks and not to compose first-rate hits and the overall cohesiveness of the album, others point out that, in addition to the poetic and lyrical lyrics, it also contains some of her least successful verses (yes, even I have to admit that comparing Matty Healy, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend and frontman of The 1975, to a golden retriever isn’t a lyrical masterpiece, it’s just cringe), and also that for the uninitiated (understand the non-swifties ) the record can easily just sound like generic pop somewhere in the background.
I consider myself a loyal fan and I have honestly listened to all the albums. Some I’m less of a fan of, while others I listen to at least once a week – but even I have to admit that The Tortured Poets Deparment is too long, some tracks blend into others, and for none other than Taylor, who can actually do whatever she wants probably didn’t pass. On the other hand, it also contains some truly masterful pieces that are both lyrically and authorally strong, but are unlikely to be radio hits (such as The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived ).
The Tortured Poet Departments is an album that probably won’t turn new listeners into swifites. I would almost say it makes it a bit impossible for them because it’s like jumping on a bandwagon. There is an awful lot of content, and it is also full of links to previous albums or posts on the singer’s social networks.
Listening to Taylor Swift is like being a fan of Marvel movies – you either understand the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) or you don’t. I’m not afraid to use this comparison, despite the fact that the MCU is often used as the ultimate example of pop culture emptiness, where quantity won over quality. Perhaps this could be a warning to the Taylor Swift Universe.
On the other hand, I can’t help feeling that maybe this is another deliberate step in the singer’s masterful PR. Taylor Swift’s greatest strength, and also what distinguished her from her companions, who have, for example, a much larger vocal range (Adele), a more sophisticated artistic persona (Beyoncé) or a specific performative image (Lana Del Rey), is her storytelling. Taylor has always been the protagonist of her own stories – almost everything she’s ever written has been about her own life. Even the records that broke out of the trend of love songs and break up songs (Folklore and Evermore) and told about fictional characters actually related to Taylor Swift’s inner world.
Paradoxically, this is precisely the reason why so many people (including me) can relate to her. She sings for all women who have also not forgotten the wrong of a boy from the 5th grade in elementary school, who also ponder at night whether what they said somewhere a month ago, they should have said differently, who also constantly analyze and solve themselves and are afraid what they come up with.
More on the topic:
Taylor is her own world and interprets everything that happens around her through herself, her emotions and feelings. She does not talk about the world around her, it is only a mirror of her inner processes. She’s been building her own story for fifteen years in this way of telling, so it’s admirably cohesive, rich, poetic, yet flexible enough to reflect how she herself ages.
This is also the reason why, for example, her feminism or any well-intentioned attempt at political expression sounds empty – the Taylor Swift Universe is a world of inner feelings, emotions, grievances, in which the surrounding world is mirrored, but in the end is irrelevant to them.
From all this, Taylor assembles her mythological universe, in which someone she sings about on Lover is also the protagonist of her latest album, albeit in a completely different way, and the wrong that happened ten years ago is still the subject. The thoughtfulness and sometimes almost frightening care of these connections requires you to know the story from the beginning and to be willing to participate in this constant dissection of the world through the eyes of an overly sensitive and slightly vindictive woman (for me it’s a hobby, but I can understand why it is completely foreign).
Swifties and fandom in the age of social media
But the universe itself would not explain how someone can become the most famous person in the world through this approach. We all have an inner world, and many other people can also write authentic song lyrics that reflect it. The second level of Taylor Swift’s (and her team’s) mastery lies in how long-term and consistently she involves her fans in building this universe. It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that no one else in pop culture has understood the added value of social media as well as she has.
At one time, Taylor Swift was one of the biggest celebrities on the Tumblr social network (which itself more or less gave birth to the concept of online fandom), where she interacted with her fans very intensively. And while some celebrities are just discovering video platforms like TikTok, Taylor is already miles ahead in how she uses them.
If we were to take the campaign of her last album as an example again, it was impossible to escape both the overall aesthetic (which records the long-term popular trend of dark academia) and above all the so-called easter eggs, so popular with fans – i.e. various clues, textual or visual, through which it was possible to decode, about what the album will be. And I’m not just talking about the long-term use of the number 13, linking to Instagram posts that are more than 5 years old (that’s all Taylor does), but for example, the week before the album’s release, QR codes appeared on walls in 12 places around the world , which led to YouTube videos featuring the sound of a typewriter (one of the new album’s visual symbols).
In media studies, the term so-called online participatory culture is used – we do not consume, but actively participate, create our own content, our own stories. A typical example of online participatory culture is, for example, writing fan fiction. And it’s this aspect of social media that Taylor can brilliantly exploit and make people feel like we’re all playing a game together that she’s Mastermind behind (a reference to the song from the Midnights album, you know where I’m going?).
It is completely incomprehensible to people who stand outside, but it is all the more interesting to those who participate. It is not without interest that there is a lot of talk about online participatory culture, for example, in connection with conspiracy theories. The success of radical political movements like QAnon can also be explained by the fact that they gave people the opportunity to “find out their own truth” through systematically scattered fragments of information.
I don’t think that Taylor Swift is spreading conspiracy theories – but, like some of their interested spreaders, she understood very well how social networks can be fun and that it is far from just about self-presentation (which, on the contrary, she has rather muted and has personal information on her profiles slowly).
There are probably many explanations for why Taylor Swift is more famous than anyone else on the planet. The simple thing – that she’s just a good pop singer who writes catchy lyrics and avoids controversy – is certainly important. But there are many such people. However, only Taylor Swift was able to build a personal mythological universe to this extent. It took a long time and probably a lot of hard work, but the result is the corny one: “This is Taylor’s world now. We just live in it.”
Album – Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department (2024)
Producers: Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner, Patrik Berger
