Woman of the Year 2023

Taylor Swift at Thirty-Three

My first impression of Taylor Swift had nothing to do with music. I saw her appearance in a movie—Valentine’s Day (2010) by the late Garry Marshall—in a bit of stunt casting. The film’s a diversion I enjoyed for its lightness and sentimentality. Swift’s fine in a small role. In retrospect, its sensibility matches hers, then and now, even as an adult artist at age 33. Swift, the oldest sibling from a small city in America’s Keystone state, favors romance, true love and wearing your heart on your sleeve, as the saying goes, like Garry Marshall’s shamelessly romantic ensemble picture.

My early notice also goes to what I regard as the crux of her appeal and what propels her as an artist who’s both a singer and a songwriter. Taylor Swift, Time magazine’s “person of the year,” comes across in Valentine’s Day as a plain, awkward, ordinary girl—she possesses herself and dominates the screen, if as an unusual-looking, sinewy athlete, with offbeat earnestness as her utmost quality.

I was not taken with Taylor Swift, let alone as a Swift fan. Her voice and songs, upon first listening, are decent though rather tinny or thin; music is sparse and often distorted by electronic sound. Even knowing that Kanye West had accosted her on stage in 2009 during an awards ceremony victory, I wasn’t interested in Taylor Swift.

This changed in 2015 when she explicitly challenged and opposed what I regard as the world’s greatest big business—Apple—and won. I took notice of her as an artist, still with no serious interest in her music. I wrote about Swift on my blog (2008-2020).

Time’s 2014 cover

At the time, I wrote:

When an individual moneymaker takes a moral stand on principle, realizes it with action and wins, the activism ought to be studied as an example in success.

This week, recording artist Taylor Swift provides such an example. Swift, a pop country music star, recently took to Tumblr (a blogging platform) to write a letter of activism. Swift explains that Apple’s new Apple Music streaming service precludes payment to artists in the first three months. Swift argues that this is wrong. In a persuasive, simple letter implicitly based on egoism, not altruism, because she predicates the letter on achieving her own values in an explicit expression of magnanimity, Swift makes the case for what amounts to intellectual property rights…As Swift concludes her letter to Apple: “Please don’t ask [artists] to provide you with our music for no compensation.”

Besides Swift’s fundamentally acknowledged fact that Apple’s terms are Apple’s to set, what distinguishes Swift’s activist letter from other forms of celebrity activism is her recognition of the good for being good. Swift does not malign Apple. In fact, she titles the post “To Apple, Love Taylor” and proceeds to express her “reverence” for Apple’s innovation and achievements…The letter is selfish, as against self-centered (as she points out when she writes that the issue of paying artists “is not about me”, which in this context is true), because in writing it she seeks to gain, keep and advance her values; in this case, the ability of artists to earn money to create…[her letter demonstrates that]…Capitalism is, in fact, win-win…This is activism that succeeds. As Apple executive Eddy Cue posted today on Twitter (and, as I teach in my social media course, social media is a crucial, legitimate tool for selfish communication), after granting Swift’s request: “We hear you, [Taylor Swift]…Love, Apple.”

Eight years later, as she tells Time, “[2023] feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33. And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that.”

Making herself tougher in the intervening years is part of the reason I think Taylor Swift offers a lesson from which everyone can learn (I know I can). More so now that I know her catalogue better. I first took an interest in Swift’s music a few years ago when an enthusiastic divorced, suburban dad who works in the film industry gave me a song-by-song crash course, emphasizing her albums evermore and folklore. Whatever her flaws, limitations and deficiencies, I was struck by the simplicity, emotional power and aura of Taylor Swift’s songs.

Since then, I’ve sporadically dabbled in Swift’s music and career. My interest deepened this year with my awareness of new and re-recorded tunes and contemplation of what makes Swift a star, whatever this means in today’s context. For example, Time’s West Coast editor Sam Lansky, who interviewed Swift for the cover story, notes that “[i]n releasing her concert movie, Swift bypassed [Hollywood] studios and streamers, instead forging an unusual pact with AMC, giving the theater chain its highest single-day ticket sales in history.” A Harvard professor teaching a course on Taylor Swift, Lansky writes, compares her to William Wordsworth.

Not that Taylor Swift’s favored by intellectuals. Over and over, whether challenging the entertainment industry status quo over music royalties or creative control, she goes her own way. So do her fans—also known as “Swifties”—who tend to be loyal. The current tour concertgoer reportedly spends an average amount of nearly $1,300. Taylor Swift, unlike many bestselling pop celebrities, maintains an active account on Elon Musk’s X—defying a boycott—and, as her letter to Apple demonstrates, neither denounces nor placates big business.

Like other bestselling artists of our time, including Neil Diamond, Susan Boyle, Ed Sheeran, Elton John, Adele and Pink, who confronted Kanye West on Swift’s behalf after West deprived her of a victory speech in 2009, Swift’s more likely to be known for her songs than for her style; stressing her music as the foremost focus during promotion, she displays middle class values with independence:

As Lansky reports:

Connections to her family are everywhere, including a striking photo of her grandmother Marjorie, an opera singer and the inspiration for a track on her album evermore. Swift grew up on a Christmas-tree farm in Pennsylvania, with her younger brother Austin; her father Scott was a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, and [mother] Andrea worked in marketing. Her family still works closely with her today. “My dad, my mom, and my brother come up with some of the best ideas in my career,” Swift says. “I always joke that we’re a small family business.”

Whether seeking ownership of her master recordings, her cat, Benjamin Button, or showing up for professional football games to root for the man with whom she’s romantically involved—whether anyone, including her fans, approves—Swift doesn’t outwardly conform, suppress herself or sell out. Taylor Swift also does not seem to hold America, capitalism and the West in contempt; she’s focused on pursuing what she wants, as she did with the release of her concert movie, which—

…released directly to theaters without a traditional partner, is an event. “We met with all the studios,” she tells [Lansky], “and we met with all the streamers, and we sized up how it was perceived and valued, and if they had high hopes and dreams for it. Ultimately I did what I tend to do more and more often these days, which is to bet on myself.” She credits her father with the idea.”

Generally, Taylor Swift fans reflect her as an alternative to shallow celebrity worship. As one Swift fan put it to Time: “When I listen to her songs, I think about what I’ve been through—not what she’s been through.”

On her relationship with Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, Swift’s comments also mirror Swift’s egoism, which I observed in 2015: “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves,” she tells Time. “[W]e’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care. The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

In a podcast for the paid subscriber, I recommend favorite Taylor Swift tunes and explain why I like them. In the meantime, I’m encouraged by Time’s profile of her as an intelligent, complicated artist. Despite her feminism and support for Barack Obama, I am an admirer of her music and career. This is because of her ability as a musical storyteller.

As Sam Lansky writes:

… she gives people, many of them women, particularly girls, who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter. That for your heart to break, whether it’s from being kicked off a tour or by the memory of a scarf still sitting in a drawer somewhere or because somebody else controls your life’s work, is a valid wound, and no, you’re not crazy for being upset about it, or for wanting your story to be told.”

Taylor Swift, who celebrates her birthday this week on December 13th, showed Time’s journalist a note from legendary singer and songwriter Paul McCartney, who sent Taylor Swift a handwritten Beatles lyric: “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”

Writing about life, death and cancer as well as heartbreak, romance and facing the grind of a world going broke, mad and dark, Taylor Swift keeps life in perspective, takes trouble in stride and embodies the defining quality of being American: “It’s all in how you deal with loss,” she tells Time. “I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

Early in Time’s article, Swift tells a story about a country and western singer who paid her anyway after canceling Swift’s participation in an alcoholic brand-sponsored tour due to Swift being below the legal drinking age. It was an act which changed her life. That she’s kept herself aligned with reality, going against Kim Kardashian and toxic cultural trends, while pursuing romantic love and excellence in her work deserves recognition, even a designation as broadly cast as a woman of the year. I noticed and judged her foremost by her principled actions. Only then did I listen to Swift’s songs.

I’m glad I did. I gain value from her songs, which unspool in clusters of streaming lyrics like Alanis Morissette’s and, at their most melodic, come wrapped in undulating, rhythmic loops of phrases that, for me, ring true about love and life. Looking back, it’s been evident from the beginning that Taylor Swift, contrary to her bad reputation, doesn’t hold these in contempt.

“Today Was a Fairytale,” goes the title of a song she delivered for that Valentine’s movie about being in love. It’s simple. But it reflects a streak of pop music romantic realism she apparently embraces and represents. I think I see this on her face when she’s looking at the one with whom she may be in love. It was in her face when someone stole her victory speech. It’s there when she performs, too, or discusses injustice when she thinks she’s been wronged. It’s a blend of confidence, passion and innocence. It’s a quality which is neither snide nor sly and it’s not too sleazy, too fancy or too hip. And it’s not easy to fake. Whatever this quality, it makes Taylor Swift seem like a star who’s thinking of tomorrow and, to paraphrase the late Norman Lear, what’s next to come. I like this about Taylor Swift. It’s what’s made me her fan.

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