No matter how high your defenses, I guarantee you’ll find at least one that breaks them down. I count at least ten stone-cold classics in her discography. (A carpetbagger from the Pennsylvania suburbs, she became an expert code-switcher early in her career and never looked back.) And when it comes to writing instantly memorable pop songs, her only peers are a few anonymous Swedish guys, none of whom perform their own stuff. She may not have the raw vocal power of some of her competitors, but what she lacks in Mariah-level range she makes up for in versatility and personality. Even with the widespread critical embrace of poptimism - a development I suspect has as much to do with the economics of online media as it does with the shifting winds of taste - there are still those who see Swift as just another industry widget, a Miley or Katy with the tuner set to “girl with a guitar.” If this list does anything, I hope it convinces you that, underneath all the thinkpieces, exes, and feuds, she is one of our era’s great singer-songwriters. So, uh, I don’t recommend you listen to this list top to bottom.īut I do recommend sampling as many of these songs as you see fit. What sort of real life can stand up against fantasies like these?
Listen to too many and you might ache again at the nagging feeling that those stories of yours have all been a bit uneventful and drab by comparison. Listen to her songs and you’ll ache at the resemblance to the most dramatic moments in your own private history. An unworthy suitor won’t just say something thoughtless he’ll skip a birthday party or leave a teenage girl crying alone in a hotel room. People don’t slowly ease into a relationship in her songs they show up at each other’s doors late at night and they kiss in the rain.
Swift - or at least the version of Swift on her albums - has remained largely the same person since her debut: a thin-skinned, bighearted obsessive, with a penchant for huge romantic moments. (For 1989, she embraced feminism and threw away the last vestiges of her Nashville sound, but those were basically just aesthetic changes.) If the word on her has shifted since her debut, it’s because we’ve changed, not her. Other people say she’s Jewish.Īnd yet, unlike Madonna or Bowie, Swift got through the first 11 years of her career without any major reinventions. Some people say she’s a goddess of the alt-right. She’s been feminism’s worst nightmare, and an advocate for victims of sexual assault. She was a precocious teenager, and the ultimate embodiment of white privilege. And, outside the legions of fans who eat up everything she puts out, no take on her ever stays solid for long.
I find it hard to explain why exactly, and I’m sure Swift would, too: Somehow, this one 27-year-old woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, keeps finding herself at the center of our national conversations about race, gender, celebrity, victimhood, even the economics of the tech industry. One of them is a massive, multi-million-dollar enterprise filled with violence and betrayal, and the other airs on HBO. In this business, there are two subjects that will boost your page views like nothing else: Game of Thrones and Taylor Swift.
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