Taylor J. Swift has successfully learned to embrace her pop star name.
In a conversation with Business Insider, Swift, who is director of government capabilities at the POPVOX Foundation, explained how sharing a name with the music superstar, 34, was initially difficult to deal with, but has since become somewhat something easier to manage.
“As someone who works in advocacy in Congress, where I help advocate for things like better wages, benefits and technology, it helps to have a name like mine because people s ‘usually remember it,’ he told the outlet.
“When people remember my name, they also remember the ball that I’m trying to move, and that’s what’s important,” Swift continued.
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According to Swift, he first heard of the singer with whom he shares a name when he was 15 years old.
“At first I thought, it’s no big deal, she’s a singer with one or two hit songs, it won’t affect me – but I was wrong. Over time, I started to “find it frustrating,” he told Business Insider.
“I was just a kid trying to live life and I now shared a name with a great singer. Plus, I had just moved back to Ohio to live with my dad, so I was the new kid on the block. “school, with the name Taylor Swift,” Swift added. “To top it off, I had a Justin Bieber haircut, I had glasses and I was on the debate team, it was not a fun time.”
After debating whether he should continue to be called Taylor or TJ — an abbreviation of his first and middle names — Swift said he finally realized, “I was given that name for a reason , and I will grow up and become who I am. I’m supposed to be with this.
Courtesy of Taylor J. Swift
Swift said he is now taking extra steps to ensure he is not misidentified as the “Blank Space” singer in real life.
“When I do press interviews, I ask them to please refer to me as Taylor J. Swift, so no one confuses me with the pop singer. That way, no one wonders why Taylor Swift (without the J ) speaks in Congress, he said. “I also put the ‘J’ on my business cards or when applying for a job, to avoid confusion.”
But Swift said he was still a sensation before when others thought he was the music superstar.
“For example, last weekend I booked a dinner for two under the name Taylor Swift. I could tell the hostess looked a little disappointed when I arrived,” she said. he declares. “As usual, they joked that I wasn’t the real Taylor Swift, so I just laughed and said, ‘I hear that all the time but I just did it .” shake.’ “
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“In the past, I think my name has confused people a little bit. But when I strike up a conversation with them, or if I brief a member of Congress, or if I hold some sort of meeting, they see that I’m serious about the work we do,” Swift told Business Insider.
“I’m very proud of the work we do, and after a minute or two people see how dedicated I am to the cause we’re working on and my name doesn’t take away from that,” he said. for follow-up.
Overall, Swift noted that there were bigger problems in the world and that having the same name as one of the biggest stars in the world wasn’t the worst thing possible.
“I think now that if my name is the biggest fight I have in life, I’m fine. It seems trivial to believe otherwise,” he explained.
