It’s kind of hard to believe that the Taylor Swift who was once engulfed in media reactions is now the same Taylor Swift who now stands on a pedestal so high it feels like no one will outshine her.
During her 1989 era, she received unfair backlash and experienced “millions of people hate you so badly” due to a web of lies that was turned against her. The lies turned in response to her discomfort with how she was portrayed without her consent. In a way that objectified and discredited his efforts in his career so far.
The misogynistic backlash is not new, many women have experienced it; take Piers Morgan’s tirade against Little Mix Undress music video or Sabrina Carpenter incurring internet ire for going through a breakup. Women can barely do anything without it being torn apart like a crow pecking at a corpse, Swift ‘watched the women in this industry being criticized and measured against each other and chosen’. So the fact that Taylor Swift has embraced and spoken (and sung) about the criticism she’s faced is part of the reason she’s lasted so long. But that’s not the only reason, reducing her to the double standard she faces would be unfair. Swift persevered because instead of letting “this scrutiny break them… (she) continues to make art”.
Swift has that chameleon quality but has an unchanging core of quality songwriting, genres may change but the essence of her songwriting remains.
She talks about this reinvention both in the lyrics and in her 2020 miss american documentary saying “everyone has been a shiny new toy for about two years. Female artists I know have had to reinvent themselves twenty times more than male artists…constantly having to find new sides of themselves that people find shiny”.
All this change to further explore the depths of her art, she was not adapting to the musical environment, she was changing the environment itself.
Her songwriting has always been the medium by which we often learn her thoughts on what is being said about her, she was tired of double standards, so she wrote The man and Crazy woman. She was the crazy girl who dated men just to write about them, so she wrote Empty space to ridicule this account, “everything they wrote about me became the stuff of musical satires” (Billboard). It’s this beautifully crafted response that means an air of mystery constantly surrounds her, the media can tell you what they think she is, but she defines herself through her writing in a way that’s a sheer genius to behold. In a way that silences the stories written about her but not by her.
Swift manages to write deeply but even her most personal songs resonate with her fans, Very good being a prime example. Telling the specific story of a relationship, but in a way that means anyone who’s been stung by a breakup can relate, she’s mastered not just the writing of her experience, but the human experience as well.
Swift has elevated herself to a mode of timelessness by writing for no one but herself, even when addressing critics she does so through a lens so uniquely hers. She writes until she can’t stop, like with Folklore and Still for they are “a collection of songs that flowed like a stream of consciousness.” She has a thirst and passion for songwriting so resplendent that you have no choice but to marvel at her brilliance. Swift is encompassed by all of this, so we have no choice but to be too.
To say that in 2020 Swift thought that Lover was “one of my last chances as an artist to seize that kind of success” and now, years later, she’s breaking records and achieving historic achievements with Midnights. It’s a testament to what undeniable talent can do.
Swift writes about love, femininity and life with all the nuances and complexity exploring every corner of it, she captures what it’s like to be the heartbroken girl, the exhausted figure who’s had enough to try, the head head in love person, the woman who is fed up with the patriarchy and all it has done to her. She captures feelings you didn’t even know you had and expresses them in a way no one else ever could. A way so perfect it seems like the only way it should be written. She really is a writer as rare as love at first sight.
By rising to this timelessness, she has become the kind of icon that will be talked about for decades. She answered her own question of “ask me why so many things fade away but I’m still here” (Midnight, Karma). His fluency will be studied and his songs heralded as the standard of what a good song is. Swift’s timelessness lies in her unwavering desire to stay true to her pen and her vision.
Feature Image Credit: Rolling Stone
