Taylor Swift’s controversial song “I Hate It Here” has fans divided over the pop star’s racial perspective and lyricism.
“My friends were playing a game where we picked a decade, that we wished we could live in instead/I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists and without marrying for the highest bid,” Swift sings.
The track from “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” a deluxe version of his album that contains 31 songs, is about his discontent and how our memories are distorted by nostalgia. This is also the first time Swift has sung about race in her music.
Taylor Swift sparks backlashLyrics of “all the racists” on the new album “Tortured Poets”
Although Swift has been outspoken on political topics such as voting rights and LGBTQ+ issues during her nearly 20-year career, she has rarely spoken or sung on the subject of race. The only exception occurred in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis.
At the time, she posted on her Instagram and Twitter two weeks after Floyd’s death with resources, criticized former President Donald Trump for “stoking the fires of white supremacy” during “his entire presidency” and had chastised his home state of Tennessee for monuments “that celebrate racist historical figures who did bad things.” »
Today, experts, critics and fans are analyzing the reactions — and rapid negative reactions — to Swift’s “I Hate It Here.”
Taylor Swift expert says pop star’s music may face disconnect with certain demographics
Professor Naomi Ekas teaches a course on the connection between psychology and Swift’s place in pop culture at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She believes there are universal themes that listeners have experienced in Swift’s lyrics, but notes that the pop star’s particular worldview may not apply to everyone.
At the start of the spring semester, Ekas asked her students what labels they attached to Swift. Many responses indicated that “these are white girls’ experiences, and it’s white girls’ music and there’s not that type of representation or that type of connection outside of that particular racial group”, she told USA TODAY.
“Everyone has dated the bad boy and had friendship breakups and, you know, crashed and burned in relationships, revenge – those are pretty common themes in humanity, but its particular life and the way she lives them might not connect to everyone,” says Ekas.
She adds that as a white person who enjoys listening to Swift’s music, the prospect didn’t cross her mind at first. But as she listened to the music more and talked with people from different backgrounds, she understood the point of view.
Taylor Swift and her fans’ parasocial relationships play out on TikTok: ‘I’m worried about the Swifties’
Swifties, fans of the Pennsylvania-born pop star, are known to defend Swift’s music and her motivations.
Claire Oduwo, a Black psychiatric resident and self-proclaimed Taylor Swift fan, posted a video to TikTok with a caption that read, “I’m a Swiftie but this album is a failure.”
Oduwo says people respond to lyrics “based on our own personal experiences that we put into the lyrics,” telling USA TODAY that Swifties identify lyrics “the right way,” while black people often identify lyrics . lyrics “in the wrong way”.
Dozens of fellow Swifties criticized the take in the comments of Oduwo’s original TikTok. She followed up with a response video about parasocial relationships, or what the Cleveland Clinic calls one-sided relationships with celebrities or fictional characters.
Oduwu, who participated in last year’s Eras Tour and Swift’s previous The Red Tour, also said she was reconsidering whether she was a “Swiftie” after the TikTok backlash she received .
As a black fan, Oduwo knows that Swift is “obviously, she’s a white woman who caters to a certain demographic of people versus certain other artists, who is clearly going to the concert. You can see at how diverse it was compared to maybe a Beyoncé crowd, so you already feel a little weird in that situation.
“I just think maybe some (fans of color) feel a little isolated because those kinds of lyrics play into the rose-colored glasses that people sometimes have towards the past of this fantasy ‘Bridgerton’ type existence where Black people are not in this picture,” she added. “Not just whether people are racist or not, but like black people, they’re just not included in the picture of this society.”
Some Swift fans say ‘I hate it here’ is self-criticism and commentary
Some believe that Swift’s lyricism in “I Hate It Here” is a simple phrase with complicated nuances and comments.
Stephanie Burt, a literary critic and professor at Harvard University who teaches a lively course on Swift and offers a more in-depth analysis of Swift’s lyricism, says Swift is self-critical and returns to a series of “illusions and illusions.” illusions that captured his psychology.”
“She continues in the same verse saying, ‘Wow, that was stupid.’ She ends up criticizing herself, which she honestly does a lot on this album. She ends up presenting her own madness and inviting us to see her make bad judgments and oversimplify her own history and the history of the world. , Burt said.
“She’s attacking the same kind of extraordinarily common false nostalgia and, as she says, quill pen writing that people attacking her on Twitter are calling her out for. “She usually says harsher things about herself than her detractors know — and she’s right, and she knows exactly what she’s doing,” Burt says.
Burt says she thinks Swift doesn’t address race or “white supremacy” in her music “because she doesn’t have much to say as an artist about it, but I think she she is aware of it. I think she leaves that to Jason. Isbell, a white guy who writes songs (critical of) white supremacy.
“As far as we know, she has 10 songs about fighting white privilege somewhere in her catalog and she didn’t release them because she didn’t think they were very good,” Burt explains.
CT Liotta, an author and Substack columnist who has written about Swift and her own nostalgia, compared “I Hate It Here” to Swift’s 2019 LGBTQ+ anthem “You Need to Calm Down.”
“What’s curious about ‘I Hate It Here’ is that I don’t feel like it really addresses race in any substantive way. It’s not like, ‘You need to calm down “, which is a clear rebuke to LGBT hatred. In fact, it might even be wiser of him to acknowledge that the 1830s were filled with racism, rather than sticking to “I wish visit,’” Liotta wrote in an email interview.
Swift previously changed one of her controversial lyrics from the 2010 track “Better Than Revenge” with the re-release of her album “Speak Now” last year. On the original, she sings: “She’s best known for the things she does on the mattress.” In “Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)”, the line rewritten for 2023 says: “He was a moth to the flame, she held the matches.”
Is the “I Hate It Here” Negative Reaction Typical of Taylor Swift?
The United States — and the world — has long been divided over Swift’s pop superstardom.
“I Hate It Here” is the latest chapter in the tortured poet’s personal controversies. People took sides during Swift’s long-running feud with rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and his ex-wife Kim Kardashian. Swift has spoken at length about misogyny, gender politics, and the effect of shame on her health.
“When people aren’t in love with you anymore, there’s nothing you can do to change their minds,” Swift says in “Miss Americana,” the 2020 Netflix documentary that details her complex relationship with fame.
Liotta thinks she’s right: none of this matters to the Swifties, because they haven’t fallen in love with her.
“One of the most curious things to note is that this tempest in a teapot will do nothing to harm the Taylor Swift brand. I don’t know a single person who has, to date, said ‘I was a fan by Taylor Swift until I’m a Taylor Swift fan’ she released “I Hate It Here”. Her core audience just doesn’t care, who does? haven’t liked for years,” says Liotta.
Ekas also questions the criticism and backlash surrounding “I Hate It Here.”
“If we look back on this attack on the lyrics and everything, would we do the same thing to a man? I don’t know. Would we be ripping Kanye’s lyrics like that. I feel like the only lyrics we have” “I already tore up Kanye’s, those are the ones he wrote about Taylor Swift, right?