Taylor Swift: Better Than Your Therapist

article and layout by Caroline McCarthy

Iremember the first time I heard “Dear John” the way some people remember where they were during major life altering events. I was eighteen years old sitting in the passenger seat of my mom’s car, listening to our mutual favorites on the “Speak Now” album when I heard the iconic John Mayeresque opening chords - I usually skipped this song. When “Speak Now” was released in October of 2010, I was only nine years old and had never felt the heartbreak needed to understand this story. So I typically spent my time listening to “Sparks Fly” or “Mean” instead.

At eighteen, I had just gone through my first major breakup. I remember being very proud of myself for not letting myself cry or allowing a guy to mess up the rest of my senior year. “Dear John” shattered those false accolades and I spent the rest of the car ride with my headphones on, listening to the song on repeat, and replaying memories as if the song were tailor-made to explain my life story. I felt as if I had gone through the five stages of grief in a 6 minute and 43 second song. Some people call this fabulous, award-winning storytelling, but Swifties know that the way Taylor Swift writes music often makes us feel so connected with her it’s like we’re living in her music video. Nearly half of Americans consider themselves to be fans of Taylor Swift’s music (44%, as found by IPSOS’ 2022 study). Her biggest fans, the 9% that consider themselves “Swifties” have for years accepted that their love for her music stems from the shared experience of heartbreak. However, similarly to a study that found magazine content taught young girls how and what to think, Swift’s lyrics — which most of her audience grew up with since before

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which a girl or woman is permitted to understand herself.” their tweens — may very well have taught her fans how to process their emotions, keeping them hooked on her hooks.

Angela McRobbie is a British cultural theorist and feminist scholar who focused on how popular culture influenced young women’s culture. She specifically looked at the content young women were given to indulge in the media and how that influenced their perception of self. McRobbie analyzed “Jackie” and “Marie Claire” magazine, calling them “responsible for defining and producing the norms of cultural

Taylor Swift fans connect so heavily with her lyrics and one another because we grew up with Swift’s code of understanding your emotions and how to process them. There is a pattern of Swift going through a phase of growing up and reciting the experience to her fans to learn from. In her 2020 documentary Miss Americana, Swift said “There is an element to my fan base where we feel like we grew up together. I’ll be going through something, write the album about it and then it’ll come out and sometimes it’ll just coincide with what they’re going through.” She described it as if they were “reading [her] diary.”

While this is primarily seen in her breakup hits, Swift’s lyrics dive into even more personal stories that resonate with her audience. In 2012, on the “Red” album, Swift’s song “Sad, Beautiful, Tragic” tells the story of her parent’s divorce. “1989,” released in 2014 is the story of moving to a new city, living with friends and finding freedom and independence in adulthood. This would be her most streamed album, with the top hit “Shake it Off,” which encourages her audience to be true to themselves and ignore what haters say about them, being one of her most successful songs ever. On Lover, Swift’s song “Soon You’ll Get Better” walks the listener through her mother’s battle with cancer and Swift’s specific experience being a daughter feeling desperate and hopeless as she watches her mother fight.

A generation of Swifties have never gone through a major life event without having Swift navigate it for them first. Her fan base’s devotion to her and her music comes from years of using Swift’s experience as a prototype for analyzing one’s own thoughts and feelings. Her lyrics serve as cultural artifacts, or objects that reflect the beliefs, values, customs and traditions of culture and society.

This creates a mentorship mentality that encourages women to look at Swift as a role model. As her career progressed and Swift came into a more confident adult, the messages in her music shifted into a more political and feminist tone. Swift has spoken out on issues such as body positivity, the gender pay gap, female representation in the media and LGBTQ+ rights. She does so not only in press conferences and on social media, but within the music that she is producing. By using her voice through the trusted platform of her music, she is giving her fans the language they need to begin discussing these topics themselves. I first noticed this when my little sister, Katie, began listening to Taylor Swift more regularly. During the COVID lockdown era, her and I would only leave our homes to drive around town. To pass the time we would listen to Taylor Swift and drink Dunkin Donuts.

After months of isolation, conversation steered away from hometown friends and outside activities - because there weren’t any to talk about. Somewhere on the same road, listening to the same songs, my younger sister, who was 16 at the time, began talking about politics and feminism in a way I had never heard before.

She was particularly fascinated with Swift’s legal battle for the rights to her own music. After “The Man” was released in 2019, Katie learned that even women who seemed to be at the top of the world still hit their head on the glass ceiling.

I remember very vividly later that summer when Katie got angry about a comment my brothers had made, and the family instantly called her hysterical. She stood right up and said “Oh but it’s okay when you do it? When you get angry you’re in the right, when I’m angry I’m

hysterical.”

Swift was very vocal about how the patriarchal music industry took advantage of her early on in her career, and Katie was outraged that the industry would allow that to happen to her. She began researching cases, listening to all of Swift’s interviews and videos about being a woman in the industry, and has overall learned more about confidence and feminine energy than she ever could have in a traditional teaching environment. Swift paved the way and taught her how to express her feelings and gave her the language needed to convey them in a way that was understandable. Though this example was just brothers being brothers, this confidence and knowledge on the female experience will forever help Katie stand up for herself - as it will for all Switifies.