Swift - Vivienne Chester

Why you should admit you love Taylor Swift

vivienne ChesTer

CW: discussion of assault, sexual assault.

My name is Vivienne and I love Taylor Swift. Sorry, what did you say? Oh, you think that’s ‘cringe’? Well, I’m here to tell why it’s not cringe at all and is instead a very cool personality trait – one you should adopt! Welcome to the hill I will die on.

Everyone has different tastes when it comes to music. We all like different genres and artists and associate these categories with different types of people. For example, we might think that a middle-aged man would like Guns and Roses, while someone ‘sophisticated’ would enjoy classical music. The most prevalent of these stereotypes is that teenaged girls like pop music – and this is not unsubstantiated. According to Paul Lamere, when we study music charts based on gender, the teenaged female Top 40 includes Pop artists such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and Rihanna; while the teenaged male Top 40 includes Eminem, Daft Punk, and Jay-Z – musicians who decidedly do not belong in the Pop sphere. It is important to note here that most popular music is aimed specifically at a teenaged audience – it’s where the money is! 77% of teens in the US told Statistica that they couldn’t go a week without listening to music. However, this figure was higher by 13% for girls.

But if hugely successful songstresses such as Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce are so blatantly popular, then why – when one admits to liking them – is one usually rebuffed with the usual ‘Oh wow you like her? Haven’t you grown out of that?’. My answer is always: ‘Yes, it is for teenaged girls, and why do you think that’s such a bad thing?’. Most of the time, their answer to this sounds like ‘Oh you know they don’t actually write their own songs, don’t you?’ or ‘they can’t sing, it’s all just autotune’. On her latest album, Evermore, Swift was a primary writer on all her tracks. As for the autotune comment, Ariana Grande (who has the second-most Spotify streams of all time) has a background in musical theatre, and rarely uses autotune. Music that helps girls going through their formative years feel understood and empowered should not be the butt of anyone’s joke. Neither should

the women that write, sing, and produce this music, yet they are under constant scrutiny. Anyone who has followed the Taylor SwiftKanye West drama over the last few years can attest to this.

It’s interesting to note that both male musicians (both in the pop genre and others) and musicians that have a majority male audience rarely face such scrutiny. Although Chris Brown pleaded guilty to assaulting his girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, he has maintained a successful career in the industry in the past decade – he has fiftyone top 40 entries, and he is the singer with the fifth-most consecutive weeks on the Hot 100 chart. The late Michael Jackson has been plagued for years by assault allegations, however had upward of twenty-six million monthly listeners as of 2021. If Taylor Swift can be personally destroyed for five years for winning a Grammy, I don’t see her memory surviving allegations of paedophilia. Although other factors are of importance, we can see through examples such as these that cancel culture is much harsher on its female victims. My point is, so what if the music you like is girly??!!? Embrace it! ‘Girly’ is not an insult! ‘Girly’ describes the bravest, strongest, and coolest group of people I’ve encountered. We have collectively deemed pop music (primarily that made and enjoyed by women) as less valuable, on a purely misogynistic basis. So go listen to your Beyonce, your Ariana, your Katy Perry, and your Taylor Swift. Why should music that you like be a guilty pleasure and not just a pleasure? Pop isn’t a dirty word; come, join me on my hill.

MY POINT IS, SO WHAT IF THE MUSIC YOU LIKE IS GIRLY??!!? EMBRACE IT!