Taylor Swift and the fear of good-faith criticism
The Life of a Showgirl holds a mirror to a billionaire, exposing what many of us already knew.
It’s impossible to escape the avalanche of Taylor Swift discourse that rushes through the internet and popular media for every milestone, music drop or paparazzi served to us. And the reaction to the launch of her highly anticipated 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, has arguably been the loudest yet.
Many would argue it’s a fitting response to a pop superstar whose US$2 billion Eras Tour cemented her as the wealthiest female musician and top-selling recording artist in global history. Taylor Swift is The Zeitgeist. So why does it feel increasingly treacherous to land even the most good-faith criticism of the billionaire pop-star without being accused of misogyny or dismissed as the fun police?
The heightened emotions that surround the Taylor Swift fandom - the nostalgia, the sisterhood, the parasocial connection - have characterised a space that is intolerant of dissidence and allergic to critical thought. It’s particularly striking in the guarded language any would-be-critic is forced to adopt when dealing with themes of an album that is completely estranged from the crumbling world order ordinary people are witnessing in real time.
Anyone who has dabbled in critique of Taylor Swift and lived to tell the tale knows that it is important, perhaps compulsory, to first lay out your credibility as a TS connoisseur, or at the very least, offer your earnest respect for her musical feats and lyrical genius. To that end, please know that Taylor Swift’s discography has earned a treasured place in both our hearts - she’s soundtracked friendship, love and heartbreak through our teens and early twenties.
Rest assured, we’re not here to shame anyone for the joy they find in the musical world Taylor Swift has built. But nor are we here to defend her whiteness, her wealth or her silence. Criticism, even the less friendly kind, is not inherently antifeminist or hateful, and pretending otherwise only serves to place Swift on a moral pedestal that is incongruent with her billionaire status.
The Life of a Showgirl’s release is nestled in the context of a global politics on the brink of collapse. In Swift’s home country, a fascist US government continues to empower Christian nationalism, racism and genocide, and actively endangers the safety of anyone who is not white, straight and MAGA. Her latest work, widely critiqued as her most self-indulgent and lyrically shaky to date, and released in at least eight vinyl versions (and counting), rings woefully tone deaf as the world is burning.
