So, the Super Bowl is over (for the LVIII-th time). The Kansas City Chiefs won (again), and Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey kissed in public (again), and this question still remains: Am I the only writer in America who hasn’t written about Taylor Swift? Far be it for me to be left in the lurch.
If it weren’t for the pre-game obsession with her by the MAGA world—meaning right-wing TV pundits and politicians—I might not have written this article. The insanity of all the conspiracy theories that bounced around that world about her and her current boyfriend, Travis Kelce, is both absurd and laughable, not to mention being fully in line with folks who are inclined to take QAnon fantasies seriously along with believing (or ignoring) every utterance that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth. All I can think is that they must be terrified of Swift and what she might do when it comes to saying something about the upcoming election. And, no, neither she nor Travis said anything about the election or Democrats or registering to vote in the immediate aftermath of the game. Does that mean the secret CIA plot was only partially successful (meaning the Chiefs won but no Biden endorsement)?
But we did get an announcement of Beyonce’s next album (although Taylor beat her to the punch by announcing her next one during the previous week’s Grammys). On the other hand, Beyonce’s will be released first (in March), followed by Taylor’s (in April). It is kind of like “The Hunger Games,” isn’t it? Whose album will get the most sales, the most streams, the most whatever? That is kind of what Jay Z set up at the Grammy Awards, intentionally or not.
If nothing else, though, the MAGA world’s obsession with Taylor Swift is a reminder of what country music radio, along with the Nashville country music establishment, did to the Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) not all that long ago—namely, destroyed their careers when they were so intemperate as to criticize President Bush in 2003 and, by extension, the war in Iraq that was about to begin within days. Musically, at least in the short run (three years later), it resulted in their best and first crossover album, “Taking the Long Way,” in which they took nothing back. As Natalie Maines sang, “I’m not ready to make nice, I’m not ready to back down.” Whatever else you might say about them, they did anger really well. It took 14 years, until 2020, for them to release another album, “Gaslighter,” but, as far as I know, it didn’t sell well. Founding member Laura Lynch died in a car accident in Texas in 2023, and though The Chicks may not have disappeared entirely, but they are no longer the massively popular act they once were.
The great (and sad) irony is that today’s MAGA world, led by Donald Trump, has come to the same conclusion about George W. Bush and the Iraq War that The Chicks came to 20 years earlier. I haven’t heard that the world of Nashville country music has decided to apologize for what it did to them. You Nashville folks feel proud of yourselves?
No doubt you realize that shame and apologies do not come easily to MAGA politicians, meaning virtually the entire Republican Party these days. Remember the “swiftboating” by Republicans of John Kerry in the far distant past because he dared to change his mind about some issues? (“Swiftboating” is a pretty ironic term in the current context, don’t you think?) Most of the GOP has gone from loathing Donald Trump to adoring him, or at least pretending to. As for Taylor Swift, they have gone from wishfully thinking of her as the ultimate white conservative music star to understanding that she is anything but that once she came out of her political shell in 2018 and endorsed Democratic candidates running for office in Tennessee and urged her fans to register to vote in a post on Instagram. Although her candidates lost their elections, about 35,000 people actually registered to vote as a direct result of her Instagram post.
And now she is dating a football star (and vice versa), one who had COVID vaccinations no less, going to his football games (as he goes to her concerts), and the political right goes nuts. Are they really that frightened of her? Maybe.
On the other hand, everybody seems to want a piece of Taylor Swift these days. Some of the commentaries seem straight out of high school. Taylor is all googly-eyed because she has caught the eye of the star football player, every high school girl’s dream. God forbid it should be the other way around, that the football player is all googly-eyed because he has caught the eye of the world’s biggest star. I would like to think that the truth is closer to something else: that two adults were introduced and found that they liked each other. Or something like that. Is that so hard to believe, or are we condemned to live out our own high school obsessions or fantasies over and over again?
What is striking and ironic about this is that it seems to be exactly what Taylor has tapped into with her millions of fans. Certainly, many of her songs have been about love—about finding and losing it, about faithfulness and betrayal, about honesty and lying—as a young girl, as a young woman, and as a full-grown adult. No matter how many ‘tweens and teens go to her concerts all dressed up in their Taylor costumes from their favorite era, their parents—mothers, mostly—are taking them, and they are fans too. It is not simply that their mothers passively listened to her through their children or listened to her themselves. I think it is something more. I think that there are lots of those mothers whose teenage souls live within them still, able to be stirred to life, their teenage longings rekindled—first yearnings, first loves, first losses. And there are also all the young women in their 20s and 30s, not mothers yet, whose teenage memories are still fresh in their hearts or who are going through similar things that Taylor talks about in her songs—and they all, all those teens and the young women and the mothers, know the lyrics, seemingly to every song, and sing along with her.
Yet, despite all the self-confessional lyrics of her songs and the obsessive searching for hidden clues in those lyrics by her fans, I wonder if we really have any idea who Taylor Swift really is. I am not a real fan of hers (I am not given to fandom), even if I like many of her songs. She really is a very good songwriter, despite what her critics say, and she has become a wonderful performer. When the Eras tour movie came out, I went to see it on a huge screen. It was wonderful, and I went to see it a second time, liking it just as much, if a bit differently. Watching the film, I was struck by how little overt sexuality or eroticism was part of her presentation, either in her physical presence or the mini-dramas enacted. Unlike many young female singers who can pack arenas, sex and eroticism are not what she is selling, nor was it the way she chose to define her transition from teen to adult performer. Certainly, she is pretty, self-assured, gorgeously costumed, and even when somewhat skimpily attired, it is not with the almost nudity that some singers offer. For the three hours of the movie, she presents herself as the girl next door: sunny, successful, sometimes sad, and nostalgic but always able to “shake it off.” She is a survivor, an overcomer, and one who is never down too long.
How much of this is real? I have no idea. No matter how much she reveals through her music, she lives in a carefully controlled bubble and has one of the best PR teams on the planet, one that allows us to see only what she wants us to see. What we mostly see within the bubble is bits and pieces of the past and rarely the present. We get hints of, but don’t really see, how well she treats her staff along with the musicians who work with her, we don’t see how much she contributes to local charities like food kitchens in the cities she visits or the cash bonuses she pays to all the dancers, truck drivers, and roadies on her Eras tour. There is also the tangible economic difference her popularity has made to whatever cities the tour took her to. And without a doubt, the NFL loves her impact on ratings (despite the fact that the owners are far more likely to help fund Trump than Biden). But what she has chosen to show us with Travis Kelce, the most public romance of her life thus far (I think), is somewhat different. It is not the phenomenally successful artist or businesswoman. It is the girl next door, the enthusiastic cheerleader for her boyfriend, willing to dash out of her sold-out arena show in Japan and hop on a plane and arrive in Las Vegas in time for the big game. She loves her parents; she loves his parents and has become friends with his circle. It’s hard to imagine that girl wanting to be in a long-term relationship with someone who has a totally dysfunctional family life or one who is perennially attracted to bad boys.
And maybe what comes across to me in all this—in all the lyrics, with all the past boyfriends, with her circle of female friends, in her performances, in her overcoming challenges, in her overwhelming success, and in her optimism—is the ultimate expression of the girl next door. And for that, I go back to a song of the old Chicks from their album “Home,” the album they were promoting when their careers were destroyed: “I believe in love, Love that’s real, love that’s strong, Love that lives on and on.” I hope she finds it.
