By Maria Millers
She’s come and gone in her private jet and whether or not you have ever listened to a Tay Tay song or watched a video, you would surely have been aware of her presence in our city.
The mainstream press gave wall to wall coverage, nudging aside issues of national significance.
Love her or leave her there is no denying that Taylor Swift cannot be dismissed as just another pop singer.
She has been Times Person of the Year for 2023 and has been credited with political influence.
Questions abound whether she will again endorse Joe Biden in the upcoming US presidential election.
She’s won a swag of Grammy Awards, has beaten Elvis Presley for the most albums to debut at number one and the most number one albums by a woman in history.
She is now reputed to have achieved billionaire status.
As a pop star she sits alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna and as a songwriter she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell.
Academics search her lyrics for associations with famous poets: Wordsworth, Dickinson even Shakespeare.
University of Melbourne hosted A Swiftposium 2024 to better understand Taylor Swift’s global impact on the music industry, fandom, popular culture and the economy.
Some couldn’t get enough, others wished she would get on her private jet and be off.
The hard fact is that 98000 attended her ERAS Tour concert at the MCG and were prepared to part with large sums of money for the privilege.
Her presence in Melbourne is said to have contributed millions to our economy as fans willingly paid for inflated prices on air fares, hotel accommodation, food and outrageously overpriced merch (Are these the same people who are doing it tough in the current cost of living crisis?).
Managed by her mother and father she often compares herself to a family business and indeed whoever is responsible, the marketing has been impressive.
And, at a time, when family and community networks are frayed, she offers to her fans a sense of belonging and symbols of friendship to what some say is akin to a cult.
Her lyrics feature friends, lovers, enemies and ex partners and fans love this insight into her personal stories of heartbreak and revenge.
This correlates with our current obsession with confessional memoir, from stories of misery and the macabre to celebrity tell all.
Her lyrics range from early songs about teenage crushes to betrayals, from a wholesome image to now one of a powerful female protagonist in a patriarchal society.
Is she a good role model for young women? And is she a force for good?
Certainly no role model in sustaining long relationships.
So is she a great 21 st century poet or just a marketing success story?
She has certainly unashamedly owned the narrative of her life, warts and all from the painful and cringe worthy to the triumphal Maybe that explains the extraordinary loyalty and following she enjoys from young females.
Her relatability is often cited, particularly by anyone who has been victimized in a society that still dismisses women’s feelings as inconsequential.
Her confessional style has been often compared to other well known poets who have mined their own emotional lives: Ann Sexton, Adrienne Rich , Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath. But
Swift’s poetry never reaches the lyricality and depth of these poets.
Her work when read (as distinct from her highly polished videos) appears simplistic, self – obsessed, as the following extract from Look what you made me do shows:
don’t like your little games
Don’t like your tilted stage
The role you made me play of the fool
No, I don’t like you
I don’t like your perfect crime
How you laugh when you lie
You said the gun was mine
Isn’t cool, no, I don’t like you (oh!)
But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time
I got a list of names, and yours is in red, underlined
I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!
Ooh, look what you made me do
Look what you made me do
On the other hand the following extract(with no accompanying video) from Sylvia Plath’s famous poem Daddy written not long before her suicide and shortly after being abandoned by her husband Ted Hughes shows a much higher poetic sensibility as she reflects on the impact of her father’s death when she was a young child.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
Taylor Swift whether you like her songs or not cannot be dismissed nor her impact minimized or ignored and as someone once said writing is revenge without the need to ask
permission or apology, where ethics can be pushed aside to not give in to gendered expectations of etiquette and propriety.
The personal is always political.
But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time
I got a list of names, and yours is in red, underlined
Now in her thirties it will be interesting to see how she evolves and reinvents herself in the future.
