Major pop acts are finally beginning to perform with regularity after the past few years of COVID-19 restrictions. The largest recent tour announcement is arguably from pop megastar Taylor Swift, who even during a global pandemic was perhaps the busiest artist in the music industry. After her exhaustive public litigation against former manager Scooter Barnes, she began the process of re-recording her masters to reclaim full ownership of her own music, recorded three entirely new albums, and broke records consistently through it all.
Perhaps less known to those who aren’t self-proclaimed Swifties (as I am), Taylor Swift has also become a vocal feminist, GOTV organizer, and critic of Trump and his cronies.
Tweet from @taylorswift13: After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the never to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looking starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump
The Twitter circles that I tend to run in as a Taylor Swift fan and as a cis white female progressive political organizer have become synonymous—young, progressive, queer, and female-dominated. No longer the idealized country girl that conservative America tried to claim as their personal sweetheart, Swift relishes being seen as the champion of a specific subset of young American women: unafraid to call out the men who wronged her, livid at being undervalued and underestimated, and empowered to control her own narrative. Swift is the so-called Mastermind of the future of blockbuster pop music.
Swift has also rightfully been criticized. Recently, she caught flack for being one of the largest polluters in the world, primarily thanks to the overuse of her personal jet. She is also, by the very nature of being one of the world’s biggest acts, by definition a brand—one set up for financial consumption at the hands of mega-corporations. Still, Swift is popular—and also low-key progressive, even if she is capitalism-emboldened. Even when basking in the fruits of her enormous wealth, Swift can not help but be in the middle of yet another political discourse.