Main Image via Billboard
More than 15 years, more than 15 million laughs and tears and Taylor Swift remains at the top of the music industry food chain.
It’s somewhat hard to believe that the Taylor Swift that was once engulfed in never ending media backlashes, drama and scandals, is now the same Taylor Swift that currently stands on a plinth so tall (and that’s not just because of her long legs) that it feels like no one will eclipse her.
Image via Vulture
Rising to fame at such a young age can be a huge challenge for most young artists, but Taylor navigated the transition in a way that feels as natural and authentic as her moving from country music to pop. She grew up alongside many of her most loyal fans, and as she matured, the subject matter and depth of her music grew up too.
Not that the journey didn’t have bumps along the way. As she rose to meteoric notoriety during her “1989” era, the amount of vitriol she received during this time has left her with the experience of “having millions of people hate you very loudly."
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This type of backlash is nothing new, many women in the music industry have experienced it; Women can barely do anything without it being picked apart like loose thread on a seam.
Taylor has “watched as women in this industry are criticised and measured up to each other and picked at”. But she’s also someone who didn’t completely unravel from said picking.
The fact that Taylor has embraced and spoken (and sang) about the critiques she has faced is a small part of the reason she has lasted this long.
Image via Netflix
Her songwriting has always been the way through which we often learn her thoughts on what is being said about her. She was sick of the double standards, so she wrote “The Man” and “Mad Woman”. She was the crazy woman who dated men just to write about them, so she wrote “Blank Space” to ridicule this narrative.
It is this beautifully designed response to say that media outlets may tell you what they think she is, but only she defines herself through her writing.
Image via USA Today
A huge part of why she’ll never go out of style is her chameleon-like quality to constantly reinvent herself yet maintain the core of quality songwriting.
She talks of this reinvention in her 2020 Miss Americana documentary saying “everyone’s a shiny new toy for like two years. The female artists I know of have had to reinvent themselves twenty times more than the male artists… constantly having to find new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny”.
But what sets her apart? Her vulnerability.
In her music, Taylor manages to write deeply but even her most personal songs find resonance with her fans; ‘All Too Well’ being a prime example. Telling the specific story of one relationship but in a manner that means anyone who has been stung by a breakup can relate to, she has mastered not only writing her experience but digs into the heart of the human experience in a poetic way.
Her ability to write of love, womanhood, and life with all the nuance and complexity that explores every corner of it;- she captures what it is to be the heartbroken girl, the exhausted figure who is sick of trying, the head-over-heels in love person, the woman who is sick of the patriarchy and all it has done to her.
She captures feelings you didn’t even know you had and words them in a way that feels like no one else ever could that fans of all ages continue to enjoy.
Image via Netflix
To think that in 2020 , she thought that her 7th studio album, ‘Lover’ was “one of my last chances as an artist to grasp onto that kind of success” and now a mere 2 years later she is breaking records and reaching historic achievements with her 10th studio album, ‘Midnights’.
It is a testament to what undeniable talent can do.
It is not surprising that several universities in America have courses centred around her body of work; from her songwriting to her skills as a producer and her more recent achievements as a director.
By ascending to this timelessness, she has become the kind of icon that will be discussed for decades to come. She has answered her own question of “ask me why so many fade but I’m still here”. Her mastery will be studied, and her discography sets a standard of what it means to weave a tapestry of rich visuals and metaphors that paint a cohesive picture of your own history.
Her timelessness resides in her unyielding desire to stay true to her pen and her vision.
Info via: Billboard, Rolling Stone
By Vennisha N.