Music

Taylor Swift turns 30 today – and as she’s grown up, so have her fellow millennials



Today feels like a strange day to be talking about a pop star’s birthday. Yet Taylor Swift – who turns 30 today – is not your average pop star. The singer’s trajectory has mapped onto that of a generation that, as it’s grown up, has woken up. Her personal battles – with inclusivity, sexual harassment, big business – have been all of our battles.

Swift burst onto the scene in 2006, a 16-year-old ingénue making quick-witted country-pop – and quickly became a regular on the celebrity circuit. “I found myself surrounded by girls who wanted to be my friend,” she wrote in a piece for Elle. “So, I shouted it from the rooftops, posted pictures, and celebrated my newfound acceptance into a sisterhood, without realising that other people might still feel the same way I did when I was alone.”

She was referring, of course, to her infamous #squad, the gaggle of thin, white women with whom she was constantly pictured. While at first Swift’s #squad caused a media frenzy, the backlash quickly followed, with Swift accused of cultivating a particularly toxic brand of white femininity. After a self-imposed hiatus, Swift returned with a new album and accompanying tour that suggested she had listened and learned; The Reputation shows featured dancers and backing musicians of all different backgrounds and body types.

Then was her attitude to sexuality. In an interview for Vogue’s September issue, Swift shared that her friend and collaborator Todrick Hall had asked her what she would do if her son were gay. “The fact that he had to ask me shocked me,” she told Vogue, “and made me realise that I had not made my position clear enough or loud enough.” So she became more vocal, protesting anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the US and releasing in June this year the single ‘You Need to Calm Down’ – widely considered an LGBTQ+ anthem (as well as Swift’s most explicit artistic rebuke of US president Donald Trump, on whose birthday the song was released).

Until this year, Swift’s silence on political issues had become deafening for her critics. Why, they asked, was someone with this much power and influence not using her platform? Yet Swift’s reluctance to assert her stance felt a lot like a reflection of the political ambivalence of a whole generation disillusioned by the way things were. It’s only in the past few years that we’ve seen a movement – more than one – emerge with the intention of giving a voice to the voiceless, from Greta Thunberg to #MeToo.

Swift may have in part been politicised by personal experience. In 2017, she countersued radio DJ David Mueller, who claimed Swift had ruined his career after accusing him of groping her at a meet-and-greet in 2013. The widely-publicised case showed a woman who refused to be belittled or cowed by Mueller’s lawyer, who at one point asked why Swift’s skirt did not appear unruffled at the front in a photo where the incident took place (“Because my ass is located at the back of my body,” Swift retorted). Swift won the case and a symbolic $1, and in a statement after the ruling said: “My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard.” Her case began a long-overdue discussion of power in entertainment; two months after the case closed, Harvey Weinstein was outed by the New York Times, igniting the #MeToo movement. 

Like many in her generation, Swift has also had to battle big business – in her case, her former manager Scooter Braun, who recently acquired the record company that owns the masters of six of Swift’s albums. When news of the sale emerged, Swift released a statement addressing how she had felt “bullied” by Braun for years, and how the deal was “my worst-case scenario”. At the AMAs, she performed ‘The Man’ – an anthem about double standards between men and women – wearing a shirt emblazoned with the names of those six albums. More recently, she accepted Billboard’s Woman of the Decade award with a speech that called Braun out by name.

This is a woman who felt compelled to play nice for years because this is what all women are conditioned to do from birth. Now she’s taking on male music execs with all the confidence of a master chess player. “Being sweet to everyone all the time can get you into a lot of trouble,” she explained to Elle. “While it may be born from having been raised to be a polite young lady, this can contribute to some of your life’s worst regrets if someone takes advantage of this trait in you. Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back. Be like a snake – only bite if someone steps on you.”

Swift’s recent work exemplifies how she’s brought together the personal and political. ‘Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince’ is an astonishing protest song that turns themes of her early work – high school, marching bands, princes and prom dresses – into a metaphor for America’s loss of innocence after 2016. “American glory faded before me / Now I’m feeling hopeless, ripped up my prom dress / Running through rose thorns, I saw the scoreboard / And ran for my life,” she sings. Perhaps the most thing about the song is its subliminal layering into the chorus of a cheerleader chant – “GO, FIGHT, WIN”. It’s a message sent to her millions of listeners: you can make change. 

So in 2020, let’s follow her example: own your success rather than apologise for them; call out injustice where you see it; and lend your own voice to others who might not be heard.



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