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She’s a country starlet-turned-international pop sensation, but Taylor Swift has recently started adopting a new moniker — political activist.
How did she get here, what is her agenda and what do people really think of her? We reveal all.
Taylor Swift has been one of the most famous singers in the past 10 years but has stayed quiet about her political views for the majority of her career.
Her parents have always had big hopes for her even before she was born. They named her Taylor as that was a neutral name and before she was even famous they made sure she was marketed well, creating a MySpace account and a website. For her and her parents it was all about making it and not letting anything get in the way. Everything had to be played smartly, political views included. At 17 in 2006, her first album, Taylor Swift, was released and it became a massive hit with young country music fans and became the top 10 of the Billboards 200.
Giving any political views could be damaging to her career, so she stayed quiet. Two years after her first album, she made an acknowledgement at supporting Obama in 2008 but then was suspiciously quiet during Obama's re-election in 2012.
Perhaps she was told giving her political views could damage her rise to fame. Her reason was she was trying to remain “as educated and informed as possible." she told Time magazine.
Hmm…as educated and informed as possible, does she mean that she didn’t want it to impact any potential album sales?
Kanye has always seen through Taylor, accusing her in 2016 of riding the wave of the Video Music Award fall out they had in 2009 for publicity.
Short version of what had happened was in 2009, Kanye interrupted her mid-speech telling her that Beyonce should have won Best Female Video , he apologised in September 2010 but days later Swift debuted her track innocent with a dig at West "Thirty two and still growin' up now// Who you are is not what you did // You're still an innocent." Kanye then back tracked his apology.
After working to improve the relationship, she did it again in 2016, when West released his (now infamous) track "Famous" in February 2016, with lyrics: "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex// Why? I made that bitch famous" which had been approved by Taylor but she denied it until Kanye’s wife Kim Kardashian-West released a phone recording between Taylor and Kanye confirming the conversation. Any controversy is good for marketing, so she might as well ride along Kanye’s publicity.
After the embarrassment of being wrong and a fierce fallout on social media, Swift stepped away. As 2016 elections came, she did not make any formal endorsement towards Trump or Hillary, despite her pro-women stance.
In 2018, she finally broke her policy of keeping politics to herself and endorsed former Democratic Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen in the state’s Senate race and Democrat Jim Cooper for the U.S. House.
She wrote that then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s (R) voting record “appalls and terrifies” her.
The comment was received with a lot of backlash with some twitter users claiming she has ended her career. Donald Trump responded by saying he now liked Swift’s music “about 25% less”.
In 2020 she has been more vocal than ever showing her support for the democrats and endorsing Biden. Interestingly Forbes praised her in their December 2019 article of her career but hinted that perhaps her days as a singles artist may be over.
So the question is, did Taylor play the politics of the music industry and did she wait for the fortune before disclosing her political intent.
Some would say yes, she may even still be playing the political game carrying off the ride of BLM movement. Others would take a different view.
