When people say that music can change the world, they don’t usually mean songs that capture a girl’s feelings with bright, sharp intimacy.
They are protest songs, political songs, and anthems against the Vietnam War. It’s not the soundtrack to a painful teenage summer or an eight-year-old’s dance routine on the playground. I mean, they don’t mean Taylor Swift songs. But it was a song Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaigner for women’s right to education, often sang with her friends growing up in Pakistan. After attending Swift’s London gig this summer, she wrote on Instagram that the music “made me and my friends feel confident and free.” That’s why the Taliban has banned it in Afghanistan.
This weekend, Swift was in Miami to begin the final leg of her Elas tour, which coincided perfectly with the final leg of the most consequential US election in decades. Already economically powerful, driving enough fan spending to have a measurable impact on local GDP no matter where in the city it takes place, the tour is also increasingly a political vehicle. .
On Friday night, Swift posted a reel on Instagram of herself exploring the stadium before a show in jeans and with her beloved cat in tow, with the caption “Back to the office,” a nod to the Republican vice presidential candidate. It was an accurate choice considering the dismissal of J.D. Vance. of Kamala Harris as a childless cat woman;
Democrats are furiously piggybacking on Swift’s endorsement of the Harris-Waltz ticket to boost desperately needed young voters, with signs around the stadium proclaiming, “I’m in the era of voting.” Advertisements are being put up and activists are praising Kamala. themed friendship bracelets (bracelet trading is a Swiftie ritual);
Shouting along to “Cruel Summer” won’t sway voters, but that’s not the point. This is a campaign to encourage people to vote. Her fan base is young, mostly female, includes a fair number of gay men, and therefore leans liberally. The more she can motivate people to actually vote in a highly gendered election, the worse it will be for Donald Trump. It may sound faintly unrealistic, but in an election that held the free world’s breath, Swift became a powerful rallying point for liberal resistance to the misogyny of the “alt-right.”
Taylor Swift is more than just a pop star now. She is a collection of celebrities who have a kind of soft power. Who else could get someone like Yousafzai, two future kings and half of the British cabinet to attend her London performance? – gained an even harder edge this summer.
Because such power has consequences. She was infuriating the MAGA movement long before officially endorsing Harris/Waltz and praising their stance on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. She has been the focus of increasingly deranged deep state conspiracy theories for months, suggesting she is the frontman for some kind of horrifyingly complex plot to rig the election. But like any conspiracy theory, it’s only interesting if some crazy person believes it.
The office hasn’t exactly been a comfortable place for Swift these days. In mid-July, an American man suspected of making threats against her on social media was arrested in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on his way to a show for which he had tickets.
Less than two weeks later, three girls were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in the British town of Southport, but the motive remains unclear. (Swift met privately with some of the survivors in London this summer.) In August, after Austrian police thwarted a terrorist plot to kill suspected Islamists, what they called “a huge number of people.” canceled three concerts in Vienna. It was a brutal echo of the 2017 Ariana Grande concert bombing in Manchester that killed 22 people.
Frankly, I thought her mother-turned-manager was terrified in London and insisted on the kind of blue-light police escort usually reserved for heads of state between the hotel and the stadium. I’m not blaming you. And it wasn’t just the lure of free gig tickets that had Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and London Mayor Sadiq Khan interested in Swift’s protection and the feasibility of an event worth around £300m to the capital. I don’t think so.
Still, the resulting extremely stupid controversy allowed editors to run giant photos of Swift in spandex pants for days on end, while Boris Johnson (of all people) ) finally jumped that shark when he used it to accuse Keir Starmer of looking corrupt.
Was the Prime Minister, who was photographed at Swift’s concert, secretly hoping that some of her stardust would rub off on him? probably. Will he try something like that again now? Almost certainly not. If Taylor Swift gets a title or a PPE contract, we’ll let you know. Sometimes we seem like a very, very small island. Meanwhile, Swift is back in office, temporarily boosting Florida’s GDP and trying to elect a black woman as president.
When Time magazine selected the 34-year-old singer-songwriter as its 2023 Person of the Year, the profile said that women and girls are “conditioned to dismissal, gaslighting, and abuse from a society that deals with their emotions.” Through her songs, she suggested that she has the power to give people permission to believe that those feelings actually matter. One year later, she’s asking them to value their feelings through voting. It’s a gentle reminder that while music may change the world, it doesn’t change the world itself.
Gabby Hinsliff is a columnist for the Guardian
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