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The Era(s) of Taylor Swift
I began writing this essay as a way to make sense of my own obsession with Taylor Swift, the singer-songwriter and one of the world’s biggest pop superstars.
I juggle two hats while doing this — one of a sociologist who studies popular culture and the other of a fan. Just as the global fan base of the K-Pop band BTS has been christened as the ‘Army’ and an earlier generation of Star Trek diehards wore the label ‘Trekkies’, members of the Taylor Swift fan community are nicknamed ‘Swifties’.
So am I a Swiftie?
My 12-year-old daughter is proud to call herself one, complete with friendship bracelets, an encyclopaedic knowledge of all 10 of Taylor’s studio albums, and a finely honed ability to track down Easter eggs — which the singer uses to hide secret messages, hints, clues, and teasers in her content.
I am more ambivalent — nearing 50 years of age, cynical about many of the rituals of fandom, heading a university where the label would be more apt for my students and their peer groups.
And yet, Taylor’s is now the only music I listen to, and lately, I have been starting and ending each day by consuming endless social media content featuring her. Footage of her performing and speaking never loses its appeal. Lyrics from her songs help shape my moods and define feelings. This is certainly the most intense relationship I’ve ever had with an artist and their work.
The Taylor-isation of my playlist
The first time Taylor began to appear on my radar was in the late 2000s when she was just becoming popular in the United States as a country musician and it was easy to ignore her as yet another white, all-American girl. Then the songs started becoming crossover hits and I began noticing her music, as more and more of her singles acquired favourite status in my personal playlist.
By the time the album ‘Reputation’ was released in 2017, I was definitely paying attention. Four new studio albums followed in quick succession, with the latest ‘Midnights’ (2022) arriving amid impossibly high expectations and yet instantly becoming a classic.
All this excitement, however, reached fever pitch with the ‘Eras’ tour she embarked on in March and the only thing I remember about the summer of 2023 is one long, glorious Taylor Swift celebration accompanied by my daughter.
Like millions of fans around the world, we followed along virtually for every stop on the US leg of the tour, memorised the set list and the choreography, whooped and screamed when the two surprise songs for each show were revealed, watched out for each guest performer, each endearing glitch, each performance that continued amid the rain. With the 12-hour time difference between Karachi and Los Angeles, we watched the last concert live and participated breathlessly in that magical moment when she announced the ‘1989’ album re-recording.
The build-up of anticipation when dates for the international leg of the tour were being announced quickly gave way to disappointment when no location near us was included. Dubai would have been the only viable option, even if the trip would have cost a small fortune. Singapore sold out quickly as did the rest of the Asian stops.
I have been alternating between convincing my daughter that realistically it’s just not possible, and wildly fantasising about any chance, any plan that might yet land us at an Eras performance. Pre-registering for ticket sales when additional US dates were added didn’t lead to anything. Perhaps London next summer?
Given the rate at which the Pakistani rupee is devaluing and the multiple crises brewing within the country, any international travel seems like a far-fetched dream right now. But who knows, some miracle might just happen.
The Eras tour
The extraordinary popularity and influence of Taylor Swift underscores the nature of celebrity in the contemporary era. This kind of historically unprecedented reach by a star is made possible by new technologies and new patterns of consumption — something the 20th-century mass media industries could only have dreamt of.
Taylor is an active, skilled user of social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram where her followers reach hundreds of millions. Her album sales, online streaming statistics and other indices of popularity have amassed astonishing numbers and routinely keep breaking records previously held by the likes of The Beatles, Barbara Streisand and Drake. On Spotify, she has 100.6 million monthly listeners, second only to The Weeknd (now known as Abel Tesfaye).
Last year she became the first artist in history to claim all top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, which tracks how well songs are doing in the US market. She has had 12 albums (including her re-recorded versions) debut at number one on the charts. And then there are the industry accolades testifying to her artistic achievements — 12 Grammys, 40 American Music Awards, 29 Billboard Music Awards, 23 MTV Video Music Awards, and many more. At this point in time, you can be sure Taylor is going to sweep whatever awards she is nominated for.
The Eras Tour has magnified this reach manifold and is widely seen as a cultural watershed, redefining what musical performance and spectacle will mean from now on. The all-stadium tour stretches over 20 months (March 2023 to November 2024) and five continents and is poised to become the first concert tour ever to gross more than $1 billion.
Much has already been written about the colossal demand for tickets which far outstripped the number of available seats, and the economic impact of the tour on American cities which saw local businesses, the hospitality industry, and public transit revitalised as a direct result of the concerts. Many hotels in British, Australian and European cities, where Taylor will be performing next year, have already been fully booked in advance.
Just as significant is the way the tour has taken over the news cycle and social media for a sustained period of time — a rare ‘monocultural’ event, in the words of some commentators, at a time when we have become used to fragmented audiences and divided attention spans.
Dedicated fans watch and re-watch online clips of her performing a favourite song, making a funny quip, a droll look, and a quirky gesture while she is on stage. Memes and viral moments ensue. Casual viewers might encounter this footage through coverage of other celebrities, since by now a stream of major stars from Hollywood, music, sports and politics have attended a performance and marked their presence by sharing photos and posts on their own social media accounts. The more successful the tour becomes, the bigger the juggernaut grows.
Each show is over three hours long and Taylor herself is on stage for all of it, except for a few minutes off for quick costume changes. Everyone who has attended, including professional athletes, has remarked about her sheer stamina, singing and dancing her way through 44 songs and then coming back the following night to do it all over again. Even from a distance, the loud, emotionally charged energy of the devoted audience and their rapport with the performer is palpable.
The show is technically ambitious and meticulously crafted, a musical extravaganza with a purpose-built stage, digital displays and pyrotechnics, and an array of dazzling costumes made by some of the world’s biggest designers. The sheer amount of preparation that goes into putting up a complex stadium show with high production values, such as this one, has to enlist the creativity and labour of a whole legion of professionals at the top of their game.
Each ‘era’ of Taylor’s musical career is defined by a different mood, colours, and lighting, each looking and sounding like a different world. She is known for having reinvented her artistic persona and musical style many times over, and the show is a testament to that. In-person and on the screen, the whole thing is designed as an immersive experience that works equally well as a whole package and in small snippets.
The largest audience for an Eras Tour performance so far has been 73,000 people in Pittsburgh. The ability to hold live music performances in stadiums and large arenas, where upward of 100,000 attendees can hear and see clearly, only came about with newer technologies of sound amplification and visual display within the last few decades.
At the same time, many contemporary celebrities can relate to the experience of being constantly watched and having minute moments of their life scrutinised endlessly, especially with the advent of social media. As the gadgets and technological apparatus for capturing, recording, and relaying this information become more and more sophisticated, spread across many hands, the illusion of intimacy and relatability of global superstars also becomes easier to believe in.
A league of her own
Taylor Swift is not unique in her achievements. Beyoncé is another female artist who just wrapped up a world tour that was spectacularly successful and grossed record amounts. Selena Gomez has many more followers on Instagram. Many others are redefining relationships with their fans and embarking on new modes of creative expression at this moment in time when the avenues for a new kind of global exposure have become available.
The thing about Taylor, however, is that she encapsulates many singular traits in one persona — a flair for crafting exquisite songs, a magnetic stage presence as a performer, and a savvy business sense. It’s rare enough to find any one of these talents in an individual, let alone all three together.
At 33 years of age, she is an artist at the prime of her career and is pushing creative and commercial boundaries in a way that few others are. Always hard at work, always planning the next surprise for her fans, writing and recording songs at a dizzying pace, and now even directing her own music videos, like a mastermind. All of this with her signature goofy charm.
For every diehard fan of Taylor’s, there is a hater out there who is not content to simply dislike her music but relishes attacking every aspect of her career and personality. She has been cancelled and campaigned against, most notably after Kanye West chose her as a target. The media loves conjuring up and dissecting many more ‘feuds’ between her and other artists. Her famous battle with recording industry executive Scooter Braun led to her re-recording her early music in a quest to own the rights to it.
She has spoken out about the misogyny and double standards female musicians face and how her own artistic credibility routinely gets questioned. Compared to the touchingly young and naive Taylor of the early years, she now comes across as a confident, mature performer, just as her voice has also become richer and her face even more striking.
She wields extraordinary clout within the music industry and has used it to advocate for artists’ rights. When fans appropriate the term ‘capitalist queen’ for her, they don’t mean it as a criticism but as an unabashed acknowledgement and celebration of the commercial success she has earned. She is now the second-richest female musician in the US, second only to Rihanna whose makeup line contributes substantially to her fortune.
All the marketing aside, at the heart of Taylor’s enormous popularity is her music, especially her ability to pen lyrics that move, inspire, and connect with her listeners across ages. I would hesitate to describe their appeal as being ‘universal’ since there are plenty of demographic groups within and outside the US who have very different relationships and expectations from mainstream cultural production.
She writes songs about relationships in their tender beginnings and in the bitterness of falling apart, about romance and friendships, fame and vulnerability, about emotions both whimsical and most profound. Her power as a storyteller is to transform her own experiences into characters and situations that so many of us can see ourselves in, without airbrushing any of her own insecurities.
From the very start of her career, Taylor paid special attention to her fan base which is overwhelmingly female, and has built an extraordinary relationship with them, where they feel like they are seen by her and receive her personal attention. She has invited them to her home, showed up at theirs, thrown listening parties for them, and surprised them with her knowledge of their lives gleaned from social media. Even now that she has become ultra-famous, she continues to engage with them online and occasionally responds to their words, jokes and trends by incorporating them into her own routines.
Swifties are, in return, known for being unfailingly nice to each other and being very protective of her — one of the terms they use to refer to her is ‘Mother’, something that confuses many outsiders but which simply means she is a female artist they look up to. I have been touched by the outrage they have shown in recent weeks when paparazzi and casual onlookers have been invading her privacy and by their reminders that real, old-school Swifties have never treated her like a zoo animal to be gawked at.
Many commentators also note how well-behaved audiences at Taylor’s concerts are and the camaraderie they display with each other. In her review of an Eras Tour show, Tyler Foggatt in The New Yorker describes the atmosphere as “a sanctum of gleeful femininity”. She notes how “anyone can write family-friendly music; only Taylor Swift can turn the Philadelphia Eagles’ stadium into a safe space”.
I feel satisfied knowing that the biggest global superstar is a woman who models a kind of femininity that is not overly sexualised or unapproachable, who for all her glamour and wealth still comes across as being likeable and earnest. She has a killer sense of style but is also unafraid to be silly, self-deprecating, and cute. It is certainly a carefully curated public persona, but the fact that kindness and consideration play such a central role in it is still remarkable.
Everyone who has worked with Taylor describes her as a thorough professional, praising her work ethic and talent, and it is refreshing to see a track record unmarred by accounts of bad behaviour — something not many contemporary celebrities can claim. Cynics will see them as PR stunts, but actions like handing out generous bonuses for all crew members — from backup dancers to truck drivers — at the end of the Eras Tour in the US shows her putting her money where her mouth is. I respect her for that.
I do worry about over-exposure and the insane hype that her every action now gives rise to. My daughter is dismayed by the coverage currently being given to a rumoured romance between Taylor and football star Travis Kelce, all based on one single meeting. “Why can’t they leave her alone?” she wonders.
When it’s not just publications like E! News, but also the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times all jumping on the bandwagon and running stories about that encounter, one can tell. The race to cash in on the power of celebrity is going to hit many more lows.
It all comes back to the music
There is me, who must sing along to every Taylor Swift song, occasionally fumbling a lyric here and there, and my daughter, who remembers all the lyrics perfectly but prefers to listen quietly.
I infected her with my enthusiasm for ‘Getaway Car’. She first introduced me to ‘Enchanted’. We fell in love with ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’ and ‘Right Where You Left Me’ together. Our list of shared favourites playing on heavy rotation changes every week.
Then there is the masterpiece ‘All Too Well’, listening to which is a near-sacred experience in our household. 10 minutes of sheer perfection and emotions flying all over the place.
My husband is a bit bemused by it all but is respectful, knowing what it is to feel passionately about music. After months of Taylor Swift playing constantly around him, he now has his own favourite songs.
At least The Eras Tour concert film is being released here on Friday, the same day as the rest of the world. For now, we’ll have to be content as we contribute to some new Taylor Swift records being broken from Pakistan.
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