Why you should admit you love Taylor Swift Vivienne Chester
CW: discussion of assault, sexual assault. My name is Vivienne and I love Taylor Swift. Sorry, what did you say? Oh, you think that’s ‘cringe’? Well, I’m here to tell why it’s not cringe at all and is instead a very cool personality trait – one you should adopt! Welcome to the hill I will die on. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to music. We all like different genres and artists and associate these categories with different types of people. For example, we might think that a middle-aged man would like Guns and Roses, while someone ‘sophisticated’ would enjoy classical music. The most prevalent of these stereotypes is that teenaged girls like pop music – and this is not unsubstantiated. According to Paul Lamere, when we study music charts based on gender, the teenaged female Top 40 includes Pop artists such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and Rihanna; while the teenaged male Top 40 includes Eminem, Daft Punk, and Jay-Z – musicians who decidedly do not belong in the Pop sphere. It is important to note here that most popular music is aimed specifically 24
at a teenaged audience – it’s where the money is! 77% of teens in the US told Statistica that they couldn’t go a week without listening to music. However, this figure was higher by 13% for girls. But if hugely successful songstresses such as Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce are so blatantly popular, then why – when one admits to liking them – is one usually rebuffed with the usual ‘Oh wow you like her? Haven’t you grown out of that?’. My answer is always: ‘Yes, it is for teenaged girls, and why do you think that’s such a bad thing?’. Most of the time, their answer to this sounds like ‘Oh you know they don’t actually write their own songs, don’t you?’ or ‘they can’t sing, it’s all just autotune’. On her latest album, Evermore, Swift was a primary writer on all her tracks. As for the autotune comment, Ariana Grande (who has the second-most Spotify streams of all time) has a background in musical theatre, and rarely uses autotune. Music that helps girls going through their formative years feel understood and empowered should not be the butt of anyone’s joke. Neither should
Help! EMERGENCY! Time is running out! I NEED DOUGHNUTS. FROM XANDER.
