Taylor Swift Band • Page 87

I think this way of putting it overly trivializes a big, personal, private decision. What you're actually asking is for someone to probably hurt their career in order to make a generally hollow statement. Taylor being rich does not diminish her right to privacy, nor does it mean that she didn't have anything to lose by speaking out.

Unlike other pop stars, Taylor still has roots in country. The last female country stars to make a big political statement were The Dixie Chicks, and it pretty legitimately torpedoed their career. Obviously, they can still tour and be successful, and they won a Grammy for Album of the Year for the album that responded to everything that happened. But their sales numbers tanked (relatively speaking), country radio stopped playing their songs, and they haven't made an album in 10 years. They were the biggest act in country music, and it didn't matter. There's also a pretty strong connection to be made between the Dixie Chicks getting banished from country radio and modern country radio DJs feeling justified in never playing female artists on the air. The fact that the genre is still feeling the after effects of that incident so many years later is significant.

Now, you can argue that Taylor's following now is enough in the pop sphere that she wouldn't have that kind of backlash. But at the same time, people are trying to argue that she could have reached that southern, middle American demographic that's been with her since the country days, since a lot of those people voted for Trump. I do not think those people would have reacted kindly to "rich pop star that left country music behind trying to tell us what to do."

Bottom line, I think it's a more complex issue than you or the people on the podcast I referenced are suggesting. We seem to agree that Swift speaking out would not have changed how things shook out. But you would still fault a person for not knowingly making a bad business decision to do something that wouldn't be helpful? I feel like it's easy to make that suggestion when you're far removed from it and it's not your career or your fans or your future that's going to bear the consequences. There is one person who has the right to make that decision, and it's Taylor Swift.

Is there any proof that celebrities speaking out makes a difference? Like, I'd love to see a survey done of that. I feel like the Republicans react with a huge level of vitriol to any celebrity who says anything even remotely liberal. I think artists and actors can do a lot more by letting their actions and their money speak for themselves.

One of the suggestions in this podcast was that Taylor could have come out and endorsed Hillary after Kanye "endorsed" Trump, as a way of "winning" the feud once and for all. Which is just so incredibly fucked up, and would have been immeasurably worse and more harmful than her saying nothing at all.

 

Anyway, if you want to skip the podcast, you can basically get all the bullshit hot takes in this article by Dan Ozzi.

Taylor Swift Needs to Sit This Year Out

 

I will speak only for myself, but growing up in a Republican household, as I was seeing Kurt Cobain with a "VANDALISM: AS BEAUTIFUL AS A ROCK IN A COP'S FACE" sticker on his guitar, hearing Kanye West say "George Bush doesn't care about black people", going to a Green Day concert when I was 13 and hearing Billie Joe Armstrong get the audience to chant "Fuck Bush" with him, seeing Tom DeLonge campaign with John Kerry, hearing Young Jeezy's "My President" for the first time, seeing people I admired for their music be outspoken politically probably played at least a little bit of a role in expanding my politics or making me question my parent's belief structures. It certainly wasn't the only part that played in my political evolution, but I think it has an effect. Taylor speaking out wouldn't have changed the election. But it would make a lot of fans who maybe don't have actively political role models have to confront that someone they adore and idolize is speaking out against someone their parents might have voted for or who is the President of the party their parents support. That can have a tangible effect.

Being rich doesn't change Taylor's right to privacy. But if I found out with certainty that she, a very rich person, made the active decision to not speak out against Donald Trump to maximize income not offending Trump supporters in her fanbase, I would absolutely lambast that decision. It would be absolutely fucked. That's not simply wanting to keep her politics private, that's a business decision that puts money over morality.

 

Yeah I don't think Vote Or Die worked, hard to have actual metrics but I think I'm like the only person who would vote because Lady Gaga told them to and I was always going to vote

 

I absolutely think that artists being outspoken has more impact on young, future voters than on people who are voting now. That's a good point.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter to me why she made the decision. She made it, and that's her right, regardless of how moral or immoral I or anyone else thinks it is. I believe it should be a perfectly valid option for an artist to opt out of making political statements, and I would defend any artist's right to do so.

 

This is a very good post, and I basically agree with it 100%. To simplify the argument to "good vs bad business decision" completely undersells Taylor's place in American culture and that she could or even would likely be seriously altering (ie Dixie Chicks-ing) the future of her career. That would absolutely be a commendable move, but it feels to me a step beyond fair to trash her for avoiding that. Especially when there is essentially no reason to think that Taylor herself could have swung the election.

We can sit here on one hand and acknowledge that Trump is evil and fall 2016 was not a regular political climate but one with greater potential consequences than an average election. That is true, and it's easy to understand why that places great import on a persistent dialogue of opposition. Is it disappointing that Taylor (or any other silent person with a platform) did not add to this dialogue? Yes. But on the other hand, we can also assuredly say Taylor Swift is an actual human being, and in my opinion to act like her silence on Trump makes her DEMON INCARNATE rather than just disappointing is really trivializing that.

I think it's easy to knock the idea that she "had a lot to lose" when viewing it as sacrificing future millions from her already exorbitant bank account, but that's an overly simplistic way of looking at it. Her entire life was built on the appreciation of people in a demographic that would have taken her "getting political" harshly. As much as we want to write them off as complicit because they voted for a fascist, the cause-effect chain of whether or not Taylor is a bad person because she didn't speak up to her bad people fans about not voting for a bad person feels like a bridge too far to me to really attack her character for it.

 

Lol I was a super impressionable youth so this speaks to me. I grew up in a sheltered rural area so a lot of my opinions were shaped by my fave artists. There are things I never even questioned until my favorite artists spoke about it. My whole interest in politics stems from my favorite artists talking about it. Without that influence I may have ended up totally different because otherwise I had like one conservative viewpoint to be exposed to so it means a lot to me when artists do it. Nobody has to speak out, but I guess when u already have enough money for 5 lifetimes and ur worried about things impacting ur career or finances I'm not super sympathetic to it. I'm not gonna hate them for it tho like I don't expect a wealthy white woman to put herself on the line like that.

 

I also feel like a lot of poc artists don't have that privilege of keeping silent because their art is so often viewed as inherently political so idk taylor has that privilege of separating the two and not speaking about it and protecting her coins and image so good for her but my hope is that people will always try to check that whenever possible.

 

As long as she's (quietly?) spending her money into her politics, she's still fostering those changes--just maybe not in ways we'd necessarily want or expect. Especially if she's gaming the system to make more money so she can give more away (not saying she IS doing this, but it's not out of the realm of possibility).

 

Lol, this is really fucking stupid

 

It's like the one stop shop for bad Taylor Swift takes. He crams everything in there: the release date controversy; the Kim Kardashian thing; the feuds; Taylor Swift Tix; Taylor's politics. Everything.

 

Still iffy on the song but yes the video is amazing. Especially that ending.

 

I will say I feel like expecting pop stars to be political is fairly new, like I know there have always been politically charged artists but it wasn't treated like a guarantee

 

Think I'm gonna pass on reading it. I'd just unmute a lot of my mutuals on twitter if I was interested in the TSwift hot take factory.

 

It's so bad. I don't fault you for this decision.

 

Just learned that there's now a thing going around accusing her of getting butt implants. I just. She clearly gained some (very healthy) weight and also appeared to up her muscularature. That word looks wrong, but I'm half asleep and hate people on the internet

 

Will never understand the bullying a lot of these celebs receive. It's her ass she can do whatever the fuck she wants to. It's not affecting their lives.

 

Women are damned if they do or don't. We get mocked for not fitting into the ideal and then we get mocked for getting surgery to fit the ideal. I'm kinda over it tbh. Leave us alooooone.

 

I wonder how much Taylor squats.

 

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I came across it at like 3AM and was like whoa.

 

I thought this was a sfw board. :(

 

On the subject of Taylor's politics, this piece is particularly fascinating and makes a lot of good points.

Blank Space: Taylor Will Not—and Should Not—Solve Your Donald Trump Anxiety