In one of his greatest hits, titled Anti-Hero, Taylor Swift presents herself to the public as an insoluble problem, a genuine “mountain monster.” Indeed, the 34-year-old American’s career and influence have transcended all known categories to date. There is no sales record that the self-made billionaire has not broken, no superlative that she has not renewed, no award that she has not won several times. As of the summer of 2024, “Taylor Swift” is more than just a genius artist: she is a planetary phenomenon, a cultural movement in her own right with hundreds of millions of fans around the world.
No less important is that, over time, Swift has acquired a political aura and influence that could decide the American presidential election next fall. Like no other contemporary artist, she knows how to transcend the divisions and chasms of her country’s society and unite them on a higher level. Her performances and actions can be said to have a truly utopian potential.
The core values that Swift and her fans, known as swifties, They defend none other than those of the United States Declaration of Independence: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In the multi-branched universe of their songs reigns a desire for autonomy, self-realization and everyday goodness whose joy in reflection and humorous self-irony embody the best that a global cultural industry of Western origin can currently offer.
You don’t have to be a convert to be moved by the utterly positive, freedom-affirming energy Swift transmits across stadiums, communities, and throughout the ether with songs like Love Story, All Too Well either Karma. The foundation of the lyrical self of these astute and keenly observant lyrics is an unconditional yes to life, to its beauties, and also to its inconsistencies. Instead of limiting herself to passively hoping for the best, she undertakes an emancipated search for enriching experiences. Instead of limiting herself to blaming others, she reflects on the hastiness of her own expectations. Instead of confining herself to the role of a complaining victim, she opens herself productively to her own longings, and also to her own vulnerabilities.
It’s true that the ticket prices are prohibitive, that the image campaign is perfectly orchestrated and that any possible gap between what appears to be and what is has been quickly plugged. Even so, Swift – who does not possess spectacular physical beauty or super vocal talent – manages with a few chords to shake off any skepticism about her authenticity, however loaded with prejudices, and unmask it for what it really is: hostility to the good life itself, fueled by a permanently depressed hatred of everything that has some success and provides a sense of freedom in its realization. In the words of one of his songs: “And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate / Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake”
Yes, she writes her own lyrics. Yes, she composes her own songs. And, yes, she gives a series of three-and-a-half-hour concerts with almost superhuman perfection.
All of this would be astonishing in itself, but it hides the enormous political potential of the phenomenon. Born in 1989, Swift is the daughter of a financial advisor and, as such, is well aware of the conservative values of a white America. To promote the career of her daughter, whose ambition was as obvious as her talent, the family moved early to Nashville, the city of music, where the young woman got her first record deal at the age of 15. At first, she successfully played the role of the savvy country girl in the style of a Southern teddy bear, and acted in the imaginary universe of the high school sweetheart and pickup truck of the average American deeply rooted in the heartland.
As she came of age and achieved global star status, a fascinated audience witnessed her multiple musical and stylistic self-transformations, which, for all their variability, never lost touch with their original medium. Not even when, following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Swift adopted a clearly progressive political stance and defended LGBTIQ rights in Tennessee.
With a disarmingly witty tongue, a credible local patriotism, a call to openly search for the self of every free person, and a transparent recognition of American founding values, Swift embodies a way out of the current political barricades. There is a possible America beyond the spiteful finger-pointing and paranoid surveillance of the enemy, the web-based conspiracy theories, and the condescending metropolitan gaze at losers in the inner states. It is lived and practiced every day in small towns. Swift embodies it at its best imaginable. The country’s latent polyphony is reflected in the artist’s diversity of styles without ever falling into elitist avant-garde. I am always also another. And America, at its best, remains the place in the world in which to fully live out this way of seeing things. That is, as long as it is not held hostage by a dictatorship of toxic masculinity fueled by blind class fear of people who transcend their own existential horizon.
For the moment, Swift, the magnet for young voters, has not yet made public her preference for this year’s presidential election. But when it came to light at the end of 2023 that the artist, currently based mostly in New York, had begun a relationship with American football star Travis Kelce, the base camp of Trump’s election campaign was definitively turned to code red. Forming a duo with Kelce, a lumberjack-type man, the prototypical image of the conservatives’ favourite sport par excellence, as well as a superstar of its most retrograde franchise (the Kansas City Chiefs), Swift is capable of giving power a few jolts that could over time far exceed mere campaign support. At the height of her fame, she could even be on her way to becoming president of the land of freedom. What Ronald Reagan achieved in his day as a twilight film star can certainly be expected from the biggest pop star of our time. Let no one doubt her ambition, her skills, her ability to impose herself, her versatility.
Instead of appearing to others as an insoluble problem because of its giant status, Swift could in the future be elevated to the status of a political solution to seemingly insoluble problems. And, as a “mountain monster,” set its sights on the Capitol in Washington. The United States, land of the swifties. An American dream that would be worth trying.
