Is Taylor Swift the last great troublemaker in pop music? Or has this always been the custom for the Time magazine Person of the Year to use their illustrious anointing to air old beef?
Because the magazine has indeed chosen Swift as the 2023 Time person of the year. The global music phenomenon joins the roll call of presidents, popes, peacemakers and the pick of 2022, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Swift is the first to contribute to the arts, and the first woman to be honored twice (she was part of a group of #MeToo silence breakers in 2017).
You start reading the interview expecting the standard hyper-controlled PR puffery from mega-celebrities. Then, suddenly, in the vast glossy expanse of words, Swift starts accusing Kanye West (now Ye) and his then-wife Kim Kardashian of a complicated situation that goes back fourteen years (when West walked in on Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards , saying her award should have gone to Beyoncé).
For the benefit of the uninformed, Ye released the song Famous years later, with lyrics about how he and Swift might eventually have sex (“I made that bitch Famous”). Swift denied approving (all) the lyrics. Kardashian released a recording showing she had agreed. It later emerged that the recording was (allegedly) edited, but not before Swift was labeled a snake (following a global plague of snake emojis on social media).
While the situation sounds terrible, I’m puzzled: Why is Swift serving up years of shade to Ye and Kardashian?
Now, without any names being mentioned, Swift is talking in the Time interview about “the death of my career”, “hiding”, “being canceled within an inch of my life and sanity”, “having my life’s work taken away by someone who hates me”. While the situation sounds terrible, I’m puzzled: Why is Swift serving up years of shade to Ye and Kardashian? And, in all the inappropriate places, she Time person of the year interview? In contrast to the heightened eminence of the occasion, you could be sitting in a nightclub restroom and eavesdropping on someone having a bitch. Which icon of 21st century pop culture do this?
Apart from her talent, Swift changes what a megastar should be, how they should behave in public spaces? And considering the times, isn’t that rather refreshing?
I would be terribly old and very late to join the “Swifties” (Swift’s fiercely loyal fans, who turn any slight against their self-actualizing queen into online Armageddon). Swift’s recent triumphs alone make my head spin. The mega-selling albums. The ongoing Eras tour, which saw demand crash on the Ticketmaster site and boosted local economies, would be the first to cross the billion-dollar mark. She was just named the most streamed artist of 2023. The list is expanding.
Related: Taylor Swift’s Eras tour becomes the first to gross over $1 billion – report
The result is a life spent under constant surveillance. Her relationships (she is now with Kansas City Chiefs American football player Travis Kelce) don’t so much play out in the media spotlight as they fester, scorch and char there. Every expression is monitored, tagged and sent back into nature to multiply. Swift knows this, but she still refuses to keep her trap shut.
Indeed, this isn’t Swift’s first challenging rodeo. She has taken many stands, including when music manager Scooter Braun acquired the rights to her early material (another complicated situation). Swift ignored those of us who shrugged, sighed, and patronized (that’s how the music industry works, suck it up, honey!), and re-recorded the whole thing to regain control. Moreover, creatively, an entire wing of Swift’s oeuvre is devoted to thinly veiled allusions to her exes: the art of songwriting deployed as a form of witchcraft, a post-relationship cleansing ritual – and why not?
In some ways this goes beyond Swift, and into the broader machinations of modern artist engagement. The escalating PR interference (“Move on!”; “Next question!”). The no-go areas. The roadblocks are in place to ensure that nothing interesting is ever said or (God forbid) printed. In this oppressed age of celebrity as a gated community, Swift’s Time interview is equivalent to throwing a grenade and then walking away whistling.
This time the PR gatekeepers might have had a point. Given Ye’s public shaming (after he made anti-Semitic and other comments, companies withdrew partnerships and endorsements), now is not the time to dust off an age-old feud and reweave your brands. You might also question the optics of weaving a story of great personal suffering as you become Time person of the year and continue your billion dollar tour.
It does a soul good to see this streak in someone so famous. The unstoppable mouth, the demand for revenge at mafia level
Some may view Swift’s behavior as brash, petty, throwing toys out of the stroller, a sign that in some ways (gasp!) she has turned into a bit of a monster. To which the only logical answer is: Even if she did, in a weird way, it’s still pretty awesome, right?
Journalism aside, it does a soul good to see this streak in someone so famous. The unstoppable mouth, the demand for revenge at mafia level. The refusal to drop the beef. Even if you feel the urge to portray Swift as some kind of Catherine de Medici of pop music (the female revenge fantasy made real, which cannot be appeased), in this climate of cringe-inducing, self-censoring, vapid celebrity talk, it feels it as a radical, revolutionary act.
Then there is the age factor. Most pop hotheads/motormouths grow out. At 33, Swift should have “learned.” She should be at her self-censoring, brand-protecting peak. Instead, recent events suggest that her outbursts were not the excesses of youth. For better, for worse, and everything in between, that’s how La Swift rolls; it’s who she is.
All of this makes Taylor a lot more interesting to this newly minted Swiftie. Even more than a mega-successful artist, pop culture comet and Time person of the year 2023, she has always been her authentic self. Isn’t this all we ask of artists?
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist