Anyone who has had a conversation with me for more than ten minutes would not be surprised to learn that my first-ever article is about Taylor Swift. To say that I’m a Swiftie might even be an understatement. Her music is, quite literally, always on my mind. My party trick is being able to name which of her songs is playing within approximately two seconds of it starting. I’ll randomly burst into song if someone says a word that I associate with one of her tracks.
But my love for her goes deeper than just her music.
Swift has amassed hundreds of major music awards over her career, including 14 Grammys, 30 VMAs, and 49 Billboard Music Awards. She has produced, written, and sung on 11—soon to be 12—studio albums, not even counting the re-recordings of some of her first six albums (the story behind those could be a whole article in itself). She might even hold the world record for breaking the most world records… but don’t quote me on that.
Still, all of that quantitative success doesn’t even begin to capture the most significant thing about her.
Just how talented Swift actually is has been a controversial topic since she became a household name in the early 2010s. Conversations about whether she “deserves” her fame have become even more frequent lately, especially after she somehow got even more popular with her record-breaking world tour, The Eras Tour. Many people online have started implying that she isn’t talented enough to be as decorated as she is, or that her music is nothing special. One of these people is Courtney Love, the American singer, songwriter, and actor.
In an interview with The Standard in April 2024, Courtney Love said, “Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.”
Yes, Love is entitled to her opinion…but I beg to differ. How, in this day and age, could someone who is a safe space for women not be important? When anything with a predominantly female audience is often labeled “cringe” or “insignificant,” Swift’s success in spite of that bias is pivotal. The fact that she doesn’t bother catering to the male gaze and still accomplishes as much as she does makes her an interesting artist in itself.
Whether or not you believe Swift is this generation’s Madonna, or even if you question her talent, there’s no denying the prominence of her influence as a woman in what many in power still consider to be a man’s world, which is exactly why I cherish her so much.