Your freshman year of college is like nothing you could have ever predicted. You went into it with goals: never skip class, go to the gym everyday, and make new friends. You leave the first semester practically crawling on the ground, hands and knees, to your hometown for Christmas break, wondering what in the world just happened in the months between August and December. It all becomes hazy. You’ll see something that reminds you of that one night where you met your best friends or you’ll hear someone who sounds like the man you try to avoid at all costs. But perhaps my favorite of all, you’ll be in the car and hear a song come on that was playing in those moments that play like a film reel in your mind.
Embroidered throughout every night of my life, is a song. Whether it was some Miley Cyrus song playing at a party or a soul crushing Olivia Rodrigo song blasting out of my car windows at midnight, there has always been someone capturing the emotions I couldn’t otherwise explain. I could tell you the story of my entire life by just playing for you a few pieces from Taylor Swift’s discography.
Whether you are in middle school, high school, or college, screaming and crying to a pop song with your friends is a healing ritual for the angry and broken hearted. Every single time I have gone through something that emotionally wrecked me, the first thing I did was find a song to relate to it. Whether it was The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived by Taylor Swift or Feather by Sabrina Carpenter, there was something in each lyric that healed a little part of me.
One thing the pop girlies do very well is taking cliches that could very well creep into their work, and throwing them out the windows. Their songs are not all about meeting someone you like, dating them, and then breaking up. Amatonormativity is not what gives these backbone. Often, their most popular songs are the ones that are gritty and written about complicated emotions. Their songs reference situationships, hook-ups, obsession, and rage. While we try to label their music as shallow and that for a middle school girl, they are actively making history with how beautifully they capture modern day women’s emotions. Taylor Swift’s songs don’t ask you to fall in love, find a husband, and settle down. They present this idea of loving abundantly, living in the sadness of its ending, and then growing from it. And doing it over and over and over again.
In pop music, we see women being portrayed as lover girls and players. Heartbroken and completely in love. Confident and terrified to look in a mirror. Perfect and messy. Independent and obsessive. The contradictions that women have always had are now being brought to light through pop music, in a way that feels acceptable and almost glamorous. You can find a song for every feeling by just clicking shuffle on Spotify. It turns every experience into something noteworthy and beautiful. Through this, masses of young women have gotten to connect over shared experiences.
If you have ever been to a concert for one of the main pop girlies, you are aware of how wonderfully safe they feel. We all dress to theme, dance, cry, and maybe trade the occasional friendship bracelet. Pop music is creating a phenomenon where women have a shared safe space to come together, even if on opposite sides of the world. The Eras Tour was a global phenomenon where millions of people could come together over their shared love for music. Before this, we had festivals like Lilith Fair, creating a place for empowerment and expression that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Olivia Rodrigo is carrying the tradition on with her new music festival called Daisy Chain.
Pop music, over the years, has been perfectly capturing the experience of young women. If you want to remember what it felt like to be in love for the first time, turn on that one Taylor Swift album. If you want to scream about your situationship from your freshman year of college, turn on Olivia Rodrigo. If you want to dance while doing your makeup before a night out, put on a Sabrina Carpenter song. Instead of waving off pop music as if it is some kind of garbage, we need to recognize it for what it has become: a historical archive of the lives of young women. For the first time in history, the story of early womanhood is being shared to the masses in a way that is adored and honored.