Taylor Swift. Just by the name, I’m sure millions of catchy lyrics, outrageous stories, name of ex boyfriends and personal opinions come to mind. But there’s one thing we all can’t deny: she is a pop culture icon. For so long, I have found myself falling all over the place. I like her music, but does that mean I have to like her? There is something different about her, but does that make her a bad person? Ever since I first listened to “Teardrops On My Guitar,” I’ve never been able to get a full read on whether or not I liked Taylor Swift.
Swift’s life from the self-titled album, Taylor Swift, to her newest album, Reputation, could garner hundreds and thousands of articles (and trust me, they have). Ofr the seemingly millions of articles on Daily Mail’s Snapchat stories about her, there is one thing that T-Swift is most known for. Something that even her fans will admit. Taylor Swift is calculated.
In the beginning, maybe this was why I was so turned off from being a dedicated fan. I loved, and still love, when celebrities are authentic and feel like everyday people. And Speak Now era Tswift seemed anything but the soon-to-be iconic “surprise Taylor” who was unprecedentedly charming became tired.
For a while there, even though T-Swift was pumping out bops like “You Belong with Me” and “22” left and right, she just couldn’t catch a break. People (like me) used to watch her and cringe at how she seemed to try hard at everything. She seemed to try hard to have the best love life, the chart-topping singles, the best everything. But man, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been #loyal fans since day one. There will always be people who worship Taylor Swift and everything she lays her hands on, that’s just how it’s always been and how it will probably always be.
However, since the release of her 2014 “1989” album, I have noticed something different. I didn’t dislike Taylor. Maybe it wasn’t even something she did. Maybe it was just by realizing that, sure, Taylor Swift is calculated but she can sure pull it off. Her music videos started to slip in super sly hints about ex boyfriends and as soon as she started to realize that her country-pop princess facade wasn’t needed anymore, she came into her own.
When people use the word calculated, it’s mostly an insult — but it’s not for Taylor anymore. She’s taken the identity as a savage and has run with it. In one of her most recent music videos, “Look What You Made Me Do,” she perfectly demonstrates that she doesn’t care about what anyone thinks. From being criticized for not putting her music on streaming services like Spotify to spinning Kanye’s infamous interruption at the VMAs into an empowering moment on her part, to single-handedly controlling the beef between she and Katy Perry after a fight about a backup dancer, Swift has 100 percent become the calculated queen we have all knew she could be.
And fans catch on fast. They obviously learn from the best and spend hours analyzing what every video or every song is about. From album to album, there seems to be a pretty consistent timeline with her taking down anyone and everyone who has wronged her. And honestly, it’s a pretty cool thing to watch fans and artists seem to collaborate on this kind of stuff. By now, Swift loads everything with hints and is probably waiting by her phone, just waiting, for the fan conspiracies to come flying in. Three days before she released “Reputation,” Taylor posted the track list for the album, and by the end of the day, fans had already seemed to figure out that the first half of the album deals with her reputation and finishes with tracks about her real life.
Listen, love her or hate her, Taylor Swift doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. She may take breaks, like the almost year-long public hiatus where she wasn’t seen for months, but she always comes back. Fiercer. Stronger. And a little more calculated.