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Once again, Taylor Swift has dominated the conversation and, once again, a large part of that conversation is whether or not she “deserves” something. In this instance, being Time’s Person of the Year, a still respected and aspired to cover in a world where print journalism (and most other forms of print) has effectively gone the way of the dodo. The ones calling out the tone deafness of her appearance on the 2023 cover (for perspective, fellow “influencers” shortlisted for the latest edition included Barbie and Vladimir Putin—yes, you read that right) are not just her usual detractors, though. They also happen to be Swifties themselves…arguing that, instead, the masses should be seeing Palestinian journalists on the cover.
This was highlighted recently by the hit-or-miss stylings of Saint Hoax, who extracted a number of comments from fans that included such sentiments as, “Big Taylor Swift fan and she’s absolutely had one of the biggest years of her entire career but hey actually maybe there are ongoing world events that could’ve been highlighted with this piece” and “As a Swiftie I’m incredibly proud of her but the real heroes are the journalists documenting the genocide happening in Palestine.” To get slightly meta, the comments about the comments themselves were more divided, with one user agreeing, “Taylor and Beyoncé: nothing more than money machines this year. The world is falling apart and they haven’t said a single thing,” while another said, “Oooomggg stop trying to take this away from her. A young woman makes it to ‘Person of the Year’ on Time magazine and what about these other people who are more deserving?? I’m not even a Swiftie but this is perverse.” Then there was the glib assessment, “Sounds about White.”
While the hype and praise around Swift has often made this listener repeat the Heath Ledger as Patrick Verona phrase, “What is it with this chick? She have beer-flavored nipples or something?” it does seem telling that, for the second most obvious time, her proverbial “trophy” is being denigrated/taken away. In fact, in the article itself she alludes to the years-long beef with Ye that started back at the 2009 VMAs when he was still Kanye West. And yes, it also involved fellow 2023 touring powerhouse (complete with theatrical release of said tour) Beyoncé. On that front, one supposes it’s comforting that the cast of characters in the mainstream hasn’t changed too much (mainly because Gen Z has produced a paucity of “stars”). And Swift wants to remind people of that by rehashing some well-marinated beef that started in 2016 (years after everyone thought it had all “calmed down” between Swift and West). With a little song called “Famous,” wherein the erstwhile West asserts, “I made that bitch famous.” The implication being that, thanks to his hijacking of her acceptance speech for Best Female Video of the Year at the VMAs, Swift’s star began to shine a lot brighter afterward. Barring the fact that this is one of the key examples that speaks to West’s narcissism, it’s a flat-out fallacy. No one got Swift to her position except for Swift (and, to reiterate, winning the birth lottery by being born to affluent parents willing to support what many other progenitors would balk at as a pipe dream).
Being that Swift is something of the queen of dredging up old material these days (what with rerecording all her previously released albums from Big Machine), it makes sense that she has an innate ability to catalog and recall every “era” of her life. And this was the era that spawned her Reputation phase, one that embraced being the “bad guy” à la Billie Eilish before the latter even really entered the collective consciousness (but insisted before Taylor on “Anti-Hero,” “I’m the problem“). Of course, there was nothing all that “bad” in what Kim Kardashian (then known, foolishly, as Kim Kardashian West) manipulated the media and the masses into thinking: that Swift had consented to Ye rapping, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why?/I made that bitch famous.” When the song came out, however, Swift reacted negatively, rightfully condemning the reference to her as misogynistic and unsanctioned. This prompted Kim K to release select portions of the phone conversation Ye had with Swift about the song that made it seem like she whole-heartedly approved. Never mind that no one bothered to ask her how she felt about the accompanying video, which was even more crass as it paraded naked wax figures (that look just like “the real thing”) of Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, George W. Bush (of all people), Donald Trump, Anna Wintour, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Ray J, Amber Rose, Caitlyn Jenner and Bill Cosby (again, weird choice) lying in bed together.
With Kardashian’s damning “evidence,” Swift was fed to the media and internet dogs, branded with that damning word again: “calculated.” And, newly, “snake.” This betrayal and backlash is a moment in her life that is called out again and again in the Time article as a reason for why she is where she is now after the heartache of that treachery. For, despite the “pain” of being painted as the villain, Lansky notes, “Getting to this place of harmony with her past took work; there’s a dramatic irony, she explains, to the success of the tour. ‘It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me,’ Swift says, and this is where the story takes a turn. ‘The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity,’ she says plainly. ‘The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.’” Cue the lyric from Reputation’s “End Game” that goes, “I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me.”
That drama came first when Kardashian initially released the edited conversation Swift had with West and, second, when the complete recording was leaked in 2020 (a year when people had plenty of extra time to analyze such things). So it is that Swift can look back now and candidly say, “You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” Yet they say what makes a successful person—a hero, even—is someone who doesn’t stay knocked down (though, this is the sort of cheeseball line that, as usual, totally overlooks the many benefits of privilege). Having been part of the fame game for so long at this point, and weathering the many so-called controversies of it (though never anything even remotely as interesting as dancing in front of burning crosses or getting pleasured amid gender-fluid patrons in a The Night Porter-inspired hotel), Swift has learned to take the bad with the good. What choice does she have, after all, if she wants to remain in the spotlight? Which she very patently does.
As she tells Time, “Nothing is permanent. So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before.” This, to be clear, is her subjective response to being discredited, and has little bearing on the actual album sales that occurred after Kardashian and West attempted to disparage her reputation. Lansky remarks on this as well, coming to the conclusion that if Swift felt canceled, then it’s valid. Life being so much more about feelings than objectivity these days.
And what Swift feels now is that her “response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She then adds, in a moment of pettiness that can’t help but overtake her, “But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.” More direct shade against not just West and Kardashian (still somehow raking in her millions as “a girl with no talent”), but also Scooter Braun.
As for those who call Swift’s decision to talk trash about that trash in what is theoretically a “classy article,” well, it’s obvious why she would more than “casually” “hint” at the feud that ignited the material on Reputation: she’s about to rerelease that album next, and it’s always good to prime the masses for the narrative that was going on during the period in Swift’s life when an album was initially unleashed. And she’s, needless to say, very much ready to take back that narrative (you know, the “one that [she] never asked to be a part of, since 2009”). It being one of the only examples of a time when she wasn’t totally in control of it. Of rerecording this album, Swift muses, “The upcoming vault tracks for Reputation will be ‘fire.’ The rerecordings project feels like a mythical quest to her. ‘I’m collecting horcruxes. I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.” As it has been for everyone else watching the drama unfold all along. Just as they’re watching a repeat of what West did to Swift at the VMAs by witnessing the internet insist that someone else (multiple someone elses) is more deserving of what she was honored with. Clearly, in this context, the “competitor” is literally in another playing field. Nay, battlefield. Making it difficult for anyone who doesn’t want to offend to argue that Swift being attacked for accepting her place on the cover has nothing to do with Palestine.
To be even more direct, in America, no one gives as much of a fuck about Palestinian journalists as they do about Taylor Swift. And that’s just the cruel, pure honesty that has ruffled so many feathers. In this regard, the editors of Time actually did do their part to assess “the individual who most shaped the headlines over the previous twelve months, for better or for worse.” Considering the latest Israel-Palestine conflict didn’t even pop off until October, that alone gives Swift a more competitive edge for the cover, as she’s been making headlines from day one of 2023, most notably when the world was “shocked” to learn of her breakup with Joe Alwyn and then appalled by her decision to go for Matty Healy as a rebound. Is it bleak and unfortunate that celebrity culture is more influential and headline-shaping than the everyperson risking their lives to report on unspeakable atrocities? Of course. Is it new? No. Is it worth diminishing Swift’s record-breaking accomplishments in 2023? Not really. Unless one is fond of the symmetry that brings us back to the very moment that Swift says sparked it all for her to work harder, better, faster, stronger (a song Kanye has sampled, yes): being publicly shamed and told that someone else should have gotten her recognition. Recognition that, at this juncture, is almost comical in its absurd reverence. Case in point, at another moment in the article, Lansky pronounces, “As a pop star, she sits in rarefied company, alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna; as a songwriter, she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Joni Mitchell.”
All of these are extremely grandiose, over-the-top comparisons that give Swift a lot more credit than she’s due (ironically, the crux of the argument for why Palestinian journalists should be on the cover instead). Not because she hasn’t “earned her stripes” (even if it’s not as challenging to do so when, again, you have emotionally and financially supportive parents), but because, well, she’s just so vanilla compared to the aforementioned legends she’s being compared to. Even so, maybe it’s time that some people should just “let Taylor finish.” Like she said (despite being fined multiple times for not taking trash out), “Trash takes itself out every time.” Or, in this case, hyper-overrated pop stars doomed to “age out” of popularity do (at least when they’re a woman). Something Swift herself has openly admitted to waiting for, thus taking advantage of the spotlight while the world is fully committed to letting her bask in it. Genocide be damned.
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Genna Rivieccio
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