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Taylor Swift is what every girl wants to be: pretty, popular, long-legged, and at the top of her field of work. At award shows you can catch her dancing with her best friends: Lorde, Ellie Goulding, Cara Delevigne, and Lena Dunham, who you could argue are all atop their respective fields. She’s hailed for her songwriting and revered for her fashion choices, all while performing with the biggest stars in every city she visits on tour. She’s Spotify’s needle in the haystack that they can’t seem to find, and her endorsements on Instagram take celebrities from the C-List to the A-List in a matter of hours.
Yet, somehow, there’s a contingent of people that hate her. Pure, unadulterated, passionate, unfiltered hatred. It’s the type of hate that inspires long, heated arguments where neither side concedes what they’ve accepted as fact. Days later, those conversations turn into texts with further proof of why you should either love or hate Taylor, with both sides finally agreeing to disagree by saying, “Nevermind, you just don’t get it.”
Then, another awards show comes along where she’s simultaneously lauded for her performance onstage by her fans while being ripped apart by internet trolls who can’t stand the sight of her being happy offstage. Because when it comes to her, there are blue states and there are red states. Unfortunately, arguing about America’s sweetheart is about as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. No matter how longwinded your case to love or hate her may be, the other side will not relinquish.
But, in all actuality, the only reason people hate Taylor Swift is because they hate themselves.
There’s that girl in every high school who is the apple of every boy’s eye. She’s the one you want to take home to mom while also being the one you hope is free for the last dance once “Iris” comes on. Smart, athletic, pretty. Yet, somehow, she doesn’t truly have a group of girl friends that are willing to stick by her side. They vilify her despite her harmlessness and do everything in their power to tear her down despite her good intentions. One could say that on one side, it’s mad love and on the other, it’s bad blood.
Well, to the world, Taylor Swift is that girl. While the rational side propels her songs to number one and account for the millions of views her music videos get, the high school mean girls take to Twitter and Facebook spewing hatred at her every move out of jealousy. They want to be the ones dancing in the front row of the Grammys. They want to be the ones rubbing elbows with Haim. They want 40 million followers on Instagram. But instead of doing the work to get there, it’s easier to make themselves feel better by disparaging someone who isn’t inherently evil in any sense of the word.
In life, it’s easier to hate than congratulate. When people feel uncomfortable or threatened, it’s easier to be on the defensive than it is to take a step back and pay their respects to greatness. Haters replace kind words with, “What does she have that I don’t?” and launch into diatribes about about how she’s “like, so annoying.” The unwarranted hatred of someone whose attributes are borderline unhateable simply shows the true colors of those not on Team Taylor.
It’s not that Taylor Swift haters are especially unhappy. I’m sure a lot of them live gratifying and fulfilling lives. It’s just that seeing her that happy and that successful and that universally loved flips a switch that turns normal, rational people into blood-smelling, ravenous sharks. Her commercial success and popularity among celebrities who have a higher approval rating than Taylor herself are too much for these people to take. While they could give up and enjoy her music and gusto, they’d rather vehemently disparage her from the rooftops until somebody chimes in to entertain their desperate need for an argument. Unfortunately, they hate her because they can never be her.
Me? I’m just a modest Taylor Swift truther. I take her for what she is — a positive celebrity force who kicks out bangers that I listen to on private session and pray come on the radio when I’m cruising to work. The first time I heard “Style,” I wanted to slick back my hair and put on a white t-shirt. When I heard “Welcome To New York,” I wanted to be crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab with wide eyes looking to all the possibilities Manhattan held for me. And when I saw the “Shake It Off” video for the first time, I saw everything that popular culture strives to be.
Unfortunately, some people just don’t get it. .
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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When “shake it off” comes on the radio and nobody is in the car I don’t change the station.
She divorced Spotify. That’s a dick move in my book. It’s as if my hundreds of plays of “22” and “Fearless” meant nothing to her. That said, Taylor, I would love to take you out to a nice sushi dinner, roll around with you in your mansion, never call you back, and then listen to the song you write about me on repeat. What do you say?
This take is just too hot.
I want to hate her because of her $6M beef with spotify and the fact that she looks like a sociopath, but such a foxy sociopath.
My wife has her songs tagged in my car so every time she’s on, it sends me a notification. I don’t even mind. Aw who am I kidding, I tagged her.
She screams stage 5 clinger to me.
Yea, I hate it when hugely successful hot girls want to monopolize my time too. It’s like, “come on, ladies, I’m too much of a catch to be tied down to one smokin hot megastar.”
1989 is the only thing encouraging me to do any real work today…
Her tone-deaf replies to Nikki Minaj about the VMAs notwithstanding, T-Swift is fantastic.
I’m just going to leave this here: her Wonderland cover shoot.
A) She doesn’t write her own songs.
B) She’s famous ’cause her daddy bought a share of a record label so they’d sign her.
I hold these things against her, but I don’t hate Taylor Swift.
Um, she wrote an entire album by herself at the age of 20 and that album when on to sell over a million copies in its first week and won a couple of Grammys. She actually writes all of her music or she co-writes with someone but she always has a hand in the writing process. So your first point is irrelevant. Your second point is also irrelevant because she started at the very bottom of the business and worked her way up to where she is today. She got “famous” as you say from her hard work. She had a dream, and followed it. So your two points hold no value.
I want my musicians to have a cool story to tell like John Frusciante (former guitarist of RCHP). The guy dropped out of high school after learning every Jimi Hendrix song on a shifty acoustic guitar then auditioned for Frank Zappa’s band but then declined to join after he learned there was a strict no drug policy, then he joins RHCP at 18, writes some of the best guitar work ever recorded for Blood Sugar Sex Magik, they got out on the map then he hated being famous so he quit life for 7 years, did a fuck ton of heroin, played the overdose game with tallies on his wall for how many times he survived, his good friend Johnny Depp waked into his house and filmed a shitty documentary named “stuff” about his struggles, loses all his teeth, burns his house down and al last has to get his arms amputated, quits heroin cold turkey, re- leaned guitar again and became the white Jimi Hendrix.
According to Kanye’s West, Kanye West made her famous.
Her dad was able to do that because they’re already filthy rich. Her grandfather started Swift Trucking.
Why would I know that? What am I, a truck driver?
Also, that’s irrelevant to my two points. Starting with a leg-up makes her more…fuck-me-sideways i dunno…inspirational?
Yes. Way more inspirational than someone who actually had to work and fight tooth and nail to get to the top. I find people who are simply handed things without having to work very hard for their “leg up” to be more inspiration than mother freaking Theresa.