Lately, she’s been dressing for revenge, feeling like everyone’s a sexy baby and admitting she’s the problem. Taylor Swift released her 10th studio album “Midnights” with immediate success and record-breaking listens on streaming platforms, but it also revealed a new side to her songwriting narrative by maturing as a pop star.
While Swift has used her lyrics in the past to dis former romantic partners or slag off on people who have caused her public aggravations, “Midnights” goes introspective. Thirteen songs created from sleepless nights thinking about situations that can only happen as you mature. She expresses emotions differently from the Taylor Swift who decided to just shake it off, as the now 32-year-old actually admits she is the problem in the song “Anti-Hero.”
“I love that line, definitely relate to it,” Claire Jolly, an accountant and self-taught musician, said.
“I think it’s a good image of what anxiety can look like because it’s just like yourself telling yourself things that aren’t true, and I think that was the main thing she was trying to convey in the music video,” Jolly continued.
Jolly gained attention on TikTok when she made an entire PowerPoint presentation about why Taylor Swift’s current partner is poor based on song lyrics that the artist has written about him.
“I can tell you, in July of 2021, that I had listened to 934 hours and 40 minutes of her ever on Spotify — that was when they told me I was in the top 1% of Taylor Swift fans, and I had listened to ‘All Too Well’ 717 times,” Jolly said.
Laura Lisbon, who works in content creation and music production, said “I don’t dislike her because I understand her music has to be for everybody, but at the same time, I do dislike her for that reason.”
“I have this weird opinion where I feel like if Kanye didn’t interrupt her at the VMAs (MTV Video Music Awards) — and like fuck Kanye with all of this — but genuinely, I feel like she kind of got portrayed as like this underdog at the time. And I feel like she’s always had this energy to her where a lot of her fans treat her like an underdog when she’s not,” Lisbon continued.
Fans of Taylor Swift, who like to go by the term Swifties, can recite song lyrics during a conversation like some people who are religious can reiterate a Bible verse. Taylor Swift clubs continue to appear at colleges across the United States with over 1,000 Swifties using Reddit to help each other connect to create societies on college campuses revolving around the pop star.
Two students at Brown University, Caroline O’Daly and Michael Yeh, cofounded Loving Him Was Brown: The Taylor Swift Club in 2021.
“Once a week, we have hourlong meetings. We open up by clapping for a picture of Taylor to just show our appreciation,” O’Daly, 22, who is a senior at Brown University studying English and art history, said.
Yeh, 21, who is studying applied math and economics, chimed in to explain the club’s favorite activity at each meeting: Show and Taylor.
“It’s just like show-and-tell, but Taylor’s version,” Yeh said. “So, we’ll have people bring in artifacts.”
O’Daly went on to add about one of the artifacts, “we’re in Rhode Island, and Taylor has a beach house in Rhode Island, so somebody went to the town where her beach house is and brought in stones for the club.”
The Brown University Taylor Swift club sends a weekly email to over 650 people with an in-depth discussion that includes a Google Form where you can vote in the club’s March Madness-style bracket it holds each semester.
“This semester we’re doing what is the best Taylor Swift bridge. We have these broken out, people vote, and we will seed them accordingly. Then, we will debate the matchups in the club and allow our email list to vote and ultimately decide the winners,” Yeh said.
“She’s been able to unify,” Yeh continued. “The club has been a space, through the common interest in Taylor, that has a lot of people connect.”
Swift is known for leaving Easter eggs in her songs for fans to decipher. With her new album, she admits in the song “Mastermind” how she orchestrated the circumstances leading to her relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn.
“She is a millennial, so sometimes she has her moments, but we love her through it all,” O’Daly said.
“Swifties are so talented and so dedicated, and I think it’s rightfully so though — Taylor has given us so much that it only makes sense to give in return.”