Taylormania

It is becoming hard to spend a day without hearing, reading about or seeing a picture of Taylor Swift.

The country-pop star is everywhere: touring the world, rerecording albums, winning GrammysThe most prestigious award in the US music industry. The trophy is shaped like a gilded gramophone. Last year, Billie Eilish won most of the main awards.. She has even conquered sport, regularly appearing at American football games to support her boyfriend Travis Kelce.

But her latest conquest is far from the glamour of stadiums. As Swift attended the Super BowlAn American football match played each year to decide which team is the best in the country. , the University of MelbourneThe capital of the state of Victoria, and Australia's second largest city after Sydney. opened its Swiftposium, a three-day academicSomeone who does research or teaches at a university. conference devoted to discussing her cultural influence.

It was originally intended to be a small event, held in two rooms. But Swift's popularity caused it to swell to 130 speakers across 60 subjects. Academics discussed Swift in the context of the music industry, gender, law, literature, sports, economics,¹ pop culture, CPRShort for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. An emergency procedure that is used to save someone's life if their breathing or heart stops. training - and much more.

Many of the speakers are fans. But they are not uncritical. One report looked at how Swift sings about public transport while flying in her carbon-belching private jet.² Others explored her music's relationship to race and colonialismThis refers not only to the material realities of colonial rule, but also to the mindset of the colonising powers and their ways of justifying empire. Most Europeans believed that empire was a moral good, because it imparted 'civilisation' to 'primitive' cultures and so helped them to develop..

Organiser Dr Emma Whatman says: "Celebrity culture holds a mirror up to society. It shapes the conversations we have about gender, race and the environment."

Swift's influence is undeniably vast. Time magazine named her Person of 2023.³ Her tour is record-breaking.⁴ At one concert  her fans cheered so much they generated seismicOf enormous size or effect. activity similar to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake.

She also has a political impact. She encouraged over 35,000 young people to register to vote in the 2020 US election. "At the moment," says Swift expert Georgia Carroll, "it wouldn't be going too far to say [Swift] is one of the most powerful people in the world."

Swift is doubly important because her songs tell young women that their thoughts have value. Girls' and women's concerns have often been dismissed as unserious. In the late 20th Century, women authors' were so neglected that several publishing houses' were founded specifically to republish them.⁵

In the 1960s, journalist Paul Johnson called female BeatlesAn English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential bands of all time. They played for ten years between 1960 and 1970, with Paul McCartney as co-lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter. fans "the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures", a misogynistA person or being who dislikes and is prejudiced against women.  caricature. Male fans faced no similar critiques. "For people conditioned to believe that their interior lives don't matter," writes journalist Sian Cain, "it's powerful to be told that they actually really, really do."

Yet we might be taking Taylor Swift too seriously. The things that seem important now often become footnotes in history. People in 1999 were obsessed with the Millennium BugAlso known as the Y2K problem, the mostly unrealised fear in the 1990s that computer programmes would not be able to cope with the date change from the 1900s to 2000s. . Few remember it now.

"Fame," wrote the poet Emily Dickinson, "is a fickle food upon a shifting plate." Dickinson would know. She was little known in life. But after her death she became known as one of America's greatest poets. Her then-popular contemporaries, the Fireside poetsA group of 19th Century American poets who were famous in their time. , quickly fell into obscurity. The same fate might await Swift.

Are we taking Taylor Swift too seriously?

Yes: Swift is a powerful figure. But to focus on her ignores dozens of musicians, artists and activists whose work is having a similar effect on the world. Study Swift - but study others as well.

No: Swift is a global phenomenon. She might have more impact on peoples' listening, lives and thoughts than any musician in history. We should not underestimate the global impact of her life and work.

Or... We might be taking Swift and her music too seriously. But the world that has developed around her - the gossip, the tours, the fandom, the column inches - is central to our culture.