It took just three days for The Tortured Poets Department to reach one billion streams on Spotify. On 19 April alone, it was listened to 300 million times. Today, at 34, Taylor Swift has extraordinary cultural power.

We can see this in the real world. A South London pub called The Black Dog has been mobbed by Swifties since they discovered one of her new songs was named after it.¹

Why is she so powerful? Some think it is because she helps people unravel deep philosophical problems that bedevil their lives.

Here are four philosophical lessons from her latest album:

Authentic self. French philosopher Jean-Paul SartreA French philosopher who is perhaps the most famous name associated with existentialism. He was married to Simone de Beauvoir. argued that even in prison people are still free to choose how they respond to their circumstances.² When Swift sings "Fresh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to", she suggests that even in confinement she still makes authentic choices.

Constructed self. However, while we must make our own choices freely, we are also social beings. Michel FoucaultA 20th Century French philosopher, activist and writer who studied the relationship between power and knowledge. argued that we are not born so much as we are made by social, legal and political pressures.³ Swift reflects on a similar theme in But Daddy I Love Him, where she complains that "these people only raise you/ To cage you".

Dialectics. Many philosophers have claimed that we can arrive at truth through argument. Socrates developed the "Socratic method" of teaching through debate, helping people to question their own views until they arrive at truth.⁴ Swift wrote the whole of Down Bad in the form of an argument with ex-boyfriend Matty HealyAn English singer-songwriter and member of the band The 1975..

Crime and punishment. Most philosophers agree that justice is one of our most essential moral ideas. But to get justice often means to punish, something Swift knows all too well: in The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived she lets Healy have it with both barrels.

Does she have a coherent philosophy?

Yes: Swift is a cogent thinker who develops the same themes across her whole body of work. We could see her as an existentialistA form of philosophy exploring the meaning of human existence. with an interest in the nature of the self, and as a moral theorist.

No: Pop legend she might be, but philosophers are specialists with years of study behind them. Writing a vaguely thoughtful melody is simply not the same thing.

Or... Swift is no academic philosopher, but much of her appeal is built on her ability to speak to a kind of pop philosophy. People feel that she expresses how they think and captures their experience of everyday life.