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 more cultural power than perhaps anyone in history.

She can even exert her influence in the real world. One of the songs on the album is named after a South London pub called The Black Dog. Since it came out the pub has been mobbed by Swifties.¹

Why is she so powerful? Some think it is for the same reason that AristotleA student of Plato, tutor to Alexander the Great and the father of political philosophy., Jean-Jacques RousseauAn 18th Century Swiss philosopher whose book Reveries of the Solitary Walker extolled the virtues of being alone in nature., and John RawlsAn American political philosopher who was extremely influential in the development of 20th-Century liberalism. were all so famous in their own time: because she helps people unravel deep philosophical problems that bedevil their lives.

Here are six 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 most people live life in "bad faith" pretending that they are not free to make their own choices. Even in prison, he argued, people are still free to determine 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 Our supposedly "free choices" are actually given to us by forces we cannot even see. 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 GWF HegelAn influential figure in German idealism and 19th Century philosophy. thought all human knowledge proceeds in this way.⁵ 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. Aristotle wrote that justice describes what we morally owe each other. But to get justice often means to punish each other, something Swift knows all too well: in The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived she lets Healy have it with both barrels, describing exactly how he wronged her and insulting his looks and personality.

Hoarding time. In So Long, London, Swift tells Healy "I'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free". In an age when people are more and more anxious about garnering "experiences" while they are still young and free, this strikes a chord.

Importance of memory. Marcel ProustA French novelist who lived from 1871 to 1922.  wrote that the simplest things, like dipping a madeleineA small, sweet butter cake. in a mug of tea, can bring back an intense flood of memory.⁶ For him this showed that memory is not just an impartial record of what has happened, but a process that we use to understand who we are. Swift describes her How Did It End? as a "post-mortemA medical examination of a body after death, to establish why a person died. ", an attempt to make sense of how a relationship shaped her own life.

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.