The Political Power of Taylor Swift

Welcome back tonight in Meet the Midterms.

Are you ready for it?

Taylor Swift decided to speak now, breaking her silence on politics.

To Taylor Swift, she is the latest celebrity to jump into the nation's heated political debate.

Taylor Swift broke her silence on politics over the weekend, publicly backing two Democrats in Tennessee.

Well, Marcia Blackburn is doing a very good job in Tennessee.

I'm sure Taylor Swift has nothing or doesn't know anything about her.

And

let's say that I like Taylor's music about 25% less now.

Taylor Swift seems to have an effect on nearly everything and now she's making an impact on young voters.

The spirit was incredible.

And when that came out, it went to the number one song.

It was beating everybody.

It beat Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift was named Times 2023 Person of the Year.

And for those of us normal people on Earth 1, a megastar with a billion dollars in ticket sales for a single tour could be given this title for the impact she has had.

But on Earth 2, right-wing commentator Jack Pasovich said, quote, the Taylor Swift girl boss, Psyop, has been fully activated to her upcoming 2024 voter operation for Democrats on abortion rights.

The Pentagon Psychological Operations Unit floated, turning Taylor Swift into an asset.

There are those who miss.

the ongoing, quite obvious impact of culture on democracy and politics.

Great artists and great politicians do the same thing.

They engage with the culture.

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Today, we are going to be touching on the untouchable.

We're just going to do it.

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Today, it's Taylor Swift Day.

It's Taylor Swift Day.

I am joined today by

Angela Watercutter.

Angela Watercutter.

You have an amazing last name.

Thank you so much.

I did nothing to earn it, but I am happy to have it.

Would you say you're a tech journalist?

Yes.

I mean, I write for Wired.

I'm a senior editor there.

My beat is culture, but because it's Wired, that sort of infiltrates into a lot of different tech spaces as well.

And also, so much of tech has infiltrated culture, right?

You know, we have TikTok, we have social media, we have all sorts of things that move into that space.

And so, yes, what I do as both a culture writer and a tech writer are very much merged.

We're going to get into all of those areas today because Taylor Swift has become so big.

Yes.

There is nothing she doesn't touch.

So just a few days ago on Fox News primetime, Jesse Waters publicly aired a segment in which he proliferated a conspiracy theory that like Taylor Swift is an agent of the Pentagon or something.

Like,

I want to start here.

Taylor Swift's the biggest star in the world.

Sorry, Gutfeld.

She's been blanketed across the sports media entertainment atmosphere.

The New York Times just speculated she's a lesbian.

And last year's tour broke Ticketmaster.

I mean, I like her music.

She's all right.

But I mean, have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?

Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon Psychological Operations Unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.

What kind of asset?

A PSYOP for combating online misinformation.

You know, the Jesse Waters thing feels like an even farther extrapolation of something that came out a couple months ago when, so, you know, Taylor Swift was named Times Person of the Year.

It was a big hoopla.

Everybody was talking about it.

And one of the things that came out of that was that certain conspiracy theorists and other folks on the internet and the right-leaning space started saying that Taylor Swift was basically a PSYOP for the upcoming election, that like she had been sort of given a pedestal in order to swing votes in one way or the other, which are people thinking that like somebody infiltrated time and made them pickers person of the year?

You know, like, how did it get from that to like, she's going to swing the next election?

So the idea being spread on the most watched cable news channel in the United States is that Taylor Swift is like a de facto agent of the state?

I don't even know.

It's a little wild, right?

Like it's very, and the thing with the waters segment was like, yeah, then, okay, now it's about the Pentagon, which like otherwise it was just more of a like election season kind of a thing.

So like, it's clearly gone in a lot of different directions.

I wanted to start there because I think the fact that

whether we like it or not, these genuinely important political commentators are talking about Taylor Swift in this way is indicative of her role

in politics today, which is certainly not something she signed signed up for.

Right.

And we're going to get into what that means.

But, like, as you, the listener, know, Taylor Swift is one of the most famous and influential people on earth, I would say, at this point.

She was Times 2023 person of the year.

She had a historic run on the ERAs tour.

Is it still going on?

Yeah, I think it's now going to other places, but.

Okay.

Well, the Ares tour made her a billionaire, which is also something we're going to get into because I have complicated feelings about Taylor Swift.

I think part of the reason that Eras Tour is ongoing is because it was so economically stimulating in local economies across the globe that governments started begging Taylor Swift to come perform at their cities so that their municipalities would get an economic boost.

And they were offering her like honorary gifts for doing so, which is just like, that's an unimaginable amount of power to have.

Right.

Yeah.

To know that you could almost essentially bring jobs to a city, you know, like that restaurants get a boost, hotels get a boost, like just because you showed up.

Taylor Swift is an industry.

Yeah.

She is the most streamed woman on Spotify.

She has over a hundred monthly, a hundred, a hundred monthly listeners.

Good for her.

She has over a hundred million monthly listeners on Spotify.

But, you know, the thing with Taylor Swift is people will list her achievements.

And I think in this moment, we have to understand her power and influence as so much greater than the sum of her achievements.

Like, she has such an undeniably tight grip on culture, not just pop culture, that everybody is forced to pay attention, regardless of whether or not they listen to her music.

What's interesting, I think, to me about Taylor Schwift, well, a couple things, a lot of things, but a couple that matter to this conversation right now is that she's an artist who, you know, now in her 30s, was still like one of those first artists to also get the internet.

You know, she was on Tumblr.

She like interacted with her fans there very early on.

And that sort of mindset and that sort of awareness of her persona has carried through throughout, even though she never needs to post on any social media ever again, even though she does.

But you know, because of that and because that has gained her this influence, she's become one of those celebrities that everybody politically wants a piece of because if she says boo about you at all in one way or another, that does have huge impacts.

Yeah, and we're going to get into the timeline of Taylor Swift's public involvement in politics, which is pretty brief.

She does a kind of trail of breadcrumbs, mostly liberal breadcrumbs.

But something that you reported on was this kind of left-wing, right-wing tug of war over Taylor Swift's endorsement.

She's become

so powerful and influential, like you said, that she can endorse someone or criticize someone in politics, and it has legitimate sway over elections.

People are going to question, like, why I'm making an episode about the politics and the political power of Taylor Swift.

And fair enough, that's a fair question.

But, you know, the answer is that Taylor Swift is like, at least in the United States, she's like a part of the political totem pole.

Whether you or I want her to be, I don't know, it reminds me a lot of like the way that like 10 years ago, sometimes people would talk about the Kardashians.

And Taylor Swift is more influential than any of the Kardashians have ever been.

Yeah.

But I remember when the Kardashians were ascending to cultural ubiquity.

And I used to get in arguments with my mom.

She'd be like, I don't want to talk about them.

And I'm like, mom,

you know, personally, I've never standed the Kardashians.

But at some point to ignore their profound effect on culture and the way that we live and the way that we consume, it becomes ignorant to an extent.

And just because, and I think there is a real gloss of misogyny in all of this, that like we view any women, but particularly women who put a lot of effort into like,

in the case of the Kardashians, like their look, we view as.

It's a public presentation, right?

Yeah, we view it as like inherently frivolous.

But at some point, their impact on culture and politics, those things are worth having.

conversations about.

Do you think, not to throw a question back at you, but like, do you think we'd have influencers in the the way that we have them today had we not had the Kardashians?

Right.

You know, like, it's really hard to say.

I mean, for a lot of those early years, it was like the trends were often set, or

I wouldn't say they were set by Kylie Jenner because oftentimes the trends that she like, quote unquote, set were actually set by black women,

but popularized largely for sure.

And like, I don't know, you think about like the selfie and it's Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian people who there is total cultural disdain for, but like, how can we look look the other way?

And so, in the case of Taylor Swift and in the case of politics, I just want to give a little bit of a background on Taylor Swift's political influence.

So, in September of 2023, Taylor Swift, which is, you know, just a few months ago, Taylor Swift posted a single Instagram story frame, and she wasn't even in it.

She, at that point, she had 272 million Instagram followers, and it was just a plug for vote.org.

It was nonpartisan.

You know, it was like a blue background with white cursive text that just said, like, sign up to vote.

And that led to, on National Voter Registration Day, it led to 35,252 new registrations, which was the most since 2020 and a 23% jump from the prior year.

Vote.com, the organization that she linked, reported a 1,200% jump in participation in the hour after the post.

MSNBC recently did an interesting segment where they were like, Look, we know that we have an important role in the political discourse, but Taylor Swift reaches 10 times the amount of people every day that all of the cable news networks combined do.

And they were like, basically making the case of like, we need Taylor.

Yeah.

You know, we, we need Taylor.

After she started dating Travis Kelsey, sales of his jerseys increased by 400%.

As everyone knows, the Swifties single-handedly brought down Ticketmaster.

Right, brought Ticketmaster to heal, right?

Just, yeah.

What happened there?

I don't know.

This is like several Swifty news cycles.

Right.

Yeah.

And I mean, like, I can't keep up.

Yeah.

You know, so tickets for the Aeros Tour went on sale and nobody could get them.

Like, it was just a melee.

But the problem was, is that Taylor Swift had gone to them, or at least this is what she had said in, you know, a statement after everything happened.

She was like, I asked Ticketmaster, like, no, you don't understand.

When I put these tickets on sale, it's going to be an influx.

Can you handle it?

And she had been reassured that they could and then they couldn't.

It kind of led to this whole thing where Swifty's made enough of an uproar that Ticketmaster went in front of the Senate.

Is that right?

Like, they were just like, there was a Senate judiciary hearing that lasted three hours about the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster controversy, which was like politicians.

moving to like break up what they consider is a monopoly at Ticketmaster.

And I just remember watching parts of the hearing and the representatives were like quoting Taylor Swift lyrics on Capitol Hill.

And I just remember being like, there we are.

Like, I don't know.

I don't know if I need my politicians to be like memes.

You can't have too much consolidation, something that unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well.

A lot of people seem to think that's somehow a solution.

I think it's a nightmare dressed like a daydream.

A few million Taylor Swift fans would respond, this is why we can't have nice things.

But once again, she's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers.

Ticketmaster auto look in the mirror and say

I'm the problem.

It's me.

USA Today recently published an article that was titled Taylor Swift has power to swing the presidential election.

What if nothing else matters?

That's wild.

It is wild and it's true, at least to an extent.

And it's like, again, whether or not we want to acknowledge this, like the ties between politics and celebrity, at least in this country, are quite tight at this point.

Yeah.

The margins are so thin, yeah.

Yeah.

And like whether or not we want to live in that world is secondary to the fact that we do.

If you imagine if Taylor Swift was just like, I'm not releasing another album unless X million people register to vote, or you know, like unless X happens or X person gets elected or whatever.

I don't think you could deny that like that would have some impact.

It may not necessarily have the impact that she calls for, but it's still a lot more influence than, like you say, an MSNBC segment maybe would reach.

The California Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, recently said that her influence on the 2024 presidential election would be, quote, profoundly powerful.

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Now back to the show.

So I want to get into the timeline of Taylor Swift's public political involvement.

And spoiler, like it's not that long of a timeline, but the reverberations, everything she does are so large.

Before 2018, Taylor Swift was basically apolitical.

Yeah.

And as you wrote on Wired, she was embraced at that point by the far right.

I didn't realize she was like embraced by like neo-Nazis.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like, I think in the last 10, if not 20 years, the sort of ways that political organizations or, you know, people of certain political beliefs operate in very similar ways to fandoms, right?

You know, like you have like online discourse about this thing.

You like have your people that you know from your Facebook group or whatever.

And there was a sort of segment, I think Weiss did a great piece about it at the time, looking at the fact that some people in these corners were, you know, sort of embracing Taylor Swift or at least like expressing a sort of fandom, like, you know, she's one of ours.

Cause at the time she hadn't said anything.

And so it could be like, well, you know, she probably agrees with us.

How much of that was related to the fact that she was coming from country music?

I mean, I think probably a large part of it, right?

Like.

Because the far-right loves country.

Well, and there's like a presumption that the artists in that, you know, kind of share an ideology, you know, of at least, if not far right, at least more conservative.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I should say the right, the right in general loves country.

And it's funny because like the gay left also loves country, just in a different way that ends up marrying in the middle.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, people talked extensively about her silence.

And I think it's, it's interesting because when you have that much power, not saying something to a lot of people is saying something.

Yeah.

It lets people put their own thing into the vacuum, right?

I mean, I have complicated feelings with celebrities weighing in on politics because I think when you have hundreds of millions of followers online, you have to be extraordinarily careful about what you say.

And I think we've seen a lot of times that people haven't.

And I think that hasty involvement in some political movement that you're projecting to hundreds of millions of followers can lead to the partial or total spread of really bad misinformation.

Right.

You know, sometimes bigotry.

I mean, I think about like the microphone that Kanye West had over the last couple of years, which is crazy.

But, you know, on the other hand, total silence in the case of Taylor Swift before she ended up speaking in 2018 can be an endorsement of the worst types of beliefs.

Right.

Like if you don't come out immediately and say, oh no, that's not me.

These people saying that like I agree with them, it allows it to have more air in the room than you might imagine.

Yeah.

And I mean, notably, she didn't.

She didn't say anything in the 2016 election, which Trump won, which was a choice.

Which was, which was something, because I do believe at the time there were calls for her to come out for Hillary or, you know, something, you know, and she didn't say anything.

And that was, that was a choice.

The Guardian in 2017, after Trump was elected, they published an op-ed that was like penned as from the staff of The Guardian.

It was like The Guardian's position on Taylor Swift.

Right, the editorial board of.

It was literally The Guardian's editorial position on Taylor Swift, where they called her an envoy for Trump's values because she hadn't spoken.

Still, through his election, she hadn't spoken on anything.

In 2018, that changed.

Yeah.

Yeah, when she came out against Marsha Blackburn for

Tennessee Senate, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

So, who is Marcia Blackburn?

I say senator from Tennessee because she did end up winning despite what Taylor had said.

But

yeah, I think she made a post on Instagram that was like kind of saying, I normally don't weigh into these things, but Marsha Blackburn, she felt, was anti-choice, you know, anti-LGBTQ plus protections.

And she was like,

this is my fans.

This is, you know, something I can't stand for.

So she, yeah, she came out against her in that election.

This was the first time she got involved in politics.

This was her foray into it.

And it was a scanned Polaroid photo.

The Polaroid era.

It was, I guess this was the Polaroid era.

Taylor Swift always does everything in her Taylor Swift way, which I understand.

Look, I heavily aestheticize my own political commentary online.

I'm not knocking her there.

Everyone needs to have a brand.

Everyone needs to have a brand, but it's a black and white photo of her in

a similar outfit to the one you're wearing.

Yeah, I'm in my folklore era.

We're a swifty adjacent.

I just want to interlude here quickly.

Angela and I discussed before we started recording, we both have a Swifty adjacent history.

Right, yeah.

I think that through friends and through just appreciating good songwriting,

I have come to really

like her as a songwriter.

And to love something is to analyze it right to love something is to analyze it and also like i don't know part of my impetus for also talking about this today was i don't know if you listen to the daily the new york times podcast i i feel like everyone listens to the daily uh a couple weeks ago the daily as one of their year-end episodes in like the last week of december they made an episode called the year of taylor swift and i listened to it and i was very excited because i was like oh we're gonna talk about the cultural the cultural implications of the power of taylor swift like that was what i thought it was gonna be And it was great.

And I'm not knocking anyone in the involvement of that episode, but it was ultimately an episode on a political podcast, on one of the biggest political podcasts in the country, praising her songwriting skills.

I love Taylor Swift's songs.

I mean, she's been on my Spotify rapped every year for God knows how long.

Like I can't knock it.

But I was left, after listening to that, I was left with like a little bit of a like, oh.

We're not also going to discuss the billionaire status, the effects on politics and economics, all of this other stuff that I think is like inextricable and really important when we're talking about someone this powerful.

So, okay.

This entire episode is just gonna end up being like caveats.

No, we're getting back.

We're getting back on track.

So she posts in 2018 to Instagram.

I'm gonna read part of the caption that I have here.

It was a long caption, but here's what she wrote.

In the past, I've been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, which she's referring to, I assume, the election of Donald Trump, I feel very differently about that now.

I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is wrong.

I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening, and prevalent.

I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for all Americans, no matter their skin color, gender, or who they love.

Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn.

As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn.

Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me.

She voted against equal pay for women.

She voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape.

She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples.

She also believes that they should not have the right to marry.

These are not my Tennessee values.

And so this was like pretty forceful.

Yeah, yeah.

Considering like, like you were saying, the periods of silence before it.

I think it was just surprising all around that she said anything, considering she hadn't up until that point.

I remember Donald Trump condemned her.

Yeah.

What do you have to say to Taylor Swift now that she's in politics?

Taylor Swift jumping into politics.

What do you have to say to her?

And what did she say?

She said she wants people to vote the Democrats.

And not Marcia Blackburn, especially.

You know, well, Marcia Blackburn is doing a very good job in Tennessee.

She's a tremendous woman.

I'm sure Taylor Swift has nothing or doesn't know anything about her.

And

let's say that I like Taylor's music about 25% less now, okay?

I like her music 25% less.

Yeah, it was a very specific number.

I don't know how we reached it, but that was what he said.

Two years later, she releases the Miss Americana documentary on Netflix, which was a documentary about her and her career up until that point.

And there was a scene in Miss Americana where you see she's arguing with her dad over whether or not to make that Instagram post.

So I want to play it and then we'll talk about it.

We've not gotten involved with politics or religion.

Yeah, but this is on the home front.

And also, back in the presidential election, I was in such a horrendous place that I wasn't going to pop my head out of the sand for anything.

I mean, does Bob Hope do it?

Well, why?

Did Crosby do it?

Does Nick Jackard do it?

You know what I'm saying?

Bob Hope

Crosby.

these aren't your dad's celebrities, and these aren't your dad's Republicans.

Hey, Mike, imagine if we came to you and said, hey, we've got this idea that we could halve the number of people that come to you next to it.

And the other thing, just from a security,

Taylor Swift comes out against Trump.

I don't care if they write that.

I'm sad that I didn't two years ago, but I can't change that.

I'm saying right now that this is something that I know is right, and you guys, I need to be on the right side of history.

And if he doesn't win, then

at least I tried.

So

here's the problem.

I just want to read you what I wrote, and I'm going to try to start.

I just really want you to know that this is important to me, and this is something that

I've got.

I've got a big issue.

Have you explained to you?

Yes, I've read the entire thing.

And the bottom line right now, I'm terrified.

I'm the guy that went out and bought armored cars.

I worry for her safety as much as anybody does.

Maybe more.

It really is a big deal to me.

She votes against

fair pay for women.

She votes against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which is just basically protecting us from domestic abuse and

stalking.

She votes, she thinks that if you're a gay couple or even if you look like a gay couple, you should be allowed to be kicked out of a restaurant.

It's really basic human rights and it's right and wrong at this point.

And I can't see another commercial

and see her disguising these policies behind the words Tennessee Christian values.

Those aren't Tennessee Christian values.

I live in Tennessee.

I am Christian.

That's not what we stand for.

I need to do this.

I need you to just,

I need you to forgive me for doing it because I'm doing it.

That clip has gone viral many times over and people have had a lot to say about it.

People on the left, people on the right.

I think it's very interesting because like, and we've seen this with a lot of celebrity, either biopics or documentaries where like, you know, they're always done with the support of the artist and they camp.

So like in some ways, you know that it is them putting out what they want the world to see of themselves and their persona.

And so like, you know, I do watch that clip with a little bit of skepticism, but not cynicism.

I think.

I don't know that it was like stage per se.

I don't think it was stage per se, but like it was a choice that she wanted it to be part of the documentary, that she didn't say, turn off the cameras.

I need to have a private conversation with my family about this right now.

And I think that she wanted to show the struggle, which I think is real, like I think is authentic, like the struggle that she had around putting out that message and what it could mean for her career.

And so I've always kind of just thought it was a, I was going to say it was tailored, and then I realized how funny that sounded.

But, you know, like it was, you know, like it was part of the entire packaging of herself that was happening around the time that Miss Americana was released.

But at the same time, I don't think that it is in any way disingenuous or, you know, like it's not authentic.

Like, I think that it was something that she wanted out there and kind of wanted on the record.

Well, and it calls into question because, like, she hasn't spoken up about politics many times since then.

In a lot of ways, this was kind of a flash in the pan as far as her participating in political discourse.

And so it, to me, it just begs the question, I don't know what you think about this, but it's like, how much does she or doesn't she want politics to be like part of her image?

I think she has gotten to a point, and I think that this probably just comes with maturity and age and reaching a point where it's like you're a little more set.

Like if Taylor Swift stopped working tomorrow, she'd be fine.

You know, like she kind of should say.

Yeah.

You know, like, and not even just financially, but like she's done enough of a body of work, I would think, that like her legacy is secure, as they say, or something.

And so I think that like with that maturity kind of has come a realization to your point earlier that that like she's going to be in the conversation even if she doesn't want to be.

And so

she does have to have said something on a few of the things that matter to her.

But I do think that something like that clip that you just played for Miss Americana or some of the other sort of, like what you were saying earlier, like bread comes, like, I made cookies for Biden, you know, like those kind of things.

She puts out there so that she can.

put them out there and then like stop getting questions about that.

You know, like she can be like, I spoke about this.

It It doesn't mean that every interviewer asks her about certain things.

Like, where do you stand on queer marriage?

You know, like, because she's said it.

But there's always going to be a new issue.

So there's probably always going to be something to ask her.

But I feel like she laid, she was laying some groundwork so that she doesn't.

have to find a new way to deflect the same question over and over and over again.

In 2020, she did the Biden cookies.

Yeah.

She posted a picture on Instagram where she's holding, she's like kind of smirking and wearing overalls and she's holding a plate of

cookies that have the Biden-Harris 2020 logo on them.

And that was her way of endorsing Biden and Harris, which, like, you know, that's nice.

And endorsements and endorsements.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And that's the thing, is like, right, it's just sort of like she didn't then go out and do a stump speech or, you know, like she didn't like show up and play guitar at a rally or something.

And that's basically like it.

I mean, she's had like a couple tweets.

She, she tweeted, I think when Roe versus Wade was overturned,

she tweeted some like sassy things at Trump at one point, like where, oh, oh, it was actually after the death of George Floyd.

She went to Twitter and she was like, how dare you instigate violence and racism?

And, you know, we're going to vote you out, which, you know, she was right.

So she's like, but that's basically it.

So she has been, I mean, she's been pretty elusive.

And look, I already see the comments where people are saying like, she's a pop star.

She's not a politician.

She's, you know, know an entertainment celebrity like she doesn't have to do all these things and like on one hand i agree i'm aware that this is not what she signed up for but at what point with like this

specific amalgamation of like power and money and fame and influence does the celebrity and the political figure converge when you are in that position like we were talking about where Even your silence is a stance, how much does it seem like you need to say something anyway?

If she came out now and and said X, Y, or Z about the 2024 election, it probably wouldn't be that different from what she said before.

So it's not like she's sticking her neck out any further.

You know, so it's sort of a, I feel like maybe she's just waiting.

I'm look, I live and breathe the internet and specifically the political internet.

And people are like constantly firing away about how Taylor Swift should be doing and saying more.

Right.

And is there a merit in that critique?

Is there merit to critiquing somebody for not speaking up more?

I mean, but not okay.

I'm, I just want to say, like, not just somebody, though.

Right, just

if you are at that level, yeah.

People, people will like fight amongst themselves in like friend groups about like what Instagram story did you or did you not post about the latest thing that happened?

Right.

This is a little different.

Yes.

I think it's worthy of critique, but also I don't know that it's necessary that everybody has to say, like everybody of her stature has to say something.

I think that she also probably will.

That's if she made people leave her alone.

That, or just because depending on which way 2024 goes, you know, it might be the same sort of thing as the midterms in 2018 where, you know, there is just such a pull to do so that she will feel so inclined.

I don't know.

Do you think there's merit or is there, is it

more complicated?

I think there is merit.

I think, and I'm going to probably get heat for that, but, you know, it is what it is.

You get heat for everything anyway.

I watch people stick their necks out quite a bit more who have so much more to lose

and who are so much more marginalized.

I mean, Taylor Swift is a billionaire.

This is only the fourth time today that I've mentioned that, but like, I don't think we should like baby billionaires.

Right.

And I've seen people frame Taylor Swift's.

often political silence in the context of the Dixie Chicks, now known as just the chicks.

And so the chicks were, I mean, you probably know this, but the chicks were, they are an amazing female country group that in the early 2000s, at a show they did in London, they spoke out against then President Bush's plan to take America to war in Iraq.

They were like one of the first like musical acts to be like truly canceled because they spoke out against war.

There were people destroying their records in the streets.

They were, you know, it wasn't.

streaming services then it was radio and people conservative activists and like kind of like patriot American activists were calling the radio stations to have their music pulled from the airways and they went from like one of the biggest country acts in the country and in the world their career took an enormous hit yeah from it like enormous enormous enormous hit Taylor Swift having come from the country genre

and that story about the chicks

is part of the story of that genre.

People have framed her silence in the context of that of like, well, she could lose everything.

Right.

And I don't think she could.

Taylor Swift is bigger than the chicks have ever been even at their height yeah taylor swift is a billionaire which none of the chicks have ever even approached come close to yeah come close to yeah there's this whole like well she could lose everything and i i don't think there's a world in which taylor swift is at risk of no no no not being extraordinarily wealthy and to that point i wonder do you think that rather than saying something it would be better if she gave like a hundred million dollars to whatever you know campaign or issue or whatever she felt it's a good question but i think there aren't a lot of billionaires, but there are relatively, there are quite a few billionaires.

And the thing that Taylor Swift has, which a lot of those mostly like white businessmen that nobody knows the names of, the thing that she has is influent.

The reason why I mentioned at the beginning about how she boosted voter registrations by like a thousand percent in the hour that she posted that Instagram story or something is because the amount of people that she's registering to vote, which by the way, statistically, when young people vote, they vote Democrat.

And those are the people who she's getting to sign up.

And when you look at the amount of votes that elections are actually won by,

she has the potential to have legitimate sway over these things.

Right.

Again, whether we want her to or not is secondary to the fact that she does.

Right.

Back to that point you were making about the USA Today story.

I think it was USA Today where it was just like, she could sway this election.

Does anything else matter?

If she says, no more music or no more tour until I get however many people to vote or however many people to sign up or whatever, that would probably have undeniable impact.

People are going to say that I'm a a hater or whatever, and I'm just not.

Like, I don't know how to say it.

I'm just not.

But I don't think someone can ascend to this level of wealth and power without receiving.

an appropriate analysis and sometimes scrutiny where it's warranted.

Yeah.

I think being a billionaire warrants scrutiny, which I wanted to ask you how you feel about that because, I mean, like I said about like the daily podcast, which is a political podcast, and it didn't mention the fact that she's a billionaire.

I don't know if there's like a little communist voice inside of me where it's like, like, right, like it's always just telling you, like, yeah, yeah.

Like, can we talk about this person without talking about her wealth?

Right.

And like, jet travel.

Because even when we think about some of the biggest artists,

Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Beyonce, I think Beyonce might approach being a billionaire.

But for the large part, like a lot of these very, very famous people, they don't have nearly the amount of wealth that Taylor Swift has, especially after the Eras tour.

And it's like, I don't know.

It's like the elephant in the room, guys.

Yeah, because under capitalism, how much money you have is how much sort of sway and, you know, say you have and things.

So yeah, it's hard to like, we can't divorce them in the same way that we can't divorce the idea of fandom and the general space that people take up in our, in public life from their money, from, you know, their output.

In this case, it's musical output and tours and performances and stuff.

But they're inextricably linked, whether Taylor Swift wants them to be or not.

I think over time she's started to confront that.

To your point, yes, like having scrutiny over that is just part of having the conversation about celebrity and how we treat it.

I think if Taylor Swift had her way, she wouldn't come within 10 miles of any of these conversations.

I think unfortunately for her, and perhaps unfortunately for everyone,

that that can't be the case.

You can't reach a certain level in public life without knowing that your very existence is.

It's an olden, but a goodin' at this point, you know, that the personal is political.

Like she can't be be in the public eye without her very existence being some kind of political act.

You know, like, it's the fortunate part, I think, of being a female artist.

Her existence is going to be politicized whether she wants to or not.

So, she might as well do something with it.

And look, I mean, I don't think celebrities are like going to save it.

Like, I think whether like democracy in the United States sinks or swims, which we're going to find out.

Like, I don't think Taylor Swift is necessarily at the helm of that.

I don't know.

I know people are gonna be like, well, what about, you know, X, Y, or Z who could be doing something?

I'm aware a lot of people are participating in the direction of this country.

And I don't think Taylor Swift is like the end-all, be-all.

But, you know, again, I just, I think when someone amasses this level of wealth and power and fame, I'm becoming a broken record.

But I think that to the point where they become where a global industry forms around the brand that is their person, we should be cognizant of their outsized role in, you know, the cultural and political political vacuum, no matter how much they would like to not be part of that conversation.

And, um,

and and we'll see.

I don't think that we will go throughout 2024 without something.

Without an endorsement.

Right.

I don't even know if it'll be an endorsement so much as just a like, I think there'll be more like, get out the vote or, you know, something that's like, even if it's as mealy mouthed as we've never had a more important election in our lives, et cetera, et cetera, which doesn't really like.

Which we say every four years.

Right.

Yeah.

Every four years is the most important election of our lives.

I feel like that will happen, but I think it'll depend on how kind of comes down in those last months before November.

I wish I had the Taylor Swift Crystal Ball, but I don't.

We all wish we had the Taylor Swift Crystal Ball.

And until then, it's going to be

a bunch of left-wing and right-wing political commentators vying for Taylor Swift.

Yeah.

Which is what it's always been, what it will continue to be until she makes her stance known.

Angela, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

For joining me in my, I would say, tepid swifty dumb.

I'm a tepid swifty.

I'm a swifty in music and

I'm a cynical swifty in politics.

I feel like I'm going to have this conversation a lot.

And so

I'm glad to have had it with you first.

Where can people find you, support your work?

Look for my writing on wired.com.

You can find me on, I still want to say Twitter, but it's X now.

No,

we don't, I have a rule against saying X on this podcast.

We don't say X.

You can find me on social media at Water Slicer, which is my ever-fun name.

Just slightly tweaked it from a nickname that I had many years ago.

Uh-huh.

I wish I had a fun last name.

I mean, I do have Bernstein, which I've, you know, my entire life, people have been like, oh, the Bears, the Bears, the Bears?

No, it's spelled differently, but you have Water Cutter.

I think that's kind of badass.

I've come to embrace it.

It was when I was a kid, it was like, how do you cut water?

But, you know,

as I, you know, I always used to say, well, you know, I was there when they parted the Red Sea.

I don't know, like, none of.

it's somebody respelling a german name and it just came out like that so like there's no like real great precedent for it yeah moses cut water yeah i want to thank you so much for joining us today on a bit fruity

i i'm i'm curious what all of your thoughts are on the political fervor of taylor swift so if you're watching on youtube leave a comment and um again if you want more so actually if you want more taylor swift discourse by the time this goes up on patreon i will have done a kind of deep dive thorough analysis of another piece the new york times did recently um which was a large speculation about taylor swift's sexuality which was wild and so yeah over on patreon we we have a discussion of the ethics of publishing that piece the the evidence within the piece of whether or not Taylor Swift is queer, which I just don't think really deserved 5,000 words in the New York Times personally.

Yeah, we put it in the context of conversations about queer baiting and

her overall cultural influence and what is and what isn't our business.

So that's on Patreon now.

And until next time, stay fruity.