Swift boating
January 7, 2024 3:30 AM Subscribe

It is highly unusual for a reputable news organization like The Times to publish an article speculating on a person’s sexuality, let alone a figure of immense cultural significance who has previously denied the insinuations. CNN responds to Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do [NYT; ungated]
posted by chavenet (149 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite

I know making your favorite stars gay has been a thing since One Direction at least, and the New York Times has been trash for longer than that.
posted by rikschell at 4:01 AM on January 7 [27 favorites]

I’d love to think we’re moving towards a society where aspects like someone’s left or right-handedness are seen as just as boringly personal as their sexual orientation. In other words, these are private details that, while part of our identity, don’t warrant public speculation or debate. Just as we don’t make a big deal about whether someone uses their left or right hand, so too should we approach personal attributes like sexual orientation. It’s a matter of respecting individual privacy and recognizing that such details, unless willingly shared by the individual, are not ours to scrutinize or discuss.
posted by ben30 at 4:29 AM on January 7 [16 favorites]

I do not understand anything about Swifties. It's not like there aren't plenty of openly queer, very femme pop and country stars, even in Swift's genres and popularity levels: Lady Gaga, Kesha, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Brandi Carlile are all right there. She's not even as aggressive an ally as acts like Dua Lipa, Miranda Lambert, The Chicks, or Kacey Musgraves have been. And yet.

There's this conspiratorial obsession with Swift that I just do not get. I don't know if it's the way her music plays with veiled hostility / danger to men she dates or whether her fans are trying to find a way to imagine her as powerless in some way against an overarching power structure that she has consistently benefited from without seriously challenging or what. There seems to be so much fantasy and imagination around Swift as a person, especially from her fans, and I find it really off putting.
posted by sciatrix at 5:00 AM on January 7 [49 favorites]

I cannot believe I am saying this about one of the organizations primarily responsible for the birth of the 24 hour news cycle and the ruin that has wrought, but... good for CNN. That NYT op-ed is like a time capsule full of horseshit from a worse age. Again, I cannot believe I am saying this, but leave Taylor alone. Dang.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:06 AM on January 7 [61 favorites]

That NYT op-ed is like a time capsule full of horseshit from a worse age.

True statement. And will be true again. And again.
posted by gimonca at 5:23 AM on January 7 [28 favorites]

Great post title btw.
posted by lalochezia at 5:25 AM on January 7 [40 favorites]

Like, even within the country music industry, she is not the person pushing this envelope. She is not the person releasing songs that are explicitly about chastising people who are judgemental of other people's sexuality, criticizing conservative extremism, talking about. She is very consistent about this!

The absolute most I've seen out of Swift is talking about how the actual consequences that stuck to other artists prevent her from doing more. Which, uh, okay, you got threatened with the fate of the Chicks. They actually said the brave thing that got them censured. There's a long way off from Swift's actual public commentary, which is consistently aligned with most common denominator level liberalism for a woman her age.

Even in that range, if you look at the very pop cheerful market of country sung to and for relatively conservative "good girl" audiences, you have Kacey Musgraves releasing song after song scolding people for judging other people's sexualities and lives ("Biscuits") and explicitly framing crushing on other girls as a good thing worth pursuing if it makes you feel good ("Follow Your Arrow").

These rumors aren't coming from people who want Swift's fans to denounce her, is the thing. They're coming from her fans. And I think they're largely being driven by a desire to imagine a reason that Swift is being somehow prevented from using her immense platform to do or say something meaningful for social good. They want to imagine her struggling for greater justice but not, somehow, able to do this. And I think this is the easiest narrative to reach for that allows people to avoid the cognitive distortion of really loving the music and being disappointed by the consistently minimally political choices made by the artist with her platform. It's the same way you can get Republicans being surprise - Pikachu over the idea that Green Day thinks MAGA sucks: they like the music, they don't listen carefully, and they imagine that the artists must be roughly in agreement with themselves. In Swift's case, though, she maximizes her audience size by carefully treading as apolitical a line as she can—which indirectly invites her audience to imagine all kinds of things about her politics. Well, if she's really that liberal, why doesn't she say so? And people get to imagining.
posted by sciatrix at 5:29 AM on January 7 [40 favorites]

Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but nowadays I'm surprised when a person under 40 turns out to be straight.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:36 AM on January 7 [16 favorites]

a reputable news organization like The Times

First I thought they meant The Times, and I laughed. Then I worked out they meant The New York Times and I laughed.
posted by pompomtom at 5:39 AM on January 7 [27 favorites]

Isn’t it also possible that like the One Direction thing, that it’s a fantasy being projected - like shipping real people because “it would be so hot if..,” with more subtle political elements about the idea of a very high profile young same sex power couple that has to stay closeted.
posted by Selena777 at 5:40 AM on January 7 [5 favorites]

Republicans being surprise - Pikachu over the idea that Green Day thinks MAGA sucks

They aren't really surprised. It's just a way to get attention by claiming to be a victim.

But that's related to the gossipification of news that seems to have sprung from social media. Any new thing that's a ripple in the Twitterverse is fair game. It's also partially how we ended up with Trump. He was in the news nonstop because his ability to be outrageous captured the press.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:43 AM on January 7 [10 favorites]

I read the piece the other day and all I could think was “how on earth was this published?!?” Glad I’m not the only one.
posted by elkerette at 5:44 AM on January 7 [15 favorites]

In Swift's case, though, she maximizes her audience size by carefully treading as apolitical a line as she can...

Kinda sorta. She quite publicly got political in 2018, and, of course, got a ton of backlash from conservative media.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:47 AM on January 7 [8 favorites]

She is not the person releasing songs that are explicitly about chastising people who are judgemental of other people's sexuality,

It wasn't a very good song but "You Need to Calm Down" was that.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:57 AM on January 7 [18 favorites]

Not a fan of Swift, not a hater. She's a nepo baby who really did transcend it, whose talent and business sense should be respected, and the songs are pretty catchy even if I'm nowhere near her target demographic. My Snarky Teen daughter feels about the same way: "Eh, she's all right, but I prefer sea shanties and '80s hair metal".

But holy crap, that Times article is real bad.

I kept wanting to shake the author. Shake her UP. "Taylor likes to sell records, lady. She's real good at it. She might, like me, genuinely support the right of queer people to be who they are without being queer herself." And I fully do support that right, though the habit some queer people have of trying to show how everyone is queer is pretty annoying. But usually, those people are just doing it informally and piecemeal, whereas five thousand words of "dropped hatpins"? Dude, she's the fucking Madonna of our generation: she likes to épater les bourgeois just a little bit so she can sell records to their kids.

Call me when she actually dates a woman, at which point I will literally say "Yawn." out loud. Your newspaper is doing its best, along with the rest of the corporate media, to give Golden Toilet every chance in the world to crawl back into power and destroy us all, and you're spending five thousand fucking words trying to persuade us that in 2024 anyone of Swift's level of fame and wealth stays in the closet? Pull the other one.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:00 AM on January 7 [47 favorites]

"the paper of record" has been so consistently shitty for decades, please, can people stop acting like the NYT has any credibility at all

This is gross.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:04 AM on January 7 [18 favorites]

All right, NYT; let’s see you publish a similar editorial about someone who actually wields real power in this country. Perhaps a senator from the south.
posted by TedW at 6:13 AM on January 7 [85 favorites]

What Selena777 said. A lot of this is based on very specific romantic fantasies and if Taylor Swift started dating a woman it would have to be the woman that fans were fantasizing about or they'd get mad.
posted by kingdead at 6:14 AM on January 7 [6 favorites]

Hopefully this means the announcement of her presidential bid is imminent
posted by pullayup at 6:14 AM on January 7 [13 favorites]

I was waiting for this to turn up here so I could comment: that was some weird shit.
posted by mumimor at 6:23 AM on January 7 [9 favorites]

I would consider voting for Candidate Swift. She has no formal political experience of which I am aware, but she has run a large organization, pays workers, would be fine with a campaign schedule, and supports human rights.

Edit: I <3 much of Swift's output but am not a Swiftie, nor have I kept up with her recent & dauntingly large catalogue.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:31 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]

I don't care for this type of thing.

It's such a mistake for marginalized people to put our hopes in celebrity representation. Not that this is new per se, but it has certainly intensified since we've repressive-toleranced our way into having, like, gay dating shows on mainstream TV and widely available yaoi.

The most important, definitive thing about Taylor Swift is that she is almost unimaginably wealthy. If there were the type of revolutionary change that would be needed to truly make society decent for all sexualities, she would be against it. The rich and powerful will always say few socially liberal things until their ox is gored, and then it's cops and guns and anti-assembly laws.

Which isn't to say that Swift is any worse than anyone else or that people can't enjoy her music, but let's not kid ourselves. Fun's fun, but a brand isn't your friend, a fast food restaurant isn't your family.

~~
Also, I really dislike the fandom fascination with closeted celebrity relationships. It's gross. It's like the closetedness is narratively fascinating and intensifies the story and then gets projected onto real people. People like the idea of these poor oppressed celebrities - very hot, of course - who have these tragic intense secret relationships with lots of drama and excitement. Bad enough to idealize that kind of thing in fiction, worse in reality.

Every time someone get super into "such and such celebrity that I find attractive is closeted it is so sad", especially when that someone is straight, I want to say "you know there are REAL gay people all around you, many of them kicked out of their homes or partially closeted to be safe at work, most of them not buffed and shone to cosmetic perfection but all still worthy of love and support, you could do something about that". But of course it wouldn't be a hot people soap opera, would it.
posted by Frowner at 6:42 AM on January 7 [51 favorites]

Firstly, I find it funny that so many folks (here included!) feel to go out of the way to declare that she's not their favorite artist whenever the subject of Taylor Swift comes up. Nobody does that for any other artist!

Secondly, I've long had a theory about why these articles get written about Taylor Swift specifically:

Taylor Swift is very, very famous. She's damn good at what she does.
Taylor Swift avoids the tabloid limelight. There is never juicy gossip about Taylor Swift, because she keeps her personal life hermetically-sealed. And she's damn good at this too.
The press resents her for this.
And, to a lesser extent, so do a sunset of people who regularly consume celebrity gossip.

Much like the press fawns over Donald Trump – his antics sell papers and are great for CNN's ratings – the press absolutely cannot stand a person who is simultaneously famous and boring.
posted by schmod at 6:49 AM on January 7 [22 favorites]

Is there no gossip, though? Between the dissection of her relationship with Kelce and basically being forced to dump the 1975 guy due to fan backlash, she's very much subject of both popular and fandom gossip.
posted by sagc at 6:51 AM on January 7 [9 favorites]

The phrase "Swiftian wordplay" made me laugh.
posted by transient at 6:55 AM on January 7 [10 favorites]

I think she's a lovely person and who she loves is none of my business.
posted by james33 at 7:00 AM on January 7 [15 favorites]

Not to totally derail the thread but even though handedness might see like a boring detail to you, to those of us who are left handed, the visibility of those who share our condition matters.
posted by interogative mood at 7:14 AM on January 7 [22 favorites]

schmod, it's kind of funny. Letting someone know where you're coming from on a topic can be a useful act for everyone involved.

On the one hand, MetaFilter is on balance regularly hostile to, uh, a lot of things that Taylor Swift is or represents. More broadly, I have repeatedly witnessed intense discussions about/adjacent to Swift become weirdly sexist, condescending, infantilizing, contemptuous, or otherwise shitty from the Swift-haters. She brings out reactions in many people, occasionally intense reactions that I would not expect.

On the other hand, I repeatedly bump into assumptions about levels of appreciation for and knowledge of Swift's full catalogue. I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of popular music, so I don't know how atypical she may actually be, but I've occasionally had Swifties trot out long lists of songs or albums I've simply never heard of. That's something I've otherwise usually only experienced with long-time fans talking about iconic artists who did so much in a short period it's still being rehashed, and/or artists with catalogues spanning many decades.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:16 AM on January 7 [6 favorites]

Not to totally derail the thread but even though handedness might see like a boring detail to you, to those of us who are left handed, the visibility of those who share our condition matters.

*Is lefthandedly confused*
posted by Selena777 at 7:25 AM on January 7 [5 favorites]

NYT's feeble attempt to compete with Gannett (media powerhouse, USA Today publisher). Gannett hired a full-time Taylor Swift Reporter, Bryan West, back in November. (The company was also seeking a Beyoncé Knowles-Carter Reporter, and hired Caché McClay.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:47 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]

You joke but my five year old can't seem to land on being right or left handed and it's a bit of a problem for fine motor skill development.

I still agree with the broader point though I'm not sure how to articulate it. There's no moral judgement about a person's left handedness or being ambidextrous. It can be important to a person as interogative mood pointed out. But it's still a detail about your personality. You're left handed and that's rare so that representation is important to you. It's just part of who you are. I expect a lot of left handed people feel the same.

My first name is commonly thought of as a "girl's" name. Things are better now for a variety of reasons but when I was younger it was important to me to know of famous men who shared my first name. I'm not sure that's quite the same thing but you can see what I'm getting at.

I'm sure there are other men with my first name or left handed people for whom it was just never a big deal. But that's just individuals being individual. Sexual orientation should be the same thing. All part of the various details that make up an individual.
posted by VTX at 7:48 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

I'm inclined to say that if Taylor was actually gay, we'd know by now. Once she came out of the not-Republican closet, if she actually was, she might as well have thrown that one in. She has a long list of ex-lovers and that would be a lot of beards if she wasn't into them at all.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:53 AM on January 7 [6 favorites]

It's not like there aren't plenty of openly queer, very femme pop and country stars,

I think this is the whole point of the speculation- can she pass some kind of purity test that gives me permission to be a fan? Phoebe Bridgers gets similar treatment and I imagine Olivia Rodrigo’s fan base queer-ships her too.
posted by simra at 7:54 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

The other thing about the closeted-celebrity-romance trope that bugs me - I think in fandom it's used to process a lot of feelings about the desire for a dramatic, intense relationship, or to process a lot of feelings about "how can I be my authentic self in ways that are unrelated to sexuality". This bothers me because, like, closeted relationships tend to be bad and stressful and painful in ways that I see recycled into fluffy fic and made-up gossip about celebrities - stories that are mostly created to be pleasurable to consume, which means that they are simplified, glammed-up, etc. It's all very well when you're creating a simplified glammed up story about a barrista meeting a prince who is traveling incognito, etc, but it gets annoying when it's about real, actual things.
posted by Frowner at 7:56 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]

Swifties who are obsessed with the idea that she is closeted falls under the same messed up rubric that Britney fans have that she is sending them secret messages about her mental health. I know famous women like that are always going to be a bulls-eye for obsessives, but it definitely falls under the "mind your business" category for me.
posted by Kitteh at 8:06 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]

She has a long list of ex-lovers and that would be a lot of beards if she wasn't into them at all.

I think you meant she has a long list of starbucks lovers :)
posted by Jeff_Larson at 8:29 AM on January 7 [9 favorites]

Though no doubt the desire of folks to disclaim any interest in Swift is to a real degree the product of sexism and ageism (and the weird intersectional vortex of contempt that exists for young women), I think it also occurs in some cases because there is some assumption that of course you care about her. You must adore her as an artist or performatively despise her for appealing to women or sincerely despise her for her environmental abuse. After a while of that I think there is a genuine desire to express disinterest in the face of a system that very much wants you to engage, one way or another. Doing so in a context that is not exactly about Swift herself lets us express that (weirdly aggressive) disinterest without actually feeding into the "any response is a good response" algorithmic machine.

Or at least that was what I came away with while interrogating my impulse to start a reply with "I don't have any interest in Swift."
posted by The Manwich Horror at 8:30 AM on January 7 [8 favorites]

I mean, the very wealthy almost never support plans that involve massive distribution of wealth. It's not Taylor Swift in particular, it's just capitalism. (If she wanted to engage in massive wealth redistribution right now, she could, for one thing - nothing keeps her from living the simplest life possible at her level of fame and giving away most of her earnings.) Like, enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of the few is bad, even if they aren't all Elon Musk; it's just bad in itself. It starves tax-funded initiatives, distorts markets, undermines democracy by placing the many, who have little time and money, against the few who can always hire people to spend virtually infinite time acting in their interests.

In general, major celebrities talk a big game but they protect their money. This isn't really an indictment of Taylor Swift, or a reason not to go to her concerts, it's just a reason not to look to her for politically significant representation or justice initiatives.

There are innumerable fascinating, heroic queer people out there; looking to TS for anything beyond a terrific concert and meticulous styling is a mistake.
posted by Frowner at 8:34 AM on January 7 [20 favorites]

Just to clarify - it's not that I think Taylor Swift is uniquely bad for being a popular performer who makes money; it's that I think Taylor Swift discourse where we look to her to reflect queerness or good politics or whatever is a big mistake. If we have to have heroes (and the older I get, the more I think that's fraught) they need to be people who are free to be heroic, not people whose entire way of being is entirely constrained by major corporations.
posted by Frowner at 8:49 AM on January 7 [13 favorites]

The moral judgements about handedness have faded but the structural discrimination continues. You get to school and they usually won’t have left handed scissors, or if they do they are not labeled, or they’ve been broken by some right handed person who tried to fix them because they wouldn’t cut. Learning motor skills is hard if you don’t have a left handed person to teach you. Hand writing, throwing, batting, catching, etc it’s hard to figure it out when it’s backwards. Desks in classrooms often have a right arm rests bit often there are none for left handed people or they are setup on the side of the room, so the right handed people get better visibility. Doors are hung to be opened more easily for right handed people. Left handed people are excluded from many many health studies, especially mental health because it complicates the data.

The result of building the world for right handed people has resulted in shorter lifespans and greater frequency of accidents among left handed people.

As with other forms of privilege right handed privilege is invisible to right handed people. As with the LGBTQ+ community a lot of members are invisible and the problems can become invisible as well. We suffer the daily frustrations of a world built backwards in silence.
posted by interogative mood at 8:51 AM on January 7 [21 favorites]

Taylor famously gave more than $50 million in bonuses to the staff of her Eras tour. Sure, she could live on a dime and give more, but I don’t think it ‘remains to be seen’ if she’s generous.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:04 AM on January 7 [19 favorites]

Taylor Swift is a billionaire. I'm not saying that it isn't a nice thing to do, giving staff bonuses, but when one is a billionaire (with armies of tax accountants who will - as they should - use those bonuses to improve the tax situation overall) that really is not the same as doing and supporting radical wealth redistribution. If there were, eg, a strong communist movement in this country which seemed likely to genuinely seize the means of production and redistribute wealth, I doubt very much that Taylor Swift (or any wealthy person) would be out there on the barricades with them, scattering their money to the winds.

Again, this isn't about whether Taylor Swift is, as an individual, a nice person. I have no idea at all because she keeps her private life pretty private - she might be darling, she might be difficult. And it's not about "are you a bad person if you went to a Taylor Swift concert", which has about the same moral valence as "are you a bad person if you bought a fast food sandwich last year". It's about a discourse where we look to very, very wealthy celebrities as sources of politics and representation when these are things they can only provide in very limited and corroded forms.

We look to them for representation, there's endless gossip with a political valence, it even distorts the news...it's just incredibly bad for us as a society. Concerts, albums, fan sites, t-shirts, etc - sure, fine, great. Just let's not kid ourselves about how the world works.
posted by Frowner at 9:13 AM on January 7 [12 favorites]

I'm of a fan of her actions to improve the music industry for all artists.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:29 AM on January 7 [11 favorites]

I listen to a lot of TS due to my sister being a huge Swiftie. I don't think speculating on a stranger's sexuality is kind, and news media in particular should absolutely not be doing it. Like Jacen notes, however, there are enough queer codes in her lyrics that it seems like she is deliberately courting it. She has a single about how she wants to stay in a lavender haze!
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:40 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]

A third possibility: She's bisexual.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:01 AM on January 7 [13 favorites]

In Swift's case, though, she maximizes her audience size by carefully treading as apolitical a line as she can

Dolly Parton did this first, or at least before Swift. In a way it is a piece of the ongoing corporatization of morality, of creativity, where human interactions are neutered and reduced to a very special Hallmark holiday special.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:02 AM on January 7 [6 favorites]

All right, NYT; let’s see you publish a similar editorial about someone who actually wields real power in this country. Perhaps a senator from the south.

That's the real tea. Here we are chatting about the sexuality of a pop star and there are federal-level politicians who deserve to be outed, given the immense power they wield in a punitive manner against gays, lesbians, and trans folks.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:10 AM on January 7 [14 favorites]

I know making your favorite stars gay has been a thing since One Direction at least, and the New York Times has been trash for longer than that.
...
"the paper of record" has been so consistently shitty for decades, please, can people stop acting like the NYT has any credibility at all

I think it's a lot more complicated than that. NYT has a well-documented (particularly here on the blue) record of shitty takes in opinion pieces and bad editorial stances. They are also, with WaPo (which, sure, has its own issues), one of two remaining national newspapers that consistently put out an absolutely titanic amount of solid journalism.

I think "NYT does some bad things; burn them down" is not quite the right take, here. I don't claim to know what is the right take. But if NYT were to disappear tomorrow I think we'd be a significant step closer to truly fucked.
posted by gurple at 10:12 AM on January 7 [24 favorites]

So weird. The “is she or isn’t she” crap has been following TS since at least the days when she was close besties with Karlie Kloss ten years ago. It’s old, tired, and irrelevant. WTF would the Times try to breathe new life into that well-beaten horse? I mean, other than “it’s the Times.”

Obliquely trying to preemptively poison her potential influence on some young voters this year? Swift is relatively openly liberal. Maybe reminding more conservative-leaning Swifties that their girl is maybepossibly gay, so they probably shouldn’t listen to her if/when she voices some political opinion?

She is a tall leggy attractive blonde billionaire dating a NFL star. Pretty much a manic conservative/neo-nazi dream girl except she stubbornly refuses to be a neo-nazi. Nazis have also always been titivated by the forbidden and the transgressive and their own repression. So Swift ends up being a perfect torment/obsession for certain people who like to be tormented/obsessed. And this happens in a way that it doesn't with other female cultural icons because they don't quite have the perfect balance of impeccable near conservative signalling (aryan ideal whiteness, dating a football star, incredibly wealthy, safely sexy in an abstract way rather than a raunchy way, blandly basic, mom's love her!) and open liberalism (gay tolerant, not publicly racist, not Republican) to produce never ending dissonance. Maybe she is the conservative Torment Nexus?
posted by srboisvert at 10:12 AM on January 7 [15 favorites]

Some of you need some Swiftamine.
posted by interogative mood at 10:21 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]

Speculating about someone's sexuality is like speculating what color of underwear they prefer. Ick.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:26 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]

I wonder if pretending to be a mortal and dancing among us ever feels new or fresh. Or is it that the meta divine realm sometimes becomes a bit stodgy. And I mean that. I hated the dons of pop-stardom for a long time.

Maybe it was only Envy. But when I began to accept that the gods were real and leap in and out of our world with the same ethos, pathos, and logos that we perceive ... it became analogously clear as to how to be in this place.

I mean this Swift could stand before unknown as I am not sure about Swift's visage or voice or whathaveyou and probably sing 20 songs in a row that I could not name but would recognize instantly and plunge me into one memory after another as I would reexamine how each of these played some part of the decades of my life by some unseen unknown being.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 10:34 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

I have to say that lumping Taylor swift in with techbro billionaires is pretty shitty. She made that money writing songs and singing them for people to whom they are meaningful, who WANT TO PAY HER. That's an incredibly impressive feat. She's not selling things at a loss, sucking up venture capital and creating a monopoly to raise prices or some crazy capitalist garbage. And it's not like she's been that incredibly wealthy for a long time. Let's see what she does with her money.

Ehhh. Swift is a quintessential nepo baby. She grew up rich and her father's wealth and connections played a huge role in her early career. He was a Merrill Lynch stockbroker and, amongst other things, bought a stake in the record label that subsequently published her first albums.

The scale of her success is still a huge accomplishment, but it isn't surprising to me that she has turned out to be just another billionaire.
posted by ZaphodB at 10:59 AM on January 7 [8 favorites]

The only time I can say I even halfway approve of trying to out someone is if they're a right wing homophobe. And even then I'm hesitant to say it's the morally correct action.

If Swift is somewhere on the LGBT spectrum that's her business unless she chooses to share it with the public for whatever reason. The fact that the New York Times, America's "paper of record", chose to burn 5,000 words on someone's speculation/fantasy/whatever about Swift being bi or lesbian is just another indication that the NYT is a piece of garbage and if it ever did have value that value is long gone.

She's a billionaire so it's not like it's actually going to cause her any economic harm, even if somehow that article meant no one every bought another of her songs she's still going to have more money than anyone should ever be permitted to have. But while my sympathy for billionaires is limited, I still acknowledge that they're human beings who have their own lives and are entitled to keep things private, out themselves on their own schedule or not at all, and that intruding on them is creepy and wrong.
posted by sotonohito at 10:59 AM on January 7 [5 favorites]

I just want to give a high five to the title of the FPP post. 5 stars.
posted by mcstayinskool at 11:08 AM on January 7 [8 favorites]

> "Firstly, I find it funny that so many folks (here included!) feel to go out of the way to declare that she's not their favorite artist whenever the subject of Taylor Swift comes up."

It's a bit of a thing on Metafilter for almost any hyper-popular performer, with a few rare exceptions who get a coolness pass for one reason or another. It happened in a recent thread about the Beatles, and I can recall instances of the same in threads about MIA, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.

I think it's better than it used to be, though. The worst I can recall was the obituary thread for Brittany Murphy, when a whole bunch of people came out to essentially say how very dare there even be an obituary thread for someone considered pretty and popular.
posted by kyrademon at 11:26 AM on January 7 [14 favorites]

garbage, pure titillating gossip and authorial wishcasting.
posted by j_curiouser at 12:18 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

I almost wanted to learn more about this Anna Marks -- what kind of professional writer doesn't understand that artists are often beloved not because they create stories solely from their own perspective, but from the perspectives of others they haven't even met? Is she remarkably ignorant? -- and then I remembered: she works for the NYT where it's not about what's real, it's not about what's true, it's about manufacturing and feeding a certain worldview that is certain to generate clickfuls of revenue.
posted by jerome powell buys his sweatbands in bulk only at 12:29 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

Swift is a quintessential nepo baby.

Can we just stop with this crap? It’s tiresome garbage.

Smoothing the road for your kid is what parents fucking do, up and down the socioeconomic ladder. As a parent, if I had had juice in some business or field, and my kids had been interested in it, you better believe I’d have done what I could to get them, at the very least, in the door. They’d still have to make good on the opportunity, as did Swift. Yeah, daddy threw some bucks around, but, if Swift had actually sucked, no amount of cash was going to convince a record company to keep her around.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:37 PM on January 7 [23 favorites]

Yeah, maybe the primary role is played by her ability to consistently execute, album after album and show after show.

The system that requires superstars doesn't surface just anyone to the top solely because the system needs that. Talent gets people only so far.
posted by jerome powell buys his sweatbands in bulk only at 12:51 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

Yes, please, the nepo baby stuff is an angle just as easily exploited by right wing assholes, even moreso. Further, if it is a problem, what kind of solution does anybody serious propose that isn't seriously unjust? How many businesses at all levels are maintained as generational family-owned? Nepo baby business? How many people worked hard to successfully make sure their kids had an advantage? Nepo baby again. And in the field of entertainment, it's nigh impossible to make success for your children. One might be a mediocre plumber in you dad's plumbing business and still manage to earn a living. Engineering one's daughter into a superstar the the likes of Swift takes some serious actual talent at the very least. If this formula were so simple, it would be repeatable on demand. It isn't.
posted by 2N2222 at 1:00 PM on January 7 [5 favorites]

I'm about 10 years older than Swift and I'm still figuring out my sexuality. I have a fairly good idea but it drifts and sways.

I can relate to the intense friendships Swift seems to have with women -- friendships that sometimes resemble romantic relationships. I had those, definitely. And I think some of that is just being young, but I also know my feelings could be confusing for me. Maybe they were for her too. I don't know. I'm not in her head.

She's controlling of her image (and I mean that in a positive way) but I also don't think she's really "hiding" any sort of secret life. Maybe she's bisexual. Maybe she's 100% straight. Maybe she's still figuring it out. But if she wants us to know something about herself, she'll tell us.
posted by edencosmic at 1:03 PM on January 7 [10 favorites]

Not to get too far afield, but the existence of generations of people with economic leverage over others is a pretty big deal.

It's like a significant part of why we try to have communism and all that.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 1:04 PM on January 7 [6 favorites]

Not to get too far afield, but the existence of generations of people with economic leverage over others is a pretty big deal.

It's like a significant part of why we try to have communism and all that.

How well did that go? And did it even come close to solving said problem?
posted by 2N2222 at 1:06 PM on January 7 [4 favorites]

It's a work in progress.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 1:07 PM on January 7 [11 favorites]

> "Firstly, I find it funny that so many folks (here included!) feel to go out of the way to declare that she's not their favorite artist whenever the subject of Taylor Swift comes up."

It's a bit of a thing on Metafilter for almost any hyper-popular performer, with a few rare exceptions who get a coolness pass for one reason or another. It happened in a recent thread about the Beatles, and I can recall instances of the same in threads about MIA, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.

In my case, at least, what I'm saying when I say I'm not a big fan is that there is undoubtedly some major strain of Swift-related knowledge that I'm unaware even exists, so take my opinion with a grain or two of salt. I'm not looking down my nose at her, or at pop stars in general.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:17 PM on January 7 [9 favorites]

I'm sure Ms. Swift is talented, but there doesn't seem to be anything truly exceptional about her talent.

Ha, yes, ok, I get it.
posted by chavenet at 1:28 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

I'm sure Ms. Swift is talented, but there doesn't seem to be anything truly exceptional about her talent.

She's no Carly Rae Jepsen, but who is?
posted by snofoam at 1:39 PM on January 7 [10 favorites]

"And we see you over there on the internet
Comparing all the girls who are killing it
But we figured you out
We all know now we all got crowns
You need to calm down."
posted by swift at 1:43 PM on January 7 [7 favorites]

Not to get too far afield, but the existence of generations of people with economic leverage over others is a pretty big deal.

It is. And it is 100% worth talking about. It’s an interesting part of many people’s stories. And also, no one ever used “nepo baby” as anything other than an insult.
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:44 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

it's true, i did mean it as an insult.

i will say something i didn't earlier, which is that regardless of my thoughts on any one billionaire an opinion piece about their sexuality is still gross.
posted by ZaphodB at 1:51 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

Keeping it real by focusing on the most important thing about this popular and successful woman: her sexuality. Never change, NYT..

(That was sarcasm. Please, please change, NYT)
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:51 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

Friendships that can kind of resemble romantic relationships can happen without them also coming with pantsfeelings. I can certainly find women attractive above the neck but not have it come along with wanting to boink them, and since I have yet to want to go below the neck, I don't consider myself bi. Maybe that's all it is.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:52 PM on January 7 [4 favorites]

"And we see you over there on the internet
Comparing all the girls who are killing it
But we figured you out
We all know now we all got crowns
You need to calm down."

it's totes worth it watching this video; clearly Taylor Swift identifies as french fries, looking for the perfect burger.
posted by chavenet at 2:08 PM on January 7 [7 favorites]

Exactly, chavenet! I feel like instead of 5k words and arguing about this, if we just watched that video we'd all have the answer, just calm down, she's already answered the question! (Plus it's a great song)
posted by Jeff_Larson at 2:25 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

The so-called liberal NYTimes has been a real dick lately. Why the fuck speculate about her sexuality unless and until she chooses to declare it in some manner? sheesh.
posted by theora55 at 3:21 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

'Seemingly gay'?
posted by MtDewd at 3:39 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

Chely responds.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:46 PM on January 7 [2 favorites]

I’d love to think we’re moving towards a society where aspects like someone’s left or right-handedness are seen as just as boringly personal as their sexual orientation.
Obviously written by a right-hander, but agree it would be good if sexual orientation was merely a target of curiosity, mild ridicule and difficulty in opening cans.
posted by dg at 5:32 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

I know making your favorite stars gay has been a thing since One Direction at least..

The ghosts of Brian Epstein and John Lennon might have some thoughts on that. And then there are movie stars going back to the silent film era.
posted by TedW at 7:02 PM on January 7 [2 favorites]

The so-called liberal NYTimes

Of all the things that piece is, it certainly is not targeting a conservative audience or espousing a conservative ideology.
posted by atoxyl at 7:08 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

Lots of song writers write songs from the perspective of someone other than themselves. One of Swift's most popular songs is written from the perspective of someone who is an unattractive nerd.
posted by straight at 8:55 PM on January 7 [4 favorites]

Considering that Richard Gere was notoriously remembered for the full page ad spread to deny gossip when he was getting married to Cindy Crawford, and apparently forgotten today, how does this compare? Celebs being (wistfully) imagined as gay isn't new - and it's no longer a career poison so I'm intrigued that a student of pop culture like Swift took a Streisand effect gamble here. All it does, it seems to me, is just providing official consent to the stupid (eta: and reactionary) fandom politics only writ large because she's a massive cultural presence.
posted by cendawanita at 9:20 PM on January 7 [2 favorites]

as someone who is like, not quite young but not quite old, it's really interesting to see the reaction on this site, which definitely skews older, vs ~social media~ which is full of like, 20 year olds.

It actually kind of saddens me that people don't seem more generally concerned with this outside of mefi, because it is absolutely fascistic mccarthy era "we will parade you as a gay communist if you don't do what we say" type of shit.

And they picked an unsympathetic target, they're absolutely testing the waters for what they can get away with.
posted by emptythought at 11:15 PM on January 7 [5 favorites]

It actually kind of saddens me that people don't seem more generally concerned with this outside of mefi, because it is absolutely fascistic mccarthy era "we will parade you as a gay communist if you don't do what we say" type of shit.

And they picked an unsympathetic target, they're absolutely testing the waters for what they can get away with.

The original article is clearly rooted in the long-running fan subculture (largely consisting, as far as I can tell, of young queer people) dedicated to speculation about Swift’s sexuality. Is the contention here that the NYT is appropriating this, uh, body of theory (and using the queer self-identification of the author as a smokescreen) with an ulterior motive to tar Swift’s reputation? I’m baffled, frankly.
posted by atoxyl at 12:03 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]

>Her fans are idiots who will roast in future heat dome events while she's ensconced in a cool microclimate gated community. The end.

It isn't like they will be spared if the avoid art by bad actors. Swift isn't some heroic figure, and she can and should do better, but she is a tiny facet of the harm done by capitalist commodity production.

Hate her if you want. She certainly deserves a lot of criticism. But don't put down kids for engaging with art that makes them feel good. They have enough to worry about without moralizing about their jams.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 3:14 AM on January 8 [10 favorites]

I’ve seen this with Beyoncé before - how long should the default assumption last that the fanbase of a pop act are still children?
posted by Selena777 at 5:26 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]

Is the contention here that the NYT is appropriating this, uh, body of theory (and using the queer self-identification of the author as a smokescreen) with an ulterior motive to tar Swift’s reputation? I’m baffled, frankly.

Uhhhh why not? They already question the very existence of trans people on the regs. Conservatives are working on rolling back rights for gay people. The NYT repeatedly defended Trump in the past. It all is apiece, to me.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:27 AM on January 8 [6 favorites]

The NYT has sacrificed its soul on the altar of mammon. They are the one newspaper in the country apparently that still makes money. They devote enormous attention to getting clicks, hence their profit. Integrity - gone. It's even worse on the so-called journalism side of the house. They still produce amazing work; they just don't seem to mind a few rotten apples in the barrel. I guess it gets them clicks. Soon a couple of rotten apples will beget a whole barrel full. Maybe they already have. The NYTPitchbot has their number.
posted by caddis at 5:38 AM on January 8 [4 favorites]

>I’ve seen this with Beyoncé before - how long should the default assumption last that the fanbase of a pop act are still children?

I don't think they are literally children. I just meant "kids" in the sense of young folks, as opposed to middle aged sorts like me who are not up to date on pop culture. (I think Beyonce's fanbase is mostly adult and also mostly younger than me, too.)

I didn't mean it to be disrespectful, though now that you mention it, I totally see how it could be. I'll think about how to express that notion in a more respectful manner. In general I feel like the younger generations are doing a lot better than we did at their ages.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 5:44 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Middle-aged folks are into pop culture. In fact, because of what happens to our cultural structures as we grow older, middle-aged people basically only keep up with new popular culture (because it's far more accessible and ubiquitous) and the legacy niche culture from their younger adulthood. Middle-aged folks have a much higher chance of recognizing a Taylor Swift song than the recent Princess Chelsea or Jonathan Bree track unless they're really into Lil' Chief Records artists or a Kiwi.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 7:53 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

One comment deleted. Let's avoid calling people idiots.
posted by loup (staff) at 7:57 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

All I want to know is if she's going to be at the Chiefs game on Sunday.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:12 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

what Frowner said

a thousand times what Frowner said
posted by elkevelvet at 8:47 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Uhhhh why not? They already question the very existence of trans people on the regs. Conservatives are working on rolling back rights for gay people. The NYT repeatedly defended Trump in the past. It all is apiece, to me.

Well, because the people who are most invested in the notion that Swift might be queer are the people who already enjoy her work a lot, like her as a public figure, and would like her more if she were to out herself. If this was a smear campaign or an attempt to tarnish her reputation, you would see a lot more pearl-clutching and a lot less "but what wonderful things might happen if..."

It's important, when critiquing a media piece, to actually consider the points of view the author is writing from. The pro-Gaylor position is not viewing queerness as a derided Other, and for that reason it isn't a smear campaign. Now, if the rumors got traction and conservative speakers were by and large trying to attack Swift's music or audience and saying "listen less because of her big homo energy" or something, you could make that argument... but that's not the direction the speculation is coming from, and it is real weird to speculate that this is what's going on when looking closely at the actual article and POV of the people promoting the narrative actively refutes that.

(I am also listening thoughtfully to folks talking about the subject of Swift's more recent work but less familiar with it, so I can't comment directly, but y'all: I'm 33. I grew up with Swift's music. Her fans are hardly teenyboppers or teenagers, because the woman has been a popular artist since the mid-00s and that was almost twenty fucking years ago. If you are dismissing her fanbase as exclusively young teenagers, you are not paying attention--even I can tell you that much. Linear time has in fact continued to function here.)

For what it is worth, the notion of bisexuality/pansexuality and the emphasis on #Gaylor has not escaped me either, and I do think it's very much worth considering how closets work for various types of queer folks. Certainly that list of openly queer pop stars I tossed out the other day includes many women who are often described as "allies" despite having been open about being bi or pan and therefore community members. The construction of the closet is often discussed in terms of gayness as something that one has to actively work to keep closed, but for bi and pan people (particularly women) the closet is more accurately viewed as something that one has to work to force open: we do a very, very bad job culturally of remembering that sexual orientations other than 100% straight and 100% gay exist, especially when people are successfully in long term relationships.

If Swift is bi or pan, it is worth noting that claiming this status in public can be... fraught, and I can certainly see a scenario in which she might choose not to deal with that whole fucking mess. Wrangling public and media understanding of bisexuality or pansexuality is an endless fucking Sisyphean nightmare, because no matter how often you clarify the actual contents of your closet, you will be treated as Schroedinger's Gay (or Straight) as if there is some secret binary that whatever your most recent long term relationship has revealed underneath your mealy protestations that No Actually It's Bi Thanks.

However, the solution to that kind of shit is to simply pay attention to what people want to share about their sexualities and respect it, which this piece absolutely is not and has not done.
posted by sciatrix at 8:47 AM on January 8 [21 favorites]

https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/taylor-swift-political-evolution-timeline-8528527/

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201183160/taylor-swift-instagram-voter-registration

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/taylor-swift-transcends-americas-political-divides-barely-rcna125908

Did a search on her politics, Fox News claimed last month that both Democrats and Republicans identify with her, and The Guardian wrongly declared her career over when she first got political years ago. With current numbers like these she could run for president this year and win easily. Plenty of critics would hate her for not being the used-car-salesman politician they think/know they can control, which is also one reason why the NYT would do a hit piece, before she knows her true power in a high stakes election cycle with tarnished candidates.
posted by Brian B. at 8:58 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

She hasn't graduated from anyone's college. She may be on someone's radar as a politically useful celebrity supporter and donor, but as a potential candidate for office?
posted by Selena777 at 9:14 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

It's important, when critiquing a media piece, to actually consider the points of view the author is writing from. The pro-Gaylor position is not viewing queerness as a derided Other, and for that reason it isn't a smear campaign.

That seems probably true about where the author is coming from, but the speculation is more about the NYT's motive for publishing this thing. I'm sure there are NYT writers who aren't transphobic, but the paper's editorial stance seems pretty hostile to trans people.
posted by straight at 9:19 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

My younger daughter (12) and her friends decided they were ‘Swifties’ a few months back (which is really cute), so now I’ve listened to more of her music than I ever otherwise would’ve. And it’s really pretty good (IMO, YMMV). And I like that she gives a lot of money away to food kitchens and the like. She seems like a genuinely good person.

But that’s not why I am commenting. I am commenting because I’ve come to hate the NYT so unbelievably much that the younger 25 year subscriber me would be shocked. I’d love to see them disappear. Occasional decent story notwithstanding.
I just don’t understand why they so desperately want Trump 2.0: The Vengencing to come about - do they just not understand that they’re very high on the hit list (obviously after immigrants, brown and black folks, gay, and esp transitioning human beings)?

I’ve toyed with the idea of making a post based upon the, oh say 50, worst aspects of the NYT - but that would only get me thru the last 3 days (and also cause a massive cardiac event) so I’ll still stick to annoyingly repetitively spluttering out that I hate the NYT with the intensity of a 1000 suns.

Sorry for sort of derail.
posted by WatTylerJr at 9:23 AM on January 8 [4 favorites]

She hasn't graduated from anyone's college. She may be on someone's radar as a politically useful celebrity supporter and donor, but as a potential candidate for office?

Both Trump and Biden have an average IQ, which is how they relate. Swift is smarter, but more importantly has the lack of political experience or party recognition for a third party candidate, which is a bonus. In most years a third party candidate is meaningless, but not this one, where a celebrity could win by simple contrast as a woman and the youngest in a doomsday-framed world.
posted by Brian B. at 9:29 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Do you know what her IQ is, Brian B?
posted by Selena777 at 9:43 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

That seems probably true about where the author is coming from, but the speculation is more about the NYT's motive for publishing this thing. I'm sure there are NYT writers who aren't transphobic, but the paper's editorial stance seems pretty hostile to trans people.

Like any large organization, NYT will be comprised of multiple competing factions, priorities, and opinions that are likely to be in conflict at any given time. It's never a good idea to get caught up in a conspiratorial framework of considering big organizations to have unified and clear motives that are always working in unison: for one thing, it means you spread a lot more fear and anxiety because you think your opponents are better organized than they really are, and it also means you tend to miss opportunities to target weak spots between factions when you press back on causes you think about.

I see absolutely no reason to suppose that this is part of any kind of organized NYT editorial attempt at secret indirect character assassination. There's just too many steps to coordinate and too many people who would have to be silently working together without a leak. That's not how humans work.
posted by sciatrix at 9:43 AM on January 8 [11 favorites]

Thanks, sciatrix, for that point about not imagining our enemies as more organized and competent than they are.

Maybe a better version of what I was trying to say is that I imagine there are editors at the NYT who would publish this because they'd like to see Swift taken down a peg. (And that there seem to be editors at NYT who have either bought in to the moral panic about trans kids or decided it's profitable to give that moral panic a platform.)

In any case, the writer's motives aren't the only relevant ones when talking about why this got published.
posted by straight at 9:50 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

wish we'd stop using "IQ" as a measurement of "intelligence". especially because in terms of different jobs/work/etc, the various skills and intelligences all contribute differently.

in any case, how do we know trump, biden, and swift's IQs anyway?

also wish we'd stop using college as a barometer of whether someone is smart.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:54 AM on January 8 [8 favorites]

Like any large organization, NYT will be comprised of multiple competing factions, priorities, and opinions that are likely to be in conflict at any given time. It's never a good idea to get caught up in a conspiratorial framework of considering big organizations to have unified and clear motives that are always working in unison: for one thing, it means you spread a lot more fear and anxiety because you think your opponents are better organized than they really are, and it also means you tend to miss opportunities to target weak spots between factions when you press back on causes you think about.

while true, the nytimes has a long and storied history of anti-trans and anti-queer articles and op-eds, so even while it's unlikely there's a conspiracy behind the swift op-ed, i think there's plenty of justification to consider the paper as institutionally bigoted and worth less than a cat's shitbox liner.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:58 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

Uhhhh why not? They already question the very existence of trans people on the regs.

The internal tension at the paper between the old guard and younger, more liberal journalists has been widely reported on. The piece in question here is speaking the language of the latter cohort - it couldn’t be further from the language of the former - and more specifically of a contingent of Swifties who very much want Ms. Swift to be a queer icon, more than she has been willing to be. If you insist on reading something underhanded into the publication of the piece, perhaps the author was intentionally given enough rope to make “her side” look a bit nuts. Perhaps. But I’m pretty secure in my assumption that people who are calling it a “hit piece” didn’t read it or didn’t understand the context.
posted by atoxyl at 9:58 AM on January 8 [4 favorites]

i think there's plenty of justification to consider the paper as institutionally bigoted and worth less than a cat's shitbox liner.

Did I make a statement about the overall value of the organization when I characterized it as a large institution with many conflicting and chaotic factions? Because I could have sworn that I was specifically and directly commenting on the specifically conspiratorial unified characterization of the paper's "motivation" in this instance.

In the interests of increased transparent communication: it is a bad idea to be in the habit of attributing to unified, organized malice with hidden, unified motives what can be explained by factionalization and internal disagreement.

The overall character of the paper, as well as its ability to institutionalize and control its more dangerously regressive factions, is beside the point I'm making. Do you have some kind of argument with that point?
posted by sciatrix at 10:07 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Do you know what her IQ is, Brian B?

Above average. Noting that Trump's and Biden's are falling for different reasons.
posted by Brian B. at 10:08 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Do you know what her IQ is, Brian B?

Above average.

this is not an iq test result/score

this is like linking to the new international version of the bible when asked about where the garden of eden is
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:13 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

Yes, of course the institution is an active threat in other dimensions of its publishing! Those regressive and anti-trans factions have the bit between their teeth and quite a bit of social power there!

That doesn't mean that it's not a huge error to collapse our collective thinking about the motivations of any particular piece into a mindset that assumes that assumes universal conspiratorial intent. In doing so we let our fear control us, and that means we make tactical errors and are more prone to attacking people who aren't necessarily enemies. Now, when there is so much reason to be afraid and fearful, is exactly when it is most important to not let that fear creep into our hearts and wrest control of our hands. We have to be clear about who enemies are, what they look like, and how they think.

This piece is rude as hell, frankly gross in its assumptions about what is and is not acceptable grounds for public commentary, and more or less an error in judgement. But it is not the face of the greatest enemy at hand. Come on now.
posted by sciatrix at 10:14 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

I think Taylor Swift is fascinating because she lives her life in the public eye, with everyone constantly knowing who she dates, how her music sales/business endeavors are going, who her friends are, but--outside of what leaks into her songs--she does not ever seem to stop and explain herself.

I seldom if ever recall ever seeing a "Taylor Swift opens up about __________" or "T Swift sets the record straight on _________________" headline. I've seen Gaga and Miley in longform interviews and TV one-on-ones explaining precisely how they see themselves, what they meant by this or that, how this part of their life was for them to experience, but Taylor Swift does not seem to do that.

It probably helps her as a sort of cypher her fans can project themselves onto, but it also seems to drive certain aspects of the media fucking bonkers, because she's really not going to stop and explain a fucking thing to them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:25 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

this is not an iq test result/score.

No, but it is relative classification. As you well noted, it isn't necessary for skills, but practical enough for comparing leadership potential before casting a vote. We should want the smarter one because a competent president must make tradeoffs between their political survival and their historical legacy. The smarter sees the latter, and are more secure in their role, so they can function as individual decision makers.
posted by Brian B. at 10:49 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

I seldom if ever recall ever seeing a "Taylor Swift opens up about __________" or "T Swift sets the record straight on _________________" headline

Taylor Swift on Sexism, Scrutiny, and Standing Up for Herself (August 2019, Vogue, archived link)

-- on the 2016 West/Kardashian "Famous" fallout:

“A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,” [Swift] says. “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly.” She adds: “When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, Kill yourself.”

An overhaul was in order. “I realized I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control,” Swift says. “I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.”

-- On not announcing her preference in the 2016 presidential election: “Unfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement. He was going around saying, I’m a man of the people. I’m for you. I care about you. I just knew I wasn’t going to help. Also, you know, the summer before that election, all people were saying was She’s calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar. These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability? Look, snakes of a feather flock together. Look, the two lying women. The two nasty women. Literally millions of people were telling me to disappear. So I disappeared. In many senses.”
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:03 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]

Privately speculating about a public figure’s sexuality when her art can be interpreted through a queer lens is one thing. I love literary analysis of pop culture so I’ll read people doing deep dives on the subject. I think taking a poet or songwriter’s work and taking much of it as literally autobiographical is a stretch, even when it’s a songwriter known for putting autobiographical details into her songs.

But a huge international newspaper publishing an op-ed like this is both gross and really weird. I don’t think the readership of this paper really needs or wants queer media analysis that veers into that kind of speculation, especially on a person who has been working hard to keep her life private because she hasn’t had a normal life since she was 15. And part of that abnormal life included creepy guys running countdowns to her being 18, and other sorts of upsetting and invasive attention.

And even if she is queer and even if her coming out would be a seismic event in pop culture and meaningful to queer fans and general American culture, it should be fine for her to have a life that’s not scrutinized like she’s a zoo animal. Why would anyone want to come out under these circumstances? Fame is already traumatic, I can’t imagine trying to navigate queer identity coming from the early 2000s country music scene and then being a whole new level of famous in a world where cameras are ubiquitous. And despite having a lot of power and money — enough to insulate her from a lot of things — not wanting the kinds of attention and work that coming out would entail seems reasonable.

I’m queer. I think it would be nifty if Taylor Swift fell somewhere under the rainbow umbrella (I think being a-spec is one real possibility that doesn’t get discussed much). But I also believe privacy is a human right, and sexuality is one bit of information that a person should have the choice to keep private.
posted by fontgoddess at 11:20 AM on January 8 [6 favorites]

This is a conversation that's hard to win. As a queer person, I think it's impolite and presumptive to speculate about anyone's sexuality. Everyone should be comfortable to express themselves as they wish, and come out if and when they feel comfortable. Everyone has a right to privacy.

Unfortunately it feels like sometimes, the argument being made isn't "everyone deserves privacy and we should not assume anyone's sexuality" but rather one of heteronormativity, that everyone should be understood as straight unless proven otherwise. When I read a comment stating that it's "gross" to speculate that someone may be gay, it feels like there's an implication that being queer is a shameful secret. I agree with the end result (let's not speculate) but the underlying connotations bother me.

Back when I was a baby gay teenager, I was interested in the gaylor gossip for a while. I don't think it's particularly unique or hard to understand. Many big fandoms have this undercurrent of shipping/speculation/projection of desire. Having it published in the NYT is the bizarre part.
posted by Emily's Fist at 11:41 AM on January 8 [4 favorites]

No, but it is relative classification. As you well noted, it isn't necessary for skills, but practical enough for comparing leadership potential before casting a vote. We should want the smarter one because a competent president must make tradeoffs between their political survival and their historical legacy. The smarter sees the latter, and are more secure in their role, so they can function as individual decision makers.

my friend, you posted a link to a bunch of tswift's quotes. the wiki article you linked is about what iq classification is, and it specifically speaks to using the scores for said relative classification. it also points out that iq scores generally stay similar throughout all stages of life, whereas you earlier stated that biden and trump's iqs are in decline.

if you'd just used the word "intelligence" rather than iq, we'd be having a different discussion, as we'd be talking about what constitutes intelligence and mental capacity/flexibility, but you keep referencing iq, which is a specific thing that we do not have insight into for any of the three people mentioned and does not necessarily measure what you want it to measure.

i want to make clear that i do agree that swift is "intelligent," for as many definitions as one wants to use; it's just we don't have anybody's IQ score for the purposes of this discussion, which makes using IQ as a relative classification system inordinately difficult to do because we're just going off our own assumptions here, and high iq also doesn't necessarily correspond to being a great political leader.
posted by i used to be someone else at 12:02 PM on January 8 [5 favorites]

Smoothing the road for your kid is what parents fucking do, up and down the socioeconomic ladder. As a parent, if I had had juice in some business or field, and my kids had been interested in it, you better believe I’d have done what I could to get them, at the very least, in the door. They’d still have to make good on the opportunity, as did Swift. Yeah, daddy threw some bucks around, but, if Swift had actually sucked, no amount of cash was going to convince a record company to keep her around.

I grew up moderately poor with high school graduate parents and I am just going to NOPE on the idea of not calling out privilege.

You can be a Nepo Baby and still be a good and accomplished person but you should never be allowed to forget the advantages you had that got you part of the way there. Being born on third base doesn't mean you didn't have to run from third base to home but it also doesn't mean you hit a home run.

People seem really touchy about Taylor Swift like when I pointed out that her rejecting Crypto advertising opportunities because they were probably unregistered securities was likely because of her father being a securities trader.

It's weird (though not as weird as wish-reporting her as gay or bi).
posted by srboisvert at 12:44 PM on January 8 [7 favorites]

I think if someone was positing Taylor Swift as a All By Myself with No Help from No One™, it might be appropriate to bring up her rather privileged set of conditions. But if we're just talking about her regular presence as an entertainer and public persona? What's the point if not a swipe at, "Yeah, she made it, but people with more talent didn't because she's a Nepo Baby." Why bring it up at all in this conversation?

I think nepo baby discourse like so much "privilege" discourse, gets wrapped around making individual value judgements about specific people rather than larger analysis of how systems work. If the idea is just to take someone down a peg or two, I just find it very selective the people that have those facts about them mentioned all the time and the people that don't.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 1:03 PM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Exactly - I've never hear anyone say it about Bill Gates, for example. He was born wealthy.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:06 PM on January 8 [3 favorites]

I'm sure Ms. Swift is talented, but there doesn't seem to be anything truly exceptional about her talent. She is a superstar because we have a system that requires superstars, and she had enough talent and enough connections to fill the role. If it weren't her, it would be someone else. That isn't a criticism of her, it is just the reality of the situation. Talent plays a real but secondary role in pop music success.

I think this is a conclusion one could draw only by not understanding how difficult it is to write a pop song that appeals to people, sticks in their minds, makes them feel things, is relatable, etc. And to do it over and over again over 15+ years is truly extraordinary. It may not be your jam, but "she's a superstar because people want superstars" is reductive and wrong.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:08 PM on January 8 [7 favorites]

Is Swift a nepobaby though? I mean, as far as I can tell, her father is a 'vice president' a Merrill Lynch, which is a common banking title, it doesn't mean he's literally one step below the company president or CEO. Her family wasn't poor, but about 1 in 5 US households is a millionaire household, so I'm not sure having a few million at retirement age counts as 'nepo', especially when his daughter got taken in her original record contract to the extent she re-recorded all her songs, and the majority of Taylor Swift's family wealth comes from Taylor, not her parents.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:15 PM on January 8 [3 favorites]

It seems like he's a wealth advisor, ie: someone who sells Merrill Lynch products out of a branch office, perhaps in a strip mall. He probably used to have sales quotas and work partly on commission.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:20 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Ok, he started "The Swift Group" in 1981, and manged $450m in assets. The 500th largest firm manages $8billion in assets, the #1 $6trillion.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:28 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]

>I think this is a conclusion one could draw only by not understanding how difficult it is to write a pop song that appeals to people, sticks in their minds, makes them feel things, is relatable, etc. And to do it over and over again over 15+ years is truly extraordinary. It may not be your jam, but "she's a superstar because people want superstars" is reductive and wrong.

Maybe. I might be underestimating her.

But her music sounds like pretty run of the mill pop music to me. It isn't my style, so I can't really do any deep analysis, but it seems competent enough. And a certain amount of real talent one her part is required. But there are better musicians who are far less successful. It seems more likely to me that she is a good enough performer being put in front of a lot of people, very aggressively than that she somehow was going to rise to the top regardless of wealth, connections, and good fortune.

I think the notion that there is really nobody else who could fill the same role in her absence is hard to believe. And without the corporate construct of aggressive marketing and distribution she is ensconced in, her role simply doesn't exist.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 1:35 PM on January 8 [3 favorites]

Maybe. I might be underestimating her.

I appreciate that. Let me explain where I'm coming from. I'm a middle-aged white guy with two music degrees who made a go of trying to be a rock star in the 90s and who has written maybe two dozen pop or rock songs. In addition, I have a teenage daughter, and thus have listened to an awful lot of Taylor Swift in the last couple years.

You are right that there are more talented musicians who are less successful. What that misses is that she is the best in the world right now at what she does - writing simple, accessible music. There's a surprising amount of nuance in her lyrics - take a line like "you kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath." The repetition of "kept" makes it stick, but the meaning shifts each time to show different views of the same relationship.

Sure, it's not Mozart, or King Crimson, or Hendrix, or whatever, but it is high craftsmanship -- because it's so simple, the craftsmanship is sort of invisible.

And as for being a "good enough performer," I'll point to this passage from a Time Magazine article:

She explained that as a part of her training to physically prepare for the show she ran on the treadmill every day while singing the concert's entire 3-hour setlist. She set the speed “fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs,” Swift told Time.

Holy hell.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:49 PM on January 8 [14 favorites]

It seems more likely to me that she is a good enough performer being put in front of a lot of people ... without the corporate construct of aggressive marketing and distribution she is ensconced in, her role simply doesn't exist.

I feel like this isn't giving enough credit to her role in her own success, the commentary about how she is "put in front of people" (by whom?) and "ensconced in marketing" (whose marketing?) and that otherwise "her role" wouldn't exist (implying that she's playing a part in someone else's production?)

It's absolutely true that marketing and business acumen play a huge role in her fame -- but it's her marketing and her business acumen. I agree that there are other, more talented artists and songwriters languishing in obscurity. But she deserves credit for her work ethic and uncanny skill at crafting the public persona and relationship with her fanbase; her current tour really showcases this. This isn't a scenario where a marketing executive was looking for the world's next pop star and stuck a random pretty face in front of a mic to sing someone else's music.
posted by Emily's Fist at 1:51 PM on January 8 [6 favorites]

You both make good points.

Didn't mean to submit that yet. :)

As someone who is not involved in the music industry I probably don't appreciate her business acumen enough, and as someone who doesn't go to concerts, I tend to forget the physically demanding aspects of these shows.

That gives me some needed perspective on her career. Thank you both for that.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 1:53 PM on January 8 [4 favorites]

someone gets to be Taylor Swift

no matter if that person has a high IQ, no matter their sexuality, no matter if they're objectively talented, a shitty person or someone who is truly awful, no matter if they were born privileged or earned every ounce of what they get

someone gets to be Taylor Swift in this timeline. and some of us get to be people who discuss that on the internet.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:55 PM on January 8 [2 favorites]

I don't think anyone is arguing Swift is the world's greatest musician or songwriter, or that talent is the only reason she's become so popular and successful. Rather that she's more talented than a lot of the people who've tried to do what she does and that one of the main reasons she's popular is that lots of people genuinely like her music, not because they're sheeple who've been tricked into liking her by the music industry.
posted by straight at 1:56 PM on January 8 [4 favorites]

She explained that as a part of her training to physically prepare for the show she ran on the treadmill every day while singing the concert's entire 3-hour setlist. She set the speed “fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs,” Swift told Time.

Just as a sidelight - if you're ever in a position where you can do it without driving people up the wall, singing while you exercise can be really fun. I am no Taylor Swift, but there was a year or so of my life where I could sing while bicycling and it was great.
posted by Frowner at 2:06 PM on January 8 [5 favorites]

someone gets to be Taylor Swift

Really? Because it's not the 80s anymore. The radio ain't what it was. There are more than 3 networks. It's hard to make a living at all selling recorded music (thanks Spotify.)

It seems like the era of mega famous stars known to everyone might well be ending. Kinda like how movie stars aren't what they used to be either, and the only ones everyone knows are the ones who got famous in the olden days...

But then there's Taylor Swift. I don't think she seems inevitable at all. In a fragmented music landscape, a fragmented culture, it's kind of amazing she exists.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:22 PM on January 8 [4 favorites]

It seems like the era of mega famous stars known to everyone might well be ending.

The same theory of networks that gave us the idea of “the long tail” does predict a few mega-popular things in the head. That’s what a power law distribution looks like. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing of interest to be gleaned from asking how things end up there, though.

What accounts for the difference between a moderately successful pop star and one of the biggest of all time (as Taylor Swift has become)? I could buy a significant role for chance and network effects. I don’t think it’s somebody at the record company pulling the right levers. I think the phenomena that elevate a musician to that level of stardom are far too big (and poorly understood) to be controlled like that.
posted by atoxyl at 2:30 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Really?

dude, Taylor Swift exists ergo someone gets to be Taylor Swift

this is not a statement on culture and the improbability of it all, it just is

someone else gets to be that dickhead who cuts in front of people in traffic. we all have our coping strategies, mine happens to be: someone gets to be (---)
posted by elkevelvet at 3:07 PM on January 8 [2 favorites]

The level of success and continuing success in the music industry that Taylor Swift has achieved seems pretty impossible without a tremendous amount of talent. She’s one of the top hit makers of the last 20 years. There are a lot of rich kids who make a record and never even get on the music charts; much less become the solo artist with the record for weeks on top of the billboard top 100.
posted by interogative mood at 4:24 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]

When someone is as sensational as Taylor Swift, normal concepts of sexuality start to break down. She must be on more exception lists than any other living person, and could have her choice of any type of person for any role. There's just no way to communicate that to the general readership of a newspaper.

In a hypothetical world where millions of people could relate, it might be worth speculating about, but as it is, we must say "it's private" for our own benefit as much as hers.
posted by Phssthpok at 5:52 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]

All of Swift’s full-length studio albums and re-recorded projects, from 2008’s Fearless, her second studio album, through 2023’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version), have debuted at No. 1. (Billboard, Nov. 2023) (Swift is in the process of re-releasing her first six albums as 'Taylor's Versions' due to the dispute over her master rights.) Swift is one of few people to reach billionaire status via their own music, record sales, and concert tickets and merchandise sales; because of that rights dispute, Bloomberg's calculations used publicly-disclosed or traceable figures for her music from 2019 onward.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:16 PM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Stopped reading this thread, even though the tpoic is very interesting to me because it is 90% about Taylor and 10% about the fucking New York Times. This was a political hit piece from word one. They attacked her because Nazis are attacking non Nazis everywhere.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:07 PM on January 8 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter: I read neither the thread nor the article but I sure do have an opinion that had nothing to do with either!
posted by atoxyl at 8:22 PM on January 8 [6 favorites]

Are you prepared for the possibility that this will result in an unambiguous statement from Swift that she is straight and/or legal action against the Times?
posted by Selena777 at 9:21 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]

I have been so confused about the NYT piece, because I really thought we'd all agreed that Swift's liner notes statement from a couple months ago had already shut this whole thing down? And the Gaylors were really mad at her when that happened because she had officially ruined their dreams? Did everyone just memory-hole this already, or am I completely wrong about how that went down? It's one thing (not a great thing imo, but whatever) to speculate about a celebrity's sexuality when they haven't actually said anything about it, but at this point hasn't she been pretty clear that she's straight and folks are just absolutely refusing to accept that answer?
posted by naoko at 10:09 AM on January 9 [4 favorites]

I went through a period, as a deeply queer woman, where I just...didn't have friends. All the "emotional affair" dramatics made me keenly aware that connecting deeply with someone who isn't your partner is A Problem, but I was also aware that gender was no barrier to my sexual or romantic preferences. The consistent remarks and jokes about my queerness didn't help.

I successfully managed that for about ten years. It was a lonely ten years and difficult and I did everything I could to stop the noise. I was as femme as I could manage (waist length hair, dresses) and carefully managed any connection I had with another human being.

But I never once felt supported when someone made a comment about me flirting with a woman, or my queerness, in the context that I was OBVIOUSLY gay. That just made me feel more wrong about whatever I'd done.

(The "omg bi woman, your husband must be so lucky, sex with women isn't real" elements, even from other queer woman, added a twist to it)

One of the catalysts for it falling apart as a coping mechanism was a friend popularising and applying Kruger's piece about the violent rituals of men in order to touch each other. It was one of those 'oh, it's not just me' moments. An entire gender is constrained by this harsh boundary between affection and sexual-romantic intent.

And we are trying really really hard to make it all of us in the West. From this kind of fever dream fan 'analysis' to the endless "omg gay history photos" that are just...moments of affection and cultural norms for behaviour, we desperately seem to want a bunch of hard lines between acceptable affection and queer relations.

Swift can use whatever set of colours she damn well wants! Bisexual lighting is not fucking real. Almost any small item can be re-read as a moment of queer history (omg broccoli!!!). She is in the music industry and we read into attractive women in sexy clothes as a gay signifier? She has kept herself close out of fear for tabloid destruction of any male female relationship and now we, as needy queers, are gonna do the same to female ones? Because we are desperate for 'representation'? She is too supportive to really be straight? She uses subtext so any we read is actively put there for us to find then use as a cudgel?
posted by geek anachronism at 4:06 PM on January 9 [7 favorites]

I wear a lot of rainbows. I suppose this makes me the biggest gay that ever gay gay gay'd, and it's probably something people think about me but it's not commented on to my face, and usually it's only girls who are interested in me for five minutes at the bar (albeit I'm not usually wearing all that much rainbow at that particular bar) while singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Except when I have made out with girls, my reaction was, "eh, okay."* I'm pretty sure that not feeling strongly about or excited about making out with girls means I am not bi. I wish I was bi because god knows dating women seems like I'd run into less jerks, but I can't drag my libido into the bi lane just because my brain would rather hang out with women most of the time and I'm tired of shitty dudes. I have tried.

* Though I've never been blown away by kissing anyone of any gender, maybe I just don't get kissing. I only know I'm tokenly hetero because other aspects of men were exciting back in the past.

Whatever Taylor is, it's probably not 100% Girls And Only Girls Only. It might be something more ambiguous, might be more like me, who's to say other than her. But it's not up to the rest of us to decide that for her. Hell, I know some people that I'd probably bet money are gay, but they don't want to be out about it or don't want to be out yet, and it's not my business to insist on that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:26 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]

I look, now, super gay. I have the haircut, the butch clothes, the walk, the stance, all of this gender non-conforming aesthetics and behaviour...to the point people are surprised to hear I have a boyfriend. A very masculine cis man at that! And even though we are poly and his wife is even gayer than me, I'm not dating her! My closeness with women isn't a signifier or my queerness - it's that I am romantically and sexually interested in a few of them the same way I am with men (and other genders). But diverging from those expectations has genuinely upset people in my experience.

How dare I look this gay and not be non-binary, not be a lesbian.

Just like there are women with close female friendships who are not the new Vita and Virginia, there are butch women who aren't gay or even bi.
posted by geek anachronism at 6:12 PM on January 9 [6 favorites]

“There are many heterosexual explanations for this,” Lux Alptraum, The B+ Squad, 10 January 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 11:40 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]

“What If We Were All Getting Along for the Last Time?”, New York Magazine Dinner Party Newsletter, 24 January 2024

Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift, and what sports can do for us (to help us ignore politics, race, and money for a while).

As the football season rushes toward a conclusion, Will Leitch looks back at the surprisingly successful merger of football and Taylor Swift. I called up the novelist and sports observer down in Georgia to hear more. He wants to warn you to take all of his predictions with a grain of salt: “I have written multiple pieces for this magazine about the impending death of football, so keep in mind I’m probably wrong about everything.”

posted by ob1quixote at 2:47 PM on January 24

Well, we dodged one Chelyabinsksian bullet already:

Asteroid the size of eight Taylor Swifts to pass Earth Tuesday - NASA
posted by y2karl at 12:07 AM on February 5 [2 favorites]

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