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A Defense Of Taylor Swift

Sometime in the new millennium it got really cool to shit on everything popular. Sure, it’s very easy to take the “that’s because everything popular is shit” stance. I’m going take a stance in this article that some may consider a #HotTake, but I’m going to fucking stand by this shit and admit that you can like something that’s popular unironically, even if that something is, in fact, Taylor Swift. Dun dun dunnnnnnn.

Let’s take it back a few years, say, 2006. Taylor Swift was new on the scene. She was writing country music songs and just being generally genuine AF. She had that curly hair that’s literally impossible to get. Seriously, no real human has Taylor circa ’06 hair. Anyway, Tay was building a pretty solid fanbase of lovesick teenagers and country music fans, aka middle America types who are just real salt-of-the-Earth people. Remember that Nashville loved Taylor first, long before L.A. and New York caught on.

Teardrops On My Guitar

No one really had that big of a problem with Nashville Taylor. The problems really started after she started crossing over into pop… orrrr it could be when she started dating hot celebrity dudes and feuding with their exes. Yeah, that’s probably more like it.

So let’s examine what made you start hating on Taylor initially: the fact she could date dudes who would never be interested in you. Was that it? Are you secretly jealous of Taylor Swift? That’s so desperate and weird of you. It’s not her fault that Jake Gyllenhaal and Joe Jonas and a motherfucking Kennedy fell for her. That has nothing to do with you, honey. So calm down.

And sure, you could argue that she was putting down other women for stealing her men—*cough* Camilla Belle *cough*—but think about this: Taylor has never confirmed who any of her songs are about. It’s kind of fucked up to vehemently hate someone based on conjecture, right? What if her songs are about random non-famous people? I mean, they’re probably about famous people, but it simply can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Taylor Swift

Ok, you’re probably not buying all this Psychology 101 explanation of “why you really hate Taylor” shit. So let’s get to this before I have a legit Chris Crocker meltdown in her defense.

If you’ve ever cried in your teenage bedroom to “Teardrops on My Guitar”, if you held a weird dorm dance party to “22”, if you’ve ever blasted “Blank Space” on repeat, you need to step off your Taylor hate for a minute and reflect on all the good times she gave you. I’m not saying you need to bust out an “I heart T.S.” shirt, but you can calm your shit on the hate for a minute.

Sure, you could argue “I can hate the person and still like the music”, but can you? Really? That seems like bullshit to me. And if you really hated her, truly, you’d never listen to her again, because every time you do, she’s laughing all the way to the bank. Suck on that for a second.

Taylor Swift

I feel like most of this hate comes from the fact that millennials think hating things is cool. And if you’re ruling that reason out and you hate her for no reason in an Anne Hathaway-type way, I can’t help you.

Yes, I get that it’s hard to get behind an adult who wears Keds, but face it, you’ll give Reputation a chance. You still follow her on Insta to see what she’s up to. You’re sipping a lot of Haterade for someone you’re so obsessed with.

If you hate her because you’re still mad about the Kanye/Kim feud, step back and realizing you’re standing your ground in defense of the Kardashians. That’s also a weird stance to take. Those people do not need you on their side, they don’t even know who you are.

On that note, neither does Taylor and you’re going to keep buying her music, so it probably doesn’t matter to her whether you hate her or not. Which is kind of like, the betchiest thing one could do—she keeps on making money off her haters and not changing anything about herself no matter what. I’m into it.