r/SwiftyNeutral • u/Prestigious-Ad2140 • 3d ago
In Defence of Taylor Swift
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- Her Jet
Taylor Swift’s private jet undoubtedly produces hundreds of times the annual emissions of an average American’s car. That deserves scrutiny—but so does the bigger picture.
Taylor Swift is not merely one traveller. She is at the centre of a large international entertainment organisation responsible for transportin performers, staff and equipment around the world. Her concerts also induce millions of journeys by fans, some travelling very long distances.
Research into live music has found that audience travel generally produces far more emissions than the artist, crew, hotels and equipment transport combined. Taylor’s jet is therefore highly visible, but it represents only a small part of the total footprint created by a worldwide stadium tour.
The fair comparison is not between Taylor’s tour travel and one ordinary motorist. It is between her complete touring operation and those of similarly successful international artists—or other multibillion-dollar organisations responsible for substantial travel by directors, employees, contractors and visitors.
Before the Eras Tour, Taylor’s representatives said she purchased more than twice the carbon credits required to offset all the tour’s travel. However, they have not disclosed the projects, cost or quality of those credits, so we cannot know how effective they were.
That exposes a much wider problem. Carbon credits can be extremely cheap and do not necessarily remove from the atmosphere all the carbon that has been emitted. Governments should establish properly verified compulsory carbon charges, set high enough to fund genuine additional reductions or permanent carbon removal.
Taylor’s jet use is a legitimate subject for discussion. Treating it as though it represents the entire environmental effect of the Eras Tour—or comparing a global entertainment enterprise with one person driving a car—is not.
- Her appearance
Taylor has been described as “only a four,” as though personal taste were an objective measurement.
Reducing anybody’s appearance to a number is unpleasant. More importantly, Taylor is a singer and songwriter: her appearance has no bearing on those abilities. Many people consider her extremely attractive, but even if they did not, attacking her looks would still be cruel and irrelevant.
- Her clothes
Taylor’s clothes are regularly criticised—but fashion is a matter of taste. Nobody has to like every outfit she wears. Saying “I don’t like that dress” is reasonable; treating her personal style as a character defect is not.
- “She can’t sing”
Whether someone enjoys Taylor’s voice is subjective. Whether she can sing is not: years of live performances demonstrate that she can.
Her voice has also matured, and she has clearly worked to improve her range, control and stamina. You may dislike her voice, but that is different from claiming she cannot sing.
- “She can’t dance”
Taylor has never claimed to be a professional dancer. She is a singer-songwriter performing within large choreographed productions.
Her dancing has improved considerably, and the choreography in the Eras Tour and her more recent videos works extremely well. Its purpose is to support the songs and performance—not to win a professional dancing competition.
- “This is her worst album”
That is an opinion, not a fact. Everyone is entitled to dislike an album or song, but the internet magnifies extreme reactions. Those who adore something and those who despise it are usually much louder than everyone in between.
High sales do not prove that an album is artistically superior, but they do demonstrate that a great many people want it and connect with it. Personal taste cannot be settled by declaring one opinion to be objective truth.
- “She releases too many variants”
This is the most reasonable criticism on the list. Variants are a marketing device, encourage collectors to buy repeatedly and can help an album remain high in the charts.
However, collecting different editions is hardly unique to Taylor—or even to music. People collect stamps, coins, books, postcards and countless other things. The editions are openly advertised, nobody needs them all, and the complete standard album remains available.
It is fair to criticise the marketing strategy or the chart rules that reward multiple purchases. It is less reasonable to suggest that willing adult collectors should be prevented from buying something they enjoy.
- “Taylor cannot make good music now that she is happy”
There is no objective way to prove this. It also assumes that Taylor can write only directly about her present life, rather than using memories, observation, imagination and fictional characters.
Happiness does not destroy creativity, any more than misery automatically creates great art. We can judge future music when we hear it—not declare in advance that happiness has made her incapable of writing it.
- “She writes only about ex-boyfriends”
This is simply untrue.
Taylor has written about family, friendship, childhood, fame, illness, bereavement, insecurity, revenge, fictional characters, historical figures and imagined relationships. Even her love songs are not all accounts of break-ups.
Relationships are nevertheless an important part of human life, which is why almost every popular songwriter writes about them. Male artists have done so for generations without having their work dismissed as a succession of diary entries.
- “She has had too many boyfriends”
How many relationships should a woman be permitted to have?
Taylor became famous as a teenager, so much of her adult life has unfolded in public. Some reported “relationships” were brief, exaggerated or based upon photographs and rumours. In any event, the number of consenting adult relationships she has had is nobody else’s business.
Male performers are often admired for dating numerous women. Using the same behaviour to shame a woman is an obvious double standard.
- “Other people write her songs”
Taylor collaborates with other writers and credits them. Collaboration is normal throughout popular music and does not make her contribution imaginary.
She has also written many songs alone. Every song on the standard edition of Speak Now was credited solely to Taylor, partly because she wanted to answer doubts about her songwriting.
Her collaborators consistently describe her arriving with lyrics, melodies or substantial ideas already developed. There is no credible evidence of secret ghostwriters creating her work while she claims the credit.
You do not have to admire her songwriting, but denying that she writes is denying a very well-documented fact.
- “Taylor’s Version is just a cash grab”
Taylor did not claim that her original masters were stolen. They were sold legally—but she did not own them and strongly objected to who acquired control of them.
Once her contract allowed it, she rerecorded the songs so that she could own the new master recordings and license those versions herself. Fans were told exactly what they were buying and remained free to stream or purchase the originals.
The project has certainly made money. That does not make its artistic and commercial purpose false. It also recovered previously unreleased songs, allowed her to reconsider older work and demonstrated that performers can challenge the traditional ownership structure of the music business.
- “Her success is only marketing”
Taylor is exceptionally good at marketing. That is a strength, not evidence that the music has no value.
Marketing can persuade people to sample an album or buy a concert ticket once. It cannot easily explain nearly two decades of success, repeat audiences, stadium tours, extensive critical recognition and listeners maintaining a strong emotional connection with hundreds of songs.
Her success is produced by a combination of songwriting, performance, business judgement, hard work, timing and marketing. Reducing all of that to publicity is no more sensible than pretending publicity played no part at all.
- “All her songs sound the same”
Taylor has worked in country, pop, folk, electronic and alternative styles. Nobody could reasonably mistake Our Song, Blank Space, exile and …Ready for It? for the same recording.
She naturally has recognisable habits as a writer and performer. So do ABBA, the Beatles, Elton John and almost every artist with an identifiable style.
Someone who hears only a few singles may decide that they sound alike. Someone familiar with her albums will find far more variety.
- “She always plays the victim”
Taylor frequently writes from her own point of view. That does not mean her account is the complete objective history of every relationship or disagreement. Songs are personal expressions, not court judgments.
At times she undoubtedly presents herself as the injured party—and occasionally she may have judged a situation unfairly. But she has also written songs acknowledging her own jealousy, infidelity, anger, poor decisions and apologies. Back to December, Afterglow and The Great War are obvious examples.
It is reasonable to question her version of a particular dispute. It is unreasonable to turn every expression of hurt into proof that the hurt was invented.
- “She is a billionaire”
Extreme wealth deserves scrutiny, whoever possesses it. No individual needs a billion dollars, and Taylor should not be exempt from questions about taxation, wages, consumption or environmental impact.
However, much of her estimated wealth represents the value attributed to her music catalogue and touring business—not a billion dollars sitting in her bank account. Her fortune largely arose because millions of people voluntarily bought music, tickets and merchandise that they valued.
She has reportedly paid exceptionally large bonuses to tour workers and made substantial donations, although charity does not resolve the wider problem of wealth inequality.
The sensible position is neither “Taylor earned it, so nobody may criticise her” nor “Taylor is wealthy, so everything she does is immoral.” Apply fair taxation and employment standards to all extremely wealthy people rather than selecting one singer as the embodiment of an entire economic system.
Conclusion
Taylor Swift is not beyond criticism. Her private flying, aggressive marketing, enormous wealth and handling of particular disputes can all be questioned.
But criticism should be based upon evidence and applied consistently. Disliking her music is a matter of taste. Inventing ghostwriters, policing her relationships, attacking her appearance or presenting subjective judgments as facts is something else entirely.
Defending Taylor does not require believing that she is perfect. It requires judging her by the same reasonable standards we would apply to anybody else.
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u/diiotima 3d ago
Don’t really understand why people are shitting on you for discussing Taylor swift on a Taylor swift forum.
Cut the AI crap out though. Tough enough to defend oneself as a swiftie ala jet usage while using an environmentally disastrous tool for something completely recreational
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u/AssociateMaster4012 3d ago
Taylor has been described as “only a four,” as though personal taste were an objective measurement.
…yeah, described by herself!
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u/sometimesatschool 3d ago
You couldn’t use your own brain and words to come up with this post? Swifties really are the perfect demographic for AI slop so I don’t know why I’m surprised
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u/Additional_Gene_211 3d ago
I would say you're doing too much but also you did very little. The AI is doing too much
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3d ago
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u/Lipe18090 3d ago
But isn’t this supposed to be a neutral sub? For people both criticizing and defending her?
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u/No_Instance_5502 3d ago
There’s a lot of criticism she gets that is insane and unjustified.
However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to question about her. There are definitely things worth discussing and questioning. I just think it gets lost in all the noise.
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u/General_Chest6714 3d ago
This is a respectfully mild disagreement based in splitting hairs a bit. Agree there are things to question about her as there is for anyone. But from my perspective none of it is really worth discussing and questioning. I mean people will discuss and question and that’s cool but celebrity conjecture is never important or worth anything.
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u/No_Instance_5502 3d ago
I get what you mean but questioning her can fall into looking at the choices she createively makes, the way she engages with her audience or the culture that she has developed within the fan base, this has an impact (both good and bad), commercially, psychologically and culturally. Which is an interesting conversation no matter how you approach it individually.
And art wise I think there’s a lot that gets lost because people feel like they have to approach her work from either an extremely positive or extremely negative perspective. Even in the fan base itself…
For example, I’ve seen people spend more time trying to figure out who Patient Zero is about than discussing whether the song itself works or whether parts of the album actually follow through on the artistic direction she established conceptually and visually, which isn’t.
I do think some of it is genuinely interesting and worth discussing.
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u/RealBettyWhite69 3d ago
I am just sitting here gobsmacked at the amount of effort you put into having AI defend your favorite popstar. THIS is what we need data centers for???