As a black woman with a universal taste in music, I often find inspiration in diverse places. Often in discussions with many of my friends and clients, I ask, "So what's your current favorite album?" or "What have you been listening to the most lately?"
I can count on one hand the number of times I've run into other Swifties in person (fans who enjoy and cherish mostly every Taylor Swift album). When discussing Taylor Swift, oftentimes conflicting feelings may come when discussing the sometimes problematic views of white feminism, and privilege. At the core of white feminism, a lesson can be learned in the subtle expression in the balance of caring too much and not caring at all.
Music generally has the power to heal, inspire, motivate, and help us connect with parts of ourselves that we sometimes forget about until the right moment. Sometimes the most valuable lessons come from the most unlikely of places.
In the past few years, Taylor has single-handedly become one of my favorite artists. Her albums are literary fantasies, carefully crafted, with tongue in cheek writing, transporting many of us to different times, places, and experiences that are not our own but also somehow relatable. Folklore & Evermore took me to the lake cabin in the woods secluded from time and people, much like Covid did, however, the album felt cozy just like her hit song "Sweater".
Midnights created a haze-filled environment that felt like either just arriving at the club, that late-night drive home, or staring up at the stars thinking of all of the possibilities that may or may not come true. My favorites from the album include Lavender Haze, Labyrinth, Bejeweled, and Snow on the Beach. Most recently, I started listening to The Tortured Poets Department, and so far it feels intimate like lounging in your lover's white t-shirt but also emotionally delicate, like a late night of pillow talking shared over a drink on ice.
If there's one thing that Taylor's music teaches us its about curated vulnerability. It may not be loud, and blunt but soft, cunning, and at moments sneaky, letting out truths that would otherwise be accosted by the same men that would have burned us during the Salem Witch Trials. Even when we are angry we deserve joy, and loftiness, the freedom of being able to celebrate our truths, whatever it may so be with the same freeness and glee as those who have known freedom their whole lives. Because even in that freeness there have been discoveries of others, tales shared and understood that translate through human experience, women's experiences in a world controlled by patriarchy.
Emotion translates universally, and within music, we can find our safe space, shake off our problems for the time being, and escape the world. This is why I love music and I'm thankful for the labor of love that ANY artist can share with us, the listeners and the main characters who sometimes feel like our own lives are boring or mundane. Taylor's music reminds me of how magical escaping into someone else's world can be, and how sometimes an artist can passively advocate even if it's just for the right of self-expression, vulnerability, and audacity.
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