Current Events > Can anyone explain to me why Taylor Swift is so influential?

(+) Yeah! (+)

All I hear about every day from my female coworkers is how much they worship Taylor Swift.

One of them just recently got married and said that she tried to go for a Taylor Swift theme in her wedding photos.

Another said that she switched banks because she saw an ad with Taylor Swift in it and "if it's good enough for Taylor Swift, it's good enough for me" as if Taylor Swift is an actual customer and not a paid spokesperson.

I can understand young people (teens) being influenced by pop stars, but these are grown women. Why does Taylor Swift have such a hold on these people?

No. No one can explain it.

Its crazy because I understand having a hero or idol but its exploded beyond reason. I get she can write her own music but the lyrics she writes sound...basic and without the music behind it, it really isn't...cool?

Like nothing she says is deep but people make it out to be so deep.

Hey TC, think about this:

She's so influential, your only active post is about her.

StealThisSheen posted...

Hey TC, think about this:

She's so influential, your only active post is about her.

Drat! She got me.

relatable

Relatable is "hey look, Taylor Swift uses the same bank that I do", not "I'm going to use that bank because that's the one Taylor Swift uses".

She's tall

I like that one song she made. Maybe it wasn't her but it sounded like something Swift would make. Her name is very fun to say. It's like being called Johnny Speed.

G-Ziss posted...

Relatable is "hey look, Taylor Swift uses the same bank that I do", not "I'm going to use that bank because that's the one Taylor Swift uses".

so relatable

My generation had Madonna, Michael Jackson, it was similar, just not as prevalently rabid without people constantly being on the internet.

If I could I would switch to whatever bank Sayuri Date uses

G-Ziss posted...

All I hear about every day from my female coworkers is how much they worship Taylor Swift.

One of them just recently got married and said that she tried to go for a Taylor Swift theme in her wedding photos.

Another said that she switched banks because she saw an ad with Taylor Swift in it and "if it's good enough for Taylor Swift, it's good enough for me" as if Taylor Swift is an actual customer and not a paid spokesperson.

I can understand young people (teens) being influenced by pop stars, but these are grown women. Why does Taylor Swift have such a hold on these people?

I agree. She is more talented than most pop stars and her music is better than most, like say sheeran and bieber but it still is not great music imo. Where she should be as huge as she is

I wrote this for another topic earlier;
She's gone from country, pop and alternative/folk while writing songs that a constantly growing fanbase sees as personal and relatable.

While doing that she also did an excellent job keeping her fanbase engaged. When she was up and coming she made the effort to meet her fans after shows. When she became too popular for that she would have her staff pick out people in the audience for a meet and greet backstage. She would pick her big fans on social media to debut her new album to at her house. Now she's too popular for things like that and instead goes for a three hour epic concert that goes over her entire career which rewards the high investment people have had.

During all of this she is also a ridiculously smart and powerful business woman who has made the correct decisions so she has complete and total control of her own career and image. With the latest victory she has is now distributing the previously mentioned concert through theaters by using her own company and bypassing the movie studios that are currently in disputes with creatives.

When it comes to celebrity endorsements that's not specific to her. That's been a thing since marketing was a thing.

MabusIncarnate posted...

My generation had Madonna, Michael Jackson, it was similar, just not as prevalently rabid without people constantly being on the internet.

But other than the massive crowds...they're not the same. Both of them had extremely catchy songs. Many of todays top pop singers have far catchier songs. Hers, mostly unrecognizable from a casual standpoint.

voldothegr8 posted...

But other than the massive crowds...they're not the same. Both of them had extremely catchy songs. Many of todays top pop singers have far catchier songs. Hers, mostly unrecognizable from a casual standpoint.

They're not in the same era. The internet has decentralized pop culture and music significantly.

It's never going to be the same no matter who the musician is. Taylor Swift is overall the biggest phenomenon musician of the modern era but that has a totally different meaning and feel today than it used to. A musician today can break all sorts of records and it's easier than ever to not even notice.

Punished_Blinx posted...

keeping her fanbase engaged

i think there's a lot of weight to that. i say this as someone who knows absolutely nothing about taylor swift whatsoever. but she has a lot of, for lack of a better term, "celebrity stamina". she enjoys staying relevant, which is why she appears everywhere when she's not making music (as i assume it goes). most musicians have a lull or dip in fame, but she maintains her presence, where ever it needs to be. it seems she works hard to stay relevant and it pays off.

but ultimately it's because, in some shape or form, she's still riding on the fact that people want to know about her so she feeds them what they want: her, everywhere. not a lot of people can put up with it. she's doing a good job so far. but overall it really seems like it's less about her music and more about her as a brand in itself. the music is just a key event to say "here i am again!"

GuerrillaSoldier posted...

but overall it really seems like it's less about her music and more about her as a brand in itself. the music is just a key event to say "here i am again!"

It's very much both. The brand and the music are the same.

Like this recent global tour is called the Eras tour. That's named after how the fans would talk about her output because of how each album is presented and marketed alongside with it capturing a specific period of her own life and the fans that followed her career at the time.

She announces her album with a single and cover that sums up the image she's gonna have for the next 2-3 years while she promotes her album and goes on tour that also captures that image. Fearless era is when she wore the glittery gold dress and cowboy boots and was a teenager becoming an adult. 1989 era was when things went pastel and she moved into more trendy outfits and the tours started having glowing wristbands. Stuff like that.

Now here's a tour that celebrates all of these different moments in time while she simultaneously is re-recording these albums to re-release. It's all top-tier marketing and it pays off. It's kinda like how MCU makes a big deal about phases and here's a musician doing it about her own career.

Thing is we are now in an age where it matters more to get a large number of people listening to your music on Spotify constantly than it is to have a catchy hit on radio. Don't know if people have really figured that out yet. The Taylor Swift fanbase knows how massive they are. They know if they buy tickets to watch her concert in a cinema then there's going to be a whole bunch of other die-hards that are gonna be singing and dancing with them. That's the kinda shit she capitalizes on in the internet era that I don't think people here really realize as they focus on what popularity looked like three decades ago.

People like her songs and she engages with her fans. She drops a lot of hints of her future projects in her music videos/album covers even. She keeps the lore of her songs consistent and makes callbacks to previous works. It makes people who are long time fans happy and they are always thinking about what the next clue is.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/3/1/AAZWwpAAE4F7.jpg

For example, a lot of people have speculated the release order of her re-recorded albums. If you see the "S" in Version is different from the "S" in Taylor's. The one in 'version' looks like a snake, the image that is associated with her Reputation album. The fan that noticed this and posted it was probably very happy to realize that the Reputation album is very likely the next to be released, even though she has not announced it yet. Everything Taylor does is deliberate and meant to be seen, which again, fans like

Apparently she treats her staff very well. I read she gave each of her truck drivers a $100,000 bonus for her tour this year. People seem to like that.

voldothegr8 posted...

But other than the massive crowds...they're not the same. Both of them had extremely catchy songs. Many of todays top pop singers have far catchier songs. Hers, mostly unrecognizable from a casual standpoint.

personally i find her songs more catchy and better overall than madonna for sure. even the random non hits she puts out are catchy and the sound tends to vary from album to album to an extent as well. she is definitely more adaptable than most pop stars