Taylor Swift is this generation’s Elvis. Or if you are younger, she’s this generation’s Beatles. Or if you are even younger than that, Michael Jackson.
Yes, you don’t get her music. I don’t either. Just like your parents didn’t get your love of Elvis or Rolling Stones. Shitting on Taylor Swift is an automatic turn-off for the 7 to 20 year-old crowd. You’ve got to be an absolute dum-dum to antagonize these future voters over something so utterly insignificant.
Klara and her friends LOVE Taylor Swift. There are Taylor Swift birthday parties. The kids write out the entirety of Taylor Swift’s lyrics. By hand. Our house is littered with stacks of paper with these handwritten lyrics. The kids know all of the lyrics by heart. This is a good thing because it’s memory practice plus handwriting practice.
Waging war on Taylor Swift, what are you, mentally impaired? And then there will be decades of moaning. Why don’t kids have any interest in our conservative ideas? Because you shat on their childhood idol and were old and uncool, you irredeemable loser.
Look at Mattel, elegantly disarming feminists and turning a feminist bête noire into a feminist icon. That’s marketing brilliance right there. If you can’t market like that, just shut the ef up and let the people without the oldster mentality do it. I’m not converting students to conservatism by giving boring speeches about how their interests suck. I’m doing it by being cool and fun and unusual. When I say in class, “and now let’s listen to my music”, I turn on Rammstein or Tupac and their eyes pop because they don’t expect it from a lady in color-matching outfits and with designer handbags.
Young people like things that annoy the oldsters because that’s how they become their own person. It’s their nature to be transgressive. We need to show them that conservatism is the biggest actual transgression these days.
Clarissa's Blog 
“We need to show them that conservatism is the biggest actual transgression”
I’m so glad kids nowadays realize that there are so many genders! Back in my day we had even more!
Don’t you even think about dressing up in a frilly dress, missy!
I remember drag queens in the old days….
You will too tip the drag queens, you man if you know what’s good for you!
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Heh. Perhaps this is how I ended up so trad religious. I grew up around drag queens and flamboyantly gay men. That was definitely old, stale, boring, and fuddy-duddy-ish by the time I reached adolescence 😉
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” I grew up around drag queens and flamboyantly gay men”
I grew up around an entire motley crew of rodeo (and non-rodeo) cowboys, circus peformers, (real) gypsies, painters, writers and other assorted weirdos (parents attracted all kinds of misfits) so lots of things that shocked or bothered normies never seemed especially weird and apart from moving to Europe my adult life has been pretty settled and staid.
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Something to that! My hippie parents didn’t *just* hang out with community-theater queers. Also a pretty eclectic range of drunks, crazies, conmen, ex-cons, aahtists, etc. Dad was a carney for a while. But also, we went to church, where on Sundays, for reasons I could never quite figure out, my mom had us all dress up and pretend to be normal. And while I never ever fit in with the church crowd, there is a lot to be said for boring old middle-class church people. If they had any personal drama, we never knew about it. And that was refreshing. And I kind of aim for that, when it comes to personal and family life: not normal. That’s out of reach. But functional, and low-drama. I’ve seen what life is like on the every-day’s-a-crisis side, and… yeah, no. They can keep it.
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I will continue to privately bitch and moan about her terrible music (which is also quite popular with people my age, so I’ve had to put up with it since high school.) But idk why “the conservative movement” thinks it’s a winning tactic. I’m also not sure why she of all people is offensive to them on a political level. Sure, she’s a Democrat, but what celebrity isn’t?
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I hate the music because it’s so bland. Brrrr. But making a big scandal out of it is beyond counterproductive. Truly, people will take any bait, no matter how primitive.
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I also don’t understand why people have a personal issue with Swift. Beyond making bad music that I’m forced to listen to at work, I can’t think of anything particularly offensive she’s done. People seem to be mad at her for…going to her own bf’s football games?
Looking strictly from a political perspective, Swift’s music and persona seems much tamer and more respectable than the average pop star. If you’re viewing this politically rather than musically, Swift should be Republicans’ favorite pop star. I only ever view this stuff musically, of course.
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Exactly. She mewls inoffensively about wanting a boyfriend, breaking up with a boyfriend, making up with a boyfriend. This is well within the range of normal, healthy interests of her target audience. It’s not like she chants “from the river to the sea” or “women have penises.”
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I am not sure I’ve ever heard her music. The only things I know about her are that her concert tickets are really expensive, and she appears to have a thing for sparkly leotards, neither of which interest me. What is the controversy about?
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I’m sure you’ve heard but immediately forgot it. It’s eminently forgettable. Not a catchy tune in sight.
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Ah, well. At least it’s not aggressively irritating? I don’t listen to the radio anymore, but there was a stretch, back in college, when I worked in food service and we were stuck with cable radio. Same loop of top-40 favorites all day long and not even ads to break up the monotony. There are some bands that come up on the nostalgia channels now, that I cannot stand, even though they never did anything to me. Alanis Morisette. Smashing Pumpkins. If I never hear them again, that’ll be fine by me.
In that same stretch I developed a fond appreciation for Norah Jones. Her songs were so unremarkable that I could not name a single one now, but I recall her music as consistently pleasant and ignorable. Which is exactly what you want if you’re gonna be stuck hearing it 20 times a day for months. Thanks, Norah.
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The problem is that there are a lot of religious zealots and reactionaries under the Republican umbrella. Actual conservatives are unfortunately a minority among those who identify as Republican or conservative in the US.
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That’s why I’m now writing for Ukrainians who are all naturally conservative but likely to be taken in by the prestige of the mainstream US culture.
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At first, I thought you were referring to Kylie Minogue, some of whose catchy pop songs I like, f.e. “I Should Be So Lucky.”
Searched Taylor Swift songs on YouTube and the melodies sounded boring, nothing catchy, upbeating or memorable. May be some lyrics are better, don’t know.
Google says her most popular song is “All Too Well”:
// I walked through the door with you, the air was cold
But somethin’ ’bout it felt like home somehow
And I left my scarf there at your sister’s house
And you’ve still got it in your drawer, even now
…
You taught me ’bout your past, thinkin’ your future was me
And you were tossing me the car keys, “Fuck the patriarchy”
Keychain on the ground, we were always skippin’ town
And I was thinkin’ on the drive down, “Any time now
He’s gonna say it’s love,” you never called it what it was //
Aren’t Klara and her friends too young for adult love songs as their first and major choice of music? She is 9, right?
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She’s turning 8 in February. Yes, I agree she’s too young but it’s the first major stage of separation. She likes what she likes and especially what her friends like.
Such boring, boring songs.
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\ Such boring, boring songs.
Another aspect is that people say today’s kids have problems to concentrate after all screen time, but Klara’s friends must have better skills at that than me. My brain turns off after literally 5 seconds at the most with her music.
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Klara makes me spend hours ranking these songs, and I can’t tell them apart, which undermines the very concept of ranking something. So yeah, it’s a snooze.
But hey, what screen time? These are kids at a private Christian school. There’s no screen time. 😆😆😆
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Btw, with my plebeian ability to enjoy only pop music, I do like attractive pop songs, so had no prejudice against Taylor.
Btw, doesn’t US have *good* music for kids?
I still love music from old FSU мультфильмы and movies for children (and adults too) like “Музыка композитора Алексея Рыбникова в фильмах, мультфильмах” (on YouTube). Seems like Russian descent also affected their ability to create good music and мультфильмы.
Why does not US have great music for kids that becomes popular? Or does it have it and I am ignorant? The only thing that comes to mind is Disney’s pop songs like “Let It Go” in Frozen.
The thing is Рыбников’s kind of music sounds different and seems a step higher than Disney. Not an expert in music, so can only use intuition. Cannot a society have both Disney and Рыбников? Why not?
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I was a huge fan of Ласковый май that my father prevented me from listening to with everything he had. I still think it’s great music. 😁😁😁 Not great like Mozart but great like in very enjoyable.
Frozen was all the rage when Klara was 3. But she is now way too grown to see Disney princesses with anything short of derision.
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“Taylor Swift is this generation’s Elvis”
I dunno about that, all the other figures were innovators but Taylor Swift seems pretty…. slick and…. good? I guess? for what it is? But pretty ordinary…
Not my thing at all but there’s far worse out there and making a big deal out of her is electoral poison for anyone under 30: “If they get that bent out of shape about her then how demented will they be about issues that matter?”
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The only female pop idol in the past I can think of is Madonna, and she sold a highly sexualized persona. Taylor Swift is a positive development because her schtick is childish innocence.
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“her schtick is childish innocence”
Isn’t she a bit long in the tooth for that?
Lots of female pop idols in the US were not really sexualized.
Connie Francis, Brenda Lee, the Supremes, Aretha Franklin all huge at various times in the 1960s. They obviously took care to look good on stage but they were not sexualized at all, they all reflected various stages of female… romantic awakening.
But they all had short peaks, what sets Swift apart is her longevity but that’s more a symptom of overall decline in music than anything special about her….
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I saw a video clip where she poses as a high-school girl, kisses a boy, etc. It is kind of weird but her audience has to identify with her, so I get it.
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“Childish innocence” how does this square with showing your bits on the stage?
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Have you met any teenagers lately? If not, then you are in for a big surprise.
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Count me in on people who don’t get why Taylor Swift is so popular and so hated by Republicans in the US. Her music is very meh and boring, it’s just audio wallpaper and I can’t tell one of her songs from the other. As far as pop singers go, she doesn’t have a sexualized or Lolita image and at least she does write and perform her own songs, even if they suck.
However, I do have some idea of why so many “conservative men” hate her. Taylor Swift is an adult woman who doesn’t have a sexual image or comes off as a Lolita or waif-like teenager, plus she is very wealthy and has a different boyfriend every few months and seems to be the dominant partner in her relationships. Some men hate that she’s not a cute, sexy Lolita and doesn’t provide fanservice for men, plus her fans are overwhelmingly women. This is just my interpretation, her music isn’t my thing and I’m much more into alternative music and indie rock
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I don’t think there’s any ‘hate’ from conservatives. People are just goofing off online about how she is a democratic party psyop who’ll tip the election in their favor with her endorsement (which looks increasingly possible).
Also, funny how the libs switched their stance on her. She used to be HATED by them for being a talentless white privileged artist (with an explicit focus on her race), but the moment she turned political, she became their darling.
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Case in point.
https://x.com/redsteeze/status/1752535110446993556?s=20
Here’s Jezebel, a ‘feminist’ site, writing about how Taylor Swift is a feminist nightmare lol.
https://jezebel.com/taylor-swift-is-a-feminists-nightmare-5466685
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God, I need to read Jezebel more often. It’s hardcore.
Here’s a quote:
“For Taylor, fifteen means falling for a boy and dreaming of marrying him. My fifteen was more like: Flirt with this one, make out with that one, try a cigarette, get drunk, lie to your parents, read some Anais Nin, wish you lived in France, attempt to adopt Shakespearean euphemisms for sex into casual conversation.”
I hope the author seeks treatment for childhood sexual abuse soon.
Leftism appeals to people because it allows them to pass off dysfunction as sophistication and specialness.
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It’s literally their substitute for having a personality.
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Saw this and thought of you. It is from the Coffee and Covid substack. IIRC a friend of mine kept a light of every unusual campaign promise kept (the keeping thereof being so, I mean) and every unexpected good thing Mr. Trump did (besides not being the American Dilma). If you are interested I could track it down.
My expectations were very low, so I stopped keeping track after he used a budget manoeuvre to get the Army Corps of Engineers to get the Wall (TM) built, and signed a bunch of executive orders promptly blocked by assorteded Hawaiian judges, Republican congress critters and the federal apparatatchiks.
Still, it was one of those conservative “well, if I WERE PREZ daydreams that came true. Like flipping the 9th Circuit Court. Soooo close.
<i>”…The appliance industry is so regulated we need a new word, a word like micromanagement. Appliances have become micro-regulated and now they don’t work.
Government regulation also ossifies big corporations into de-facto fascism. Big corporations adjust to swelling regulation and evolve to earn a profit anyway. The regulations keep out competitors, to survive, big corporations capture the regulatory agencies that are supposed to supervise them.
It’s a parasymbiotic relationship, as evidenced by the well-documented turnstile of FDA officials and board members between big pharma and the regulatory health agencies.
You might think the situation is beyond redemption, but it’s not. Not at all. We have an effective example of how easily it could be fixed. That example manifest when President Trump required every agency to remove two regulations for every new regulation imposed. The rule was simple, elegant, and brilliant. It was self-enforcing. And it worked. During Trump’s term in office, the agencies removed more than two regulations for each new one they passed.
On his first day in office, Joe Biden revoked President Trump’s regulation-pruning order.”</i>
So.
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The wall was not built. The immigration wasn’t stopped. People chanted “build the wall” at campaign rallies. Nobody chanted “don’t micro-regulate the appliance industry.”
Trump did nothing on immigration (except increase it), allowed the BLM riots, and empowered Fauci.
Regulations are a regular Republican schtick. People voted for Trump because he promised to be different from other Republican candidates and stop immigration.
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People is doing heavy lifting in those sentences. You’re good.
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Are we going to argue whether there were chants of “build the wall” or “repeal regulations on appliances” at Trump’s rallies?
I respect fandom but up to a point.
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There you go again. It’s a thing of beauty!
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“chants of “build the wall” or “repeal regulations on appliances” “
Don’t forget the chants of “”m”Move the embassy to Jerusalem!”
What’s an unbuilt wall next to appliance regulation, tax breaks and an embassy in Jerusalem?
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People are scraping the barrel, truly. It’s exactly like the argument in favor of COVID vaccines that started with “the vaccine is omnipotent” and went all the way to “it’s a kind thing to take it even if it does nothing”.
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“Sign up for this medical experiment because if you don’t you’re a jerk…”
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When I was a teenager (back during the Nixon administration), everyone my age detested the music our parents liked every bit as much as they detested the stuff we liked. When I grew up and became a parent, I assumed my kids would hate the stuff I’d loved as a teenager, and their preferred music would probably drive me crazy. Imagine my shock when I caught them listening to Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, the Moody Blues, the Rolling Stones, etc. Didn’t they get the memo? You’re supposed to hate the stuff your parents like! Turned out almost all their friends felt the same way. Very strange.
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“I caught them listening to Simon and Garfunkel …. Very strange”
A few things….
It’s a lot more available and accessible than your parents’ music was to you.
Current music is a run (I happened to catch a US top 10 on MTV in December and almost half the songs were rereleases of Xmas stuff which was not a thing in the past).
What’s the current nostalgia wave?
In the early 1970s there was a small1940s nostalgia wave followed by a much bigger 1950s wave.
There was a big 1970s wave in the 1990s… there seemed to be something of a 1980s mini-wave in recent years (all I know was the first couple of seasons of Stranger Things… how much more was there?)
What previous decade are young people attracted to?
My father had a big record collection (mostly lounge type stuff) but me and my brother were pretty indifferent to it (except for Rogers and Hammerstein soundtracks, especially Oklahoma and South Pacific).
I remember my mother being appalled when Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy became a hit around…. 1973? It was a song from her youth that she had hated then and the intervening years had not made her like it any more (I played it constantly).
The entire music industry was structured so different then….
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I tried to attract Klara to Sinatra but she was horrified. I don’t blame her since I only got why it’s genius music after I hit 40.
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Ha! I ‘m sure my Grandma would’ve been as shocked as anyone when we discovered Tom Lehrer, Cab Calloway, and the Kingston Trio.
Oh, this is great, you have to hear this. You know, your grandma *loved* this album.
I had no idea my grandma had been so hip!
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Introduce Klara to the Sad Cat Dance meme. :-)
Elvis is OK for being a kind of soul music, The Beatles are OK for being a kind of folk pop music, Michael Jackson is OK for a kind of pop synth music later in his career …
By the time the 1970s went out I was sick to death of both disco and guitar hair bands, you know the ones.
So when Blondie rolled out “Rapture” and even Nile Rodgers was moving on from disco, that was a great sign.
But it was New Wave for me, then British electronic music, house music, and several other genres.
It’s not that I have anything in particular against “one ply” T Swizzle except that her music isn’t memorable.
But The Beatles are only memorable to me because of how overplayed they were.
Pop music could be great but so much of it is shit, Saint Etienne was right on that.
Sooooo … try the original version of the mashup that became Sad Cat Dance.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E50MAc4zqh8
Then try a kid friendly version of the meme.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hDjS1p1oo8Q
It’s so catchy. :-)
My jams in the 1980s were Robert Hazard’s “Escalator of Life” and Thomas Dolby’s “One of Our Submarines”, so mainstream music doesn’t really cut it.
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Ah, forgot about this version.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fOa6WcIRvbU
Blame me if Klara starts dancing in elevators to make them go up. :-)
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