Jokes about Taylor Swift dating a lot feels like unsavory slut-shaming. I don’t dig that.
Taylor Swift sings hyper-produced songs with gimmicky hooks. Good. Inane. Fine. She also has a penchant for dating male celebrities. It’s an old showbiz move: two celebrities date, both are kept relevant in gossip circles, careers extended. Lovely. Go, kids, go.
What’s the frequency of her dating? Whom she’s dating is in the news a lot, but the pace of her dating doesn’t seem that unusual. Not that she needs anyone’s approval, but is it that much different from high school or college dating?
What rankles most is her using her dating history to sell records, over and over, then the objection to comments on her relationships/marketing strategy. She’s profiting from the national hobby of assigning each of her songs to a particular boy/man she’s dated. Nifty. It works. Adds some needed flavor to her Applebee’s blandness.
Okay, strike what was said earlier, what bothers me the most about her songs that blame bad behavior on, and screeching her independence from, these purported villains is that I’m sympathizing with her targets, who typically don’t respond in kind to her histrionics. Things are so warped that I feel empathy for her targets, including soporific talk-singer John fucking Mayer!
One of Swift’s ex-boyfriends, Harry Styles, who is in English boy band One Direction gave an interview where mumbling about Swift came across as dignified. She mocked him in her Grammys performance, a truly weird dyspeptic fantasia disturbing and tedious simultaneously, using a British accent. Styles’ response? “She’s always good on the stage. She’s been doing it a long time. She knows what she’s doing on stage. It was just another good Taylor Swift performance. It was good.” Boring yet classy.
Taylor Swift or her advisors have set on the strategy to keep milking the dating song dedication angle over and over until it doesn’t yield anything anymore, but she may be authentically motivated by a lot of rage. Choose one or the other, but don’t muddle them up and wonder why people are laughing. It would show some character if she realized “Hey, I’m just an angry beast, and I’m going to re-launch the riot grrl concept for Millenials and be the new Kathleen Hanna or a less scabby and bewildered Courtney Love.”
In defense of Love, her dating Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan got them to help her out with songwriting and production, making her art better.
