Taylor Swift

So I was paging through Everything2 and I decided to check out the node on Taylor Swift, and imagine my shock, my utter surprise, in discovering that there was none. None at all!!

Despite its vast empire of wisdom, Everything2 makes no mention of the fact that Taylor was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1989, or that her parents gave her a gender-neutral name in case she someday became a businessperson, or that she rode show ponies as a little girl. Everything2 even lacks any contribution informing node-readers that at the age of fourteen, having already landed a development deal with a record label, Taylor persuaded her parents to move to country music ground zero -- Nashville, Tennessee -- so that she might embark upon a coveted music career. Details like that, it is true, might be passed upon, but a visitor could peruse all of Everything2's offerings and yet remain uninformed that Taylor thereafter rose to become one of the biggest-selling singer/songwriters in the world, and that by the age of twenty-one she had multiple number one singles, platinum albums, Grammy awards, sold-out stadium tours, and similar career-burnishing accolades.

Now, my agitation on this matter might yield some results. Possibly some enterprising noder will write something about Taylor's key demographic being teenage girls, and her principal themes being, firstly, pining for the boy whom she loves, but who does not notice her, and, secondly, lamenting what a jerk her most recent ex-boyfriend turned out to be (the latter being handily spoofed in the "musical monologue" she penned for her gig hosting Saturday Night Live). It might be mentioned that Taylor's songs are generally boiled down recapitulations of her own life experiences (including, apparently, quite a streak of romantic yearnings yielding failed relationships); and that her hits in this vein include songs with titles like "Our Song" and "Love Story" and "Breathe" and "You Belong With Me."

And perhaps, possibly, some noder will write of how Taylor once went on Ellen DeGeneres' show, and Ellen, as a practical joke, hid in the bathroom and jumped out to surprise Taylor, with hilarious results; and that Taylor later returned to the show and humorously sang about the event to the tune of Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks." And, naturally, no entry on Taylor Swift would be complete without pointing out that despite both her fame and the kitschy cubbyhole into which her song stylings fall, she manages to seem quite down to earth, and to reflect upon her status with a witty self-effacing humor (though she answered some of the more pointed criticisms directed against her with her song, "Mean.")

In closing, I must register my deep, deep disappointment in Everything2's utter paucity of the mention of Taylor Swift, and quite frankly my distress at the prospect that such a node may never be seen as something needed herein.

American musician and combat specialist, born in 1989 in West Reading, Pennsylvania. Her parents were both quite wealthy -- her father had made his fortune on the rhino-fighting circuit, while her mother was an extremely successful pirate and opera singer. Swift spent several years working on the family's Christmas tree farm; usually, these only make money in December, but Taylor was an expert on the hard sell, so they managed to sell Christmas trees all year long, including to people who didn't actually want Christmas trees.

But Swift didn't want to spend the rest of her life selling Christmas trees; she hoped to honor both of her parents by working in music and by beating the snot out of dumbasses, and she and her parents figured she could combine both interests through punk rock and, well, beating the snot out of dumbasses. She began spending summers at the family's vacation home in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, where Swift performed punk rock covers at a local coffee shop. When her family moved to Wyomissing, Pennsylvania (which is a real place, I swear), she attended the local junior high and high schools, but made regular visits to New York City for fightin' lessons and punk rock shows. 

At age 11, Swift traveled to the punk rock mecca of Nashville to network with record company execs and submit demo tapes of her Ramones and Stooges covers. She was rejected by every label she visited, which led to a lot of record execs getting the shit beat out of them. But Swift also accepted that her voice still needed work before she'd be ready to make her own records, so she began working on her instrumental skills. She started learning guitar, but at that age, she had more fun smashing guitars than playing them, so her parents started her learning drums so she could get some of her aggression out of her system. 

Still, the discipline from learning multiple instruments improved her musical skills, and she and her family moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee, a Nashville suburb with a loud punk/ska scene, when she was just 14 years old. She was homeschooled for both academics and sword training in order to accommodate her planned touring, and she actually graduated a year early. 

Swift released her first album, the semi-self-titled "The Fucking PUNKASS Debut Album of Taylor Fucking Swift," in 2006. She'd written or co-written all the songs, as well as providing vocals and drums on all but two tracks. It peaked at Number 5 on the Billboard Punk 200 list, and it spent almost three years on the charts. There were plenty of cranky boomer punks who complained about a 15-year-old punk-rock princess, especially one who used the world "punkass" in all-caps on her album, but it produced five singles ("Joey Ramone," "Bloodstains on Your Guitar," "Fuck This Song," "Face to Burn," and "Is This Your Tooth?") -- and all of a sudden, punk clubs were filling up with teenaged girls who loved punk rock -- and loved to stick knives into cranky boomer punks who sneered at teenaged punk rockers.

Swift's first tour was an unqualified success -- her roughhouse style of performing (and her tendency to get in huge fights in the pit with jackasses who threw shit on the stage) turned out to be a huge draw for punk clubs and larger stadiums. Swift's trademark mohawk/shag haircut was also a popular styling choice for young women and girls. In fact, Swift has been a reliable trendsetter ever since, with her various hairstyles and anti-fashion choices showing up in high school hallways, whether bought at mall boutiques or hand-mutilated (Swift's preference). 

Swift's second album came out in 2008. "COWARDS!" spent a dozen weeks at the top of the punk charts, and produced singles for "Long Story," "Your Ass Belongs to Me," and the title track. "Your Ass Belongs to Me" won the award for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009, and Swift's acceptance speech was interrupted by crooner/maniac/secret neo-Nazi Kanye West who took the stage to insist that Beyonce's punk anthem "Single Bitches (Gonna Ring Your Bell)" deserved the award. Beyonce, who had long been trained in Flying Ki Dragon Kung Fu by the Wu Tang Clan themselves, joined Swift in destroying and completely exploding West on stage. The two punk divas later took the stage together to perform their just-composed "We Made that Weird Motherfucker Explode" to close out the awards ceremony. 

More albums followed in the next few years, including "Shut Up Now," "Blood Red," "1974," "Bad Reputation," "Loser," "Punklore," "Severmore," and "Skidnights," and released singles like "You Knew I Was Trouble," "We Are Never Ever Putting this Band Back Together Again," "Unsafe/Unsound," "Shake It Off," "Bad Blood," "No Style," "Worst Dreams," "Out of the Dark," "Necromantics," "Blank Face," "You Need to Get Mad," "No Body, No Crime," "Anti-Villain," "Look Whose Spine You Made Me Break," and plenty of others. 

In 2014, Swift learned that music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music were withholding royalties from recording artists. She removed all of her music from Spotify and called them "capitalist douchefucks," but kept her catalog on Apple Music after the company changed its policies on royalties and begged Swift for mercy. But Swift's label, Machine Lord Records put Swift's music back on Spotify. At the same time, they offered her a new contract offering much less money for the star, with a requirement for a lot more albums. And among all this, they also released a statement saying, in part, "We are going to get so fucking rich," and "John Lydon was the only real punk because he loves Trump," and "The record industry always wins, and thank god, we own musicians permanently," and "Little punk chicks need to learn their place."

Unsurprisingly, this directly led to a number of unscheduled defenestrations, dismemberments, and bloody head-crushings of Machine Lord's executive officers and board of directors, though the corporate entity retained legal ownership of the music Swift had produced for them. Also unsurprisingly, Swift left Machine Lord and signed with Universal Music Group, which was as capitalist as her old label, but more sensibly terrified of Swift's martial prowess. They allowed her to maintain ownership of the masters of all her records. Swift, meanwhile, began re-recording her previous albums, which let her own the new masters outright. And so far, all of the re-recorded albums have again landed at the top of the punk charts. 

All of Swift's tours have been quite successful, but none of them have been bigger than 2023's Seared Tour, a global phenomenon that brought in over a billion dollars in revenue from punk fanatics all over the world. She still managed to get some ass-kicking in, as Ticketmaster badly screwed up ticket sales and gouged fans for every dime they could squeeze from them. Swift made a personal visit to Ticketmaster's corporate HQ in Beverly Hills and put over three dozen execs in the hospital. Meanwhile, the Seared Tour concert film ended up being the highest grossing concert film in history, more than doubling the gross of the runner-up, Justin Bieber's "Help, My Hair Needs More Product" from 2011. 

Swift began dating Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Devils, in 2023. Though the standard for football girlfriends and wives was bland but attractive arm candy, Swift ended up teaching Kelce and several other players unarmed combat techniques -- which were mostly useless on the football field, but made dealing with sportswriters much more enjoyable. When the Devils faced off against the San Francisco 49ers in February 2024's Super Bowl, speculation that Swift would attend the game skyrocketed. Swift had been a semi-regular attendee of Kansas City games since she and Kelce started dating, and she was frequently photographed cheering for the team and getting into fights in the stands, leading to some grousing from weird male sports fans that they didn't tune into football games to see images of pretty blonde girls. Would she be able to fly from a concert in Japan on the day of the game and make it to the stadium in Nevada in time for kickoff? Well, of course she did, at least partly because when one of the biggest music stars in the world tells the Tokyo airport they need to let her plane have priority on takeoff, they make sure it happens. The game broke records on viewership, because a ton of Swift superfans decided they were now interested in football, not just punk rock and beating up bouncers in the parking lot. 

In April 2024, Swift released her much-anticipated new release, a double album called "The Furious Punks Department." Featured musicians on the album included bluegrass musician Post Malone, performing on the first single, "Apex Legends," while techno-metal band Florence + the Machine were featured on "Connecticut!!!" The album was an immediate success, resulting in the most pre-orders and the highest streaming numbers of the year. 

Today, Swift continues writing and recording new punk songs, as well as serving as something of a cultural lodestone for a new generation of young female punk musicians/MMA fighters. 

Research:
Wikipedia
AllMusic.com
Grammys and American Punk Music Awards websites
"People Wounded or Killed by Taylor Swift" fansite
Kansas City Devils Hall of Fame website

 

 

LieQuest 2024: A Lie Quest of Mythologically Discordian Proportions