Taylor Swift Saved My Life
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Music has always been one of the most important things in my life. I love everything about it, but my absolute favorite part is the lyrics. The story a song can tell has always captivated me, and from a young age, I was playing singer-songwriters like James Taylor, the Beatles, Carole King, and Billy Joel all the time.
Even though they were amazing artists in their own right, I couldn’t truly connect with them. What does an eight year-old know about fire and rain, or a piano player at a dive bar? I could sing along and know that I was listening to something bigger than myself, but I wasn’t a part of the music I loved so much.
That all changed in the fourth grade. My classmates and I were killing time before we left for a field trip and decided to watch YouTube videos. Someone put on Taylor Swift’s “Our Song,” and my life changed forever.
I was completely obsessed from that moment on. What I found in her music was more than just catchy, fun songs to sing into my hairbrush at sleepovers. I found someone who was making music for me, songs that I could understand and relate to.
As I grew up, Taylor’s music grew right along with me. Every album she released had songs that spoke to where I was and who I was, right at that moment. I sang along to “Mean” when my brother and I would get into fights. I cried to “All Too Well” – the OG 2012 version. I screamed the lyrics to “Blank Space” with my friends at school dances and in the car. Her lyrics are the soundtrack to my life.
What makes her music so special is how seriously she takes her subject matter. Critics wrote her early music off as sing-songy crap for the middle school set, ear-drum-busting pop songs about cute boys and lipgloss. Those who took the time to listen to her albums saw the artistry she brought to every song, and the potential she had to become one of the greatest songwriters of the 21st century.
Swift writes about the boy who sits next to her in biology class with the same care as she does about a mother grieving the loss of her child. That dedication to the seriousness of her subject matter is what earned Swift her fans – and what has made her fans stay by her side.
Think about the usual songs written for 13 year-old girls. Even when they’re good, there’s still a sense of irony about them. You can almost hear the typically middle-aged-male songwriters rolling their eyes in the background of the glittery pop songs that dominate Radio Disney.
Swift changed all that. She writes all her own songs, bringing a level of honesty to her work that was, and continues to be, shocking. By writing about her emotions in such an intimate way, Swift validates the feelings of her fans, young and old.
Male readers might not know what I’m talking about here, but as any woman can attest, there are so many moments in life where women are written off as being “irrational,” “hysterical,” or “overreacting.” To a 13 year-old girl, hearing songs that take you and your emotions seriously is earth-shaking. Her albums told me that I was not a punchline or a demographic that no one cared about. My thoughts and feelings were valid; not only that, they were important enough to get Grammy-winning songs written about them.
Swift has grown throughout the years, though, and she now stuns listeners with songs written from fictional points of view, whether that’s a parent to a child, a boy to a girl, or the feelings of a figment of her imagination.
Her dedication to stellar songwriting has inspired countless others, like Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray, Maisie Peters – and me.
Now, I’m hardly on any of these artists’ levels (even established stars have failed to reach Rodrigo’s stratospheric heights), but Swift was the reason I picked up a guitar and started to write my own songs. Even though it’s just a hobby, it’s also one of the greatest parts of my life. It’s how I process emotions – a godsend during those messy high school years when everything was “the worst thing that’s ever happened to me!!!” I’m one of countless other young girls who started making music because Taylor Swift gave them an example of what they could be and do.
From country ballads to stadium-shaking pop songs, Taylor Swift has maintained a level of songwriting that only a handful of others can touch. She pivots from pop production and lyrics about broken relationships, to delicate acoustic tracks that create fictional characters and universes, all while staying true to herself. When you listen to a Taylor Swift song, you are brought into her world for a moment – and she becomes a part of yours.
Taylor Swift has been there through every major milestone for me. I listen to her music when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m angry, when I’m tired….her music speaks to me on a level that few others can reach.
Through her artistry, her dedication to truthful writing, and her willingness to put the feelings of young women at the forefront of her work, Swift gave me and so many others a voice – and a place in the music industry. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
