From studio albums to stadium tours, Taylor Swift is a record-setting pop artist whose impacts are outsized and global in scale. At the same time, she has cultivated an audience base that finds her, her songs, and her voice eminently relatable. Taylor Swift: The Star, The Songs, The Fans positions Swift as a prismatic figure for the musical world of the 21st century.
This collection includes new work from interdisciplinary scholars who focus on Swift’s star persona; the lyrics, themes, and meanings of Swift’s songs; and the ways that fans interact with Swift’s work and with each other. Together, the essays evaluate Swift’s career with attention to how her work has resonated in a changing global society, how she has navigated shifts in the music industry, and how she has negotiated changes in her musical transition from country to pop along the lines of her age, gender, race, and class identity.
Including contributions by scholars, practitioners, and journalists, this book offers a serious consideration of one of today’s most popular music stars that shows why and how she matters. Engaging a wide variety of disciplines and methodological perspectives—including fan studies, cultural studies, philosophy, musicology and music theory, journalism, and songwriting—Taylor Swift: The Star, The Songs, The Fans will be of interest to students and scholars of music, media studies, popular culture, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, and sound studies.
Edited by:
Christa Anne Bentley,
Kate Galloway,
Paula Clare Harper
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 690g
ISBN: 9781032289885
ISBN 10: 1032289880
Pages: 268
Publication Date: 09 March 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
General/trade
,
Primary
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Introduction: The Star, The Songs, The Fans Christa Anne Bentley, Kate Galloway, and Paula Clare Harper Part 1 The Star Chapter 1. Taylor Swift on Tour: Embracing Whiteness, Growing Up Phoebe E. Hughes Chapter 2. Stripped-Down Swift: Singer-Songwriter Performance Practice Within Swift’s Brand Christa Anne Bentley Chapter 3. Taylor Swift Controls Everything Annelot Prins Chapter 4. The Mediated Natures of Taylor Swift in folklore and evermore Kate Galloway Chapter 5. “That’s Why You Have to Stream the Re-Records:” Copyright, Messaging, and Fan Engagement in Taylor Swift’s Re-Recording Project Jocelyn R. Neal Part 2 The Songs Chapter 6. Lyrical World Building: An Exploration of Taylor Swift’s Use of Intratextuality and Intertextuality Lauren Alex Hooper Chapter 7. “Write This Down”: Writing as Motif and Metaphor in Taylor Swift’s Songwriting Nicky Watkinson Chapter 8. Between the Fairytale Fractures: Queering the Swiftian Country Song James Barker Chapter 9. Register, Timbre, and Rhetoric in Two Duets by Taylor Swift Cameron Steuart Chapter 10. Make It Old: (Taylor’s Version) and the Art and Experience of Re-Creation Chelsea Burns Chapter 11. Revision, Extension, and Repetition: Analyzing Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)” Alyssa Barna Chapter 12. “I Can’t Find a Pulse”: Encoding Sonic Intimacy in Heartbeats and Heartbreaks Ailsa Lipscombe Part 3 The Fans Chapter 13. “Say it in a Tweet, That’s a Cop-Out”: Problematizing the Journalistic Practice of Using Tweets as Public Opinion Through an Exploration of Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” Melissa K. Avdeeff Chapter 14. What Does Taylor Swift Have to Do with Soccer?: The Culture of Speculation in the Practices of Brazilian Swifties Thiago Soares and Lianna Genuíno Chapter 15. Hearing #Gaylor: Queer Musical (Conspiracy) Theorizing in the Internet Age Paula Clare Harper Chapter 16. Make The Friendship Bracelets…On Your Own, Kid: Wispy Community in the Taylor Swift Fandom Georgia Carroll Notes on Contributors Index
Christa Anne Bentley is a musicologist who studies the intersections of folk and popular song through the singer-songwriter movement. She is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Arkansas. Kate Galloway is Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her research addresses how and why contemporary artists remix and recycle sounds, music, and texts encoded with environmental knowledge and the creative and social phenomena of internet music communities and practices of listening to the internet. Paula Clare Harper researches music, sound, and the internet. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago.
