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Taylor Swift: Savvy Storyteller, Marketing Genius

By Marco den Ouden

February 19, 2024

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“Hi, I’m Taylor. I write songs about my feelings. I’m told I have a lot of feelings.”

Taylor Swift to audiences on her Red tour

 

I found her story both impressive and inspiring. But I still didn’t pay much attention to her music.

I had never really been a Taylor Swift fan until recently. I’d heard snatches of her music on the radio, of course. But they were background noise until I really started listening to her music.

What made me start listening to her? When she became the “the first musician to make the ranks solely based on her songs and performances” on Forbes annual billionaires list in October 2023, I decided to check her out on Wikipedia. I found her story both impressive and inspiring. This woman was a genius, a self-made woman who started her career as a professional songwriter at age 14.

But I still didn’t pay much attention to her music. It wasn’t until the self-styled critics, haters and conspiracy mongers emerged from the woodwork like so many termites that I started listening to her music. And I found I liked her music, more than I thought I would.

Her self-introduction on the Red tour tells the story of her success in just a few words. She writes from the heart. She tells stories in her songs based on personal experience. Songs that people can relate to. Whether it is the angst of a fifteen-year-old girl experiencing first love and a first kiss in “15” or her ode to self-reliance and self-confidence in “Mastermind,” she tells a very personal story that resonates with her audience. But it is not just the emotional framework that resonates. Her lyrics are intelligent and carefully crafted.

Take “Mastermind.” A song about a woman who went after the man she wanted with purposeful resolve.

What if I told you none of it was accidental?

And the first night that you saw me

Nothing was gonna stop me

I laid the groundwork, and then

Just like clockwork

The dominoes cascaded in a line

What if I told you I’m a mastermind?

Later the lyrics note “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Strategy sets the scene for the tale.” In an early stanza she writes “It was all by design” which is cleverly changed to “It was all my design” in a later stanza.

And lest you think the guy she’s after was a patsy, she clears that up with the lines:

Saw a wide smirk on your face

You knew the entire time

You knew that I’m a mastermind

And now you’re mine

 

Brilliant lyrics that extol the virtues of planning and resolve, of pursuing a dream, of working to achieve your goals.

But regardless of her music, she is an inspiration. What are some of her inspirational achievements?

Since age twelve she had been writing songs and performing country music at the Coffee Talk Café in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. Then at age fourteen she signed a professional songwriting contract, the youngest songwriter ever contracted by Sony/Tree Publishing. Two years later she had a recording contract with Big Machine Records.

Swift is multi-talented, playing four different instruments, producing or co-producing many of her music videos, and beating music industry records left, right, and center. She broke 118 Guinness World Records.

Swift is multi-talented, playing four different instruments, producing or co-producing many of her music videos, and beating music industry records left, right, and center. She broke 118 Guinness World Records. Speaking of records, Taylor Swift arrived in Melbourne, Australia recently to kick off her first Aussie tour since 2018. She sold out the Melbourne Cricket Ground twice over on successive nights. Feb. 16th and 17th, with 96,000 attendees each night. It was her biggest show ever. Her previous largest concert had 74,000 fans in attendance. No doubt some Aussie sports fans will be thinking, “That’s just not cricket, mate!”

In a review of her debut album, Country Weekly commented on why she is successful while many fail. “Taylor Swift, 16, beats the jinx by being herself—preoccupied with the concerns of a teenage girl, for sure, but demonstrating an honesty, intelligence and idealism with which listeners of any age will be able to connect.”

When she topped the country charts with “Our Song” in 2007, she was “the youngest person to single-handedly write and sing a No. 1 country single entirely on her own.”

Jim Malec, writing for American Songwriter, quotes Swift on how seriously she takes her work. He quotes her speaking of her meetings with songwriter mentors.

I knew that being a 14-year-old girl, anybody would—understandably—think, ‘I’m gonna have to write a song for a kid today.’ But I didn’t want anyone to walk out of the meeting thinking, ‘I wrote a song for a kid today.’ So, I would walk in with 10 or 15 almost-finished songs. Or with developed ideas—finished melodies or choruses. I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew I was serious about it. That I didn’t just take it lightly.

Malec goes on to say “Of course, Swift doesn’t take anything in her career lightly. And that fact is reflected in her incisive, efficient songwriting. Even her earliest material is characterized by thoughtful—perhaps meticulous—word choice and deliberate melodic construction, with nary a lazy rhyme or aimless tune to be found.”

Also in 2007, Swift won the Nashville Songwriter of the Year award. As reported in Great American Country, “The NSAI Award, Taylor’s first songwriting award, was voted by her peers, the professional songwriter members of the NSAI.”

Although her music had been criticized by others, the most prominent disparagement of her work came when she won the MTV Best Female Video award in 2009 for her song “You Belong With Me.” Kanye West rudely grabbed the microphone away from her during her acceptance speech to suggest that Beyoncé’s video for “Single Ladies” should have won. That incident was played so often on social media it added to Swift’s popularity.

Swift has many other accomplishments under her belt. One of the lesser known is that she was the first ever celebrity host of Saturday Night Live to write her own opening monologue, a hilarious self-deprecating song she wrote called “Monologue Song.”

Swift has developed a reputation for standing up for her rights and her dignity. In 2017, at a meet and greet, David Mueller, a local disc jockey, groped her while posing for a picture. She reported the incident to her security staff. The incident was investigated and confirmed, and her mother then reported the incident to the radio station Mueller worked at. They fired him and he then sued Swift for defamation. She counter-sued alleging battery and sexual assault, looking for a symbolic $1 in damages. Swift won the case.

Vanity Fair reports she vowed to support other victims of sexual assault. “My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves.”

Swift is, in fact, known for her generosity with various causes. Wikipedia lists several:

  1. $500,000 to the May 2010 Tennessee Flood Relief
  2. $1 million to Louisiana Flood relief in 2016
  3. Donated to food banks at every stop in the Eras world tour
  4. Employed local businesses throughout the Eras tour and paid $55 million in bonuses to her crew
  5. $4 million to build an education center at the Country Music Hall of Fame

 

Those are just some of the larger donations. Many smaller ones from $25,000 to $100,000 are listed, including many to music schools, symphonies and universities and for cancer research.

The most famous case where she stood up for her rights was a dispute with her record company, Big Machine Records.

The most famous case where she stood up for her rights was a dispute with her record company, Big Machine Records. After recording six albums with them, she moved to Republic Records to have greater artistic freedom. Now, copyright law in the United States is bifurcated. There are two copyrights. The songwriter gets a copyright to their music and the publishing rights. But the physical master recordings are owned by the record company.

Big Machine had changed hands and when Swift tried to buy the masters before her contract ran out, the company would only agree if she renewed her contract. Swift balked and moved to Republic which agreed to give her rights to the masters of any new music recorded. Abigail Freeman at Forbes reports a bigger payday for Swift as well, “a royalty rate on new music of 50% or more compared to the estimated 10% to 15% she likely had on her original deal with Big Machine.” As she puts it, “Taylor Swift has taken control.”

Not surprisingly, her first single from her first album with Republic, Lover, was called “ME!,” described by Larry Fitzmaurice at Entertainment Weekly as “a blindingly bright slice of self-affirmation.”

Swift went on to re-record her first four albums, each subtitled Taylor’s Version. For the album Red (Taylor’s Version) she re-recorded “All Too Well” as a ten-minute version. It became her eighth number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 and according to Guiness, the longest song ever to top the charts.

And she moved away from country to explore other genres. BBC music correspondent Mark Savage noted that “Taylor Swift is a musical chameleon. Over the course of 16 years and nine albums, she’s switched genres from country to pop to alternative to folk.”

She is a voracious reader, sometimes getting inspiration from what she’s read.

And he reports she is a voracious reader, sometimes getting inspiration from what she’s read. Her song “Tolerate It” was based on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Her literacy shows in her lyrics, which are well crafted.

In every way, Swift is an inspiration. From the youthfulness of her start as a songwriter, to the deeply personal and emotional appeal of her songs, to her battling the music industry for control over her creative work, to her moving beyond country to explore a wide range of styles and genres, to her outstanding philanthropy, to her remarkable savvy as a businesswoman praised by both the Wall Street Journal and Fortune. Fortune’s Ashley Lutz describes her as “a business and marketing genius.”

Yet, with achieving her status as a self-made billionaire, the hatred and venom towards her has been astounding.

Some of it is a matter of taste. Such criticisms are generally benign and not hateful. But some of it has been over the top and disturbing.

Here is a playlist of the songs mentioned in this essay on YouTube. Watch the videos which are often amazing. Most also contain the lyrics which mesmerized me: Taylor Swift – Fifteen (youtube.com)

 
 

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