Taylor Swift

The Star, The Songs, The Fans
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-28987-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 284 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 424 g

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.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate, Undergraduate Advanced, and Undergraduate Core

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bentley, Christa Anne

Galloway, Kate

Harper, Paula Clare

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Volksmusik
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Einzelne Komponisten und Musiker
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Rock & Pop, Blues, Soul

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents



List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgements





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

Über Autor(innen)

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.