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Taylor Swift’s new album “The Tortured Poets Division” is out in the present day. However there’s extra to Swift than simply her music. NPR’s All Issues Thought of examines her cultural influence.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It’s one thing of a nationwide vacation in the present day in case you are one of many thousands and thousands of Taylor Swift followers on the market as a result of there is a new album to rejoice. It is referred to as “The Tortured Poets Division.” Listening events are occurring throughout, from Puyallup to Pensacola. And in Bethesda, Md., Swifties, together with Chantal Dulk-Jacobs, started gathering earlier in the present day on the dog-friendly beer backyard Bark Social. They’re planning to take heed to Taylor all day lengthy.
CHANTAL DULK-JACOBS: She makes songs about what you feel, and you’ll affiliate your emotions with these songs and take heed to it on finish for days at a time.
KELLY: Right here to unpack the cultural phenomenon that’s Taylor Swift, we’ve Paula Harper on the road. She teaches music on the College of Chicago. She is co-editing a e book about Taylor Swift and her followers. Paula Harper, welcome. Blissful Taylor Swift Day to you – to all who rejoice (laughter).
PAULA HARPER: Thanks. Thanks. So excited to be right here.
KELLY: So I need to simply dive proper in on the concept of followers. Are you able to give an instance? Is there a narrative you’d inform that will clarify simply how large, how highly effective Taylor Swift’s fan base is?
HARPER: The Swifties are an enormous and highly effective group. They are a drive. I believe my my favourite go-to instance is that, at one in every of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour concert events, they actually triggered a seismic occasion because of the mixed drive of their rhythmic leaping and dancing to Taylor Swift’s music – so a sort of literal pure occasion that’s occurring because of the drive and the dimensions and the scope of Swift’s followers.
KELLY: Taylor Swift can work together along with her followers in a approach that is fairly totally different from what the Beatles have been capable of do, or what – even earlier than that, if – individuals who have been screaming themselves hoarse over Elvis Presley. Discuss to me about the way in which that she interacts with followers that helps to domesticate such ardour.
HARPER: Yeah, effectively, one thing that I are inclined to say about Taylor Swift is that Taylor Swift did come up proper alongside the rise of social media as we all know it. So she has been interacting along with her followers on social media platforms effectively previous to the times of TikTok. These of us who have been round within the 2010s know that Taylor Swift was cultivating a really avid fan base on Tumblr approach, approach again when.
KELLY: Effectively, and in actual life too, proper? She invitations followers to her home to take heed to her new albums along with her. She does these meet-and-greets after her exhibits – is that proper?
HARPER: Yeah, completely. So you have received this porousness between on-line and IRL and this porousness, too, after all, between her movie star persona and this pal, girl-next-door persona that she’s cultivating and inhabiting.
KELLY: What are your plans to mark this new album? Are you headed to any listening events your self?
HARPER: They have not been listening events, however I’ve already been turned to as a sort of node for response by lots of my buddies who know that I’m a Swift scholar. My varied chat threads have been blowing up in the present day with people who find themselves having dispersed listening events, and I may be internet hosting an on-campus listening get together right here as effectively.
KELLY: And what are the questions coming in? Is it simply – how’s the album? How’s the album? Do you prefer it?
HARPER: How is the album? Do you prefer it? What is going on on with this Florence and the Machine collab? How can we really feel in regards to the Antonoff partnership? Which music do we predict is the perfect on the album? Who do we predict these songs are about?
KELLY: What’s the greatest music on the album, by the way in which?
HARPER: I am all-in for “Clara Bow.”
KELLY: There we’ve it. Paula Harper, thanks.
HARPER: Thanks.
KELLY: She is a Swift scholar and assistant professor of music on the College of Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “CLARA BOW”)
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) You seem like Clara Bow on this gentle…
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