Getty Images/Leah Romero Taylor Swift (2006) Below, we’ll examine each of the artist’s so-called “eras,” keeping in mind the only obvious truth: Swift is just happy we’re paying attention. None or all of these theories could be true.
So when did Swift the human become Swift the icon? Or, perhaps, when did Swift realize she could be both? Different critics and fans will tell you different stories: that she found herself during the launch of her first solo tour that she peaked years ago that she’s at her most artful today that she didn’t have true control until she started reclaiming her old songs. (They refer to the periods surrounding her albums as their own “eras.”) With each release, Swift morphed and evolved, retooling herself while wrestling to reveal more truth. Each of the singer’s 10 main studio albums have arrived packaged with their own “aesthetic,” as many of her fans are eager to dissect. It’s worth exploring, then, how the course Swift has charted both shaped and stifled this love. As she sings in a track off her newest album, Midnights, “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid / So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since / To make them love me and make it seem effortless / This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess.” The trick is she wants us to feel in on the not-so-secret secret. Even her frequent use of “ Easter eggs” in lyrics, music videos, album artwork and her own wardrobe invite fans to pay witness not just to her genius, but to the lengths she’s gone to prove it. Swift is not inauthentic, but neither is it difficult to notice her maneuvers behind the scenes. These traits make her a fascinating, complex celebrity, but an undoubtedly masterful storyteller. As much brand as flesh and blood, as much an inventor as historian (and, lately, re-inventor), Swift typically understands how she’ll be perceived better than those tasked with perception.
The difference is Swift, unlike so many her age, seems to thrive on this cycle.
In this sense, she’s also the consummate millennial: taught from youth to craft a persona, only for human emotion to blow it up. Swift is the consummate skin-shedder, forever toeing the line between self-expression and self-creation. When did Taylor Swift become Taylor Swift? It’s not an easy question to answer.
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