Taylor Swift Understands the Little Girls and Nothing Else Matters

This is a rare and extraordinary gift: the ability to set the deepest and most everyday thoughts and feelings of teenagers to music.

All the rest is lagniappe. Really. That gift is awesome, truly, and nothing else matters.

Taylor Swift has that gift. And when you are in the presence of someone who has that gift – the ability to lift a lightbulb over a young person’s head, and make them go, “Yes! That is what I feel! That is what I wish I could say!” – nothing else matters. Again: Nothing else matters. This skill, this capacity to tell young people the very thoughts that are in their expanding, assaulted minds and their continually rebirthing, swollen hearts, and to be able to do it with power and simplicity and without the obstruction of artful intentions or pretensions, oh, this is rare and amazing.

It is not merely the ability to tell teenagers the words they wish they could hear; many have done this, that is just called a love song, or a song of desire. Done well, that’s magical, but I am talking about something far more beautiful, rare and awesome: the ability to look into the lives and minds of young Americans and create pop music that, universally, makes them go, “That’s what I am feeling! That’s what I am thinking! That’s exactly what I wish I could say!”

To be in the presence of an artist who can achieve this utterly defies criticism and defies, denies, and obstructs all cynicism.

Most pop songs just talk at you. Generally, pop musicians tell you what they want (think of the proliferation of the phrase “I want” in pop songs, or some variation of it), or they quack at you what they think you should want or what they think you should feel. Honestly, the primary function of most pop music is as a mnemonic – “Oh, this is the song I think of when I remember…,” and so on. Pop music is so busy acting as a bookmark, or so wrapped up in its own presumed ability to dictate your feelings, that it usually fails to legitimately empathize.

But Taylor Swift has the ability to hold a mirror to the hearts and minds of her listeners; and they see her in that mirror, mouthing the words they are thinking but can’t articulate, the notes and texts they so desperately wish they could write. Seriously, if you want to conjure Taylor Swift, imagine a girl in 9th or 10th grade looking into the mirror but seeing Taylor Swift’s lips moving, expressing their thoughts and feelings. When a pop star appears to be able to read your mind and give language to the scribbles in the crowded margins of your notebook and your brain, when they can give words to the thoughts, fears, hopes and heartbreaks that you are having at that actual moment, that is stunning and rare. Imagine a musician appearing to be your friend at the time in your life when you need a friend the most. That’s Taylor Swift.

Of course, I recognize (and celebrate) that Ms. Swift’s audience reaches far, far beyond the teen/tween demographic: Her message of empowerment and self-awareness has power and meaning for every human of any age, race, class or sexual identity. But maybe you recall how a certain artist – or maybe it was even a book or film – reached you at precisely the time when you most needed to be reached, a time in your life when you felt unheard or unseen in that way you can only feel when you are a teenager. This sense of someone connecting with you during this time, affirming the sense that there is power, joy and commonality in what you are feeling or experiencing, and that there is someone to share the extraordinary terror and mystery of adolescence with, that is so important, even lifesaving. You never, ever need that “something” in your life more than you need it when you’re a teenager, and I wanted to honor Taylor Swift’s ability to make this connection this so universally, and on such a large scale.

True, we could analyze smaller or larger points of the artist or The Eras Tour film (for instance, the nearly oxymoronic difficulty of making a film of a show designed to be best experienced in the last row of a stadium; or the simple fact that at least half of Ms. Swift’s songs are musically — though not lyrically — based on easily cited, extant material; or her clear debt, as a performer and songwriter, to earlier artists). But this sort of analysis is utterly picayune, unnecessary, childish, whining, it is nonsense, and it is dwarfed by this reality:

It’s not that the little girls understand (though that’s certainly true). It’s that Taylor Swift understands the little girls. And the little boys, and their older sisters and brothers, and parents as well. Taylor Swift writes and sings the best yearbook quotes of all time, again and again, and sets them to adept, catchy, sugary, bright and bittersweet pop music. Nothing else matters.

There is a time in our life when nothing matters more than the perfect yearbook quote, finding someone else’s words that say exactly what you’re thinking and feeling.

Taylor Swift lives in that place, forever.

Note: The Eras Tour film is literally the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, with the exception of what I experienced during the three years I performed with The Glenn Branca Ensemble. I’m not joking. So I strongly suggest bringing something to muffle the sound or protect your ears.

VIDEO: Taylor Swift The Eras Tour movie trailer 

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Tim Sommer

Tim Sommer is a musician, record producer, former Atlantic Records A&R representative, WNYU DJ, MTV News correspondent, VH1 VJ, and founding member of the band Hugo Largo. He is the author of Only Wanna Be with You: The Inside Story of Hootie & the Blowfish and has written for publications such as Trouser Press, the Observer and The Village Voice. Learn more at Tim Sommer Writing.

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