Taylor Swift Is The 21st Century's Most Disorienting Pop Star
It's not enough to make list after list. The Turning the Tables project seeks to suggest alternatives to the traditional popular music canon, and to do more than that, too: to stimulate conversation about how hierarchies emerge and endure. This year, Turning the Tables considers how women and non-binary artists are shaping music in our moment, from the pop mainstream to the sinecures of jazz and contemporary classical music. Our list of the 200 Greatest Songs By Women+ offers a soundtrack to a new century. This series of essays takes on another task.
The 25 arguments writers make in these pieces challenge the usual definitions of influence. Some rethink the building legacies of popular artists; others celebrate those who create within subcultures, their innovations rippling outward over time. As always, women forge new pathways in sound; today, they also make waves under the surface of culture by confronting, in their music, the increased fluidity of "woman" itself. What is a woman? It's a timeless question on the surface, but one deeply engaged with whatever historical moment in which it is asked. Our 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century illuminate its complexities. —Ann Powers
There comes a moment in a lot of Taylor Swift songs where it becomes hard to sing along. It's sometimes a concept, sometimes a perspective, sometimes a phrase, sometimes just a word — but in that moment, you realize that this song isn't about you. This song is about Taylor Swift.
In 2017's "...Ready for It?", it's the little, self-referential wink, "He can be/ Every lover known in comparison is a failure."
