Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Competitive Awareness



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And it is not only the normals who fall prey to this swarm effect. As We weekly reminds us in their eponymous article, "The stars, they are like us!"

Recently, Taylor Swift has urged his many fans to vote for Democratic candidates in his state of adoption, Tennessee. Normally, the fact that a famous pop star can give his opinion on the political scene does not attract as much attention. What is different in the case of Swift is that, at least until now, she has scrupulously avoided any partisan politics, to the point of being denounced for her "political silence. "In an Instagram post, she explained recent events have led her to speak more openly about her political convictions, and I am sure that is true. More interesting to me (I admit I'm not a specialist in Swift's inner life) is what his intervention tells us about the vast cultural and political landscape.

Swift became a star in adolescence, while his political sensibility was probably not yet fully formed. In addition, his early successes were in pop country, a genre closely associated with more rural areas of the country. During this phase of her career, she and her team would have had reason to believe that many of her most devoted fans were conservatives who appreciated her optimistic lyrics and her healthy image.

Since then, however, Swift has sought to expand his artistic horizons and, predictably, to transcend his median origins. Having reached an unparalleled celebrity, she now finds herself in the highest spheres of culture industries, where awakened liberalism is de rigueur and departures are stigmatized. His reluctance to explicitly embrace center-left politics was, I suppose, a little costly for his reputation among taste creators. Critics who rejoiced at the enlightened political interventions of his peers took note of Swift's reluctance to definitively assert their worldview and explained how they had received his work. Politics aside, its apparent conventionality – its fundamental character – made it already suspect and less interesting than that of performers who could more plausibly claim marginalized identities. At best, Swift could be an ally of those who, in the theology of enlightened liberalism, arouse the most sympathy.

Given these incentives, I'm not sure that Swift has had a lot of choice in this area. Declaring Republican Marsha Blackburn conventionalThe Conservative election record, "overwhelming and terrified," was close to the least she could do. Indeed, I do not doubt that there will be many critics who will demand that it offers new denunciations of the political right, thus distancing itself from the increasingly small part of its audience composed of conventional conservatives . It is useful for most Conservatives to be so used to appreciating the work of those who hold them in low esteem that it is unlikely that denouncing them is costly and that, like columnist Josh Barro observedthe most affluent and influential consumers "are more disproportionate than they were before". From a purely commercial point of view, Swift would have been stupid not to have made his political gesture. Otherwise, she would have let herself be accused of not hating the GOP and all that that represents, which would have represented an unacceptable risk for her to stand in the eyes of those whom she wants to impress.

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