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Taylor Swift Thinks It’s Sexist You Think All Her Songs are About Her Exes

Taylor Swift stopped by Australia’s 2DayFM “Jules, Merrick and Sophie” breakfast show to talk about her new album. She also addressed the people who criticize her for writing songs about her exes. She says it’s sexist and you should stop being so sexist.

Sophie: How do you feel when people say you write about boyfriends?

Swift: It’s interesting, because I think as a songwriter your fans have been keeping up with your music since before you were known. My first album came out when I was 16. I would write about my life, as I saw it, as I felt it. Then what happens is as you get more successful, which you’re lucky if that happens, you have more and more people paying attention to what you’re doing and you’ve been doing it the same way your entire career as a songwriter. But all of a sudden the perspective has changed and they use you writing songs about your life as a way to play detective. For me, I have a really strict personal policy that I never name names. So anybody saying that a song is about a specific person is purely speculating. And they’re going to do that. But the most important thing to me is mainting artistic integrity, which means as a songwriter I still continue to write about my life. I could very well water it down and I could just say, “The sky is blue and now we’re dancing and now we’re in a club and it’s great.” (Side note: I’m pretty sure those are exact lyrics from Shake It Off.)

Sophie: People can sense honesty. You can tell in your music-

Swift: You’re going to have people see the depth from which you’ve approached a song. The fact that you put your real emotions into it and that’s valuable and that’s good and that’s real. And then you’re going to have people who are going to say, “Oh she just writes songs about her ex-boyfriends.” Frankly, that’s a very sexist angle to take. Nobody says that about Ed Sheeran. Nobody says that about Bruno Mars. They’re all writing songs about their exes, their current girlfriends, their love-life, and no one raises a red flag there.

(Thanks to Dlisted for the summary)

As Michael K alluded to, there’s a stark difference between what Bruno Mars writes about and what Taylor Swift writes about. Mars’ lyrics are more general, subtle. His single “Grenade” is basically the imagery of John Cusack holding a boombox over his head. Swift’s lyrics are more a narrative filled with hints. It sounds like something you’d find in a high school girl’s diary.

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flying777
flying777
9 years ago

Well Victor, you are sexist.