Full disclosure: I am a fan of Taylor Swift's music. From "Our Song" to "Blank Space," I can’t help but sing along any time one of her catchy pop anthems comes on. I find it hard to believe that even the most avid Taylor Swift haters can resist at least one of those overplayed tunes getting stuck in their heads. That being said, Taylor Swift is not by any stretch of the imagination a phenomenal singer. In fact, she’s not even really a great singer. However, she has stolen the hearts of millions of people around the world, and her lovably awkward presence and generous gifts to fans have managed to make her one of the most beloved and praised stars of this generation. Good for her — as much as I would like to, I can’t hate her for being idolized. She has earned all the love, money, and fame she’s received by giving the people what they want. But, if you look past the hype, it's easy to see that she's catty, petty, and pretty immature.
This brings me to my real problem with Taylor Swift, which is the fact that she is a just a giant hypocrite. She preaches feminism like it’s her job, actively calls out bullies, and has decided that she is the spokesperson for ending girl-on-girl drama. However, without digging very deep, it is abundantly clear that she is not only one of the biggest drama queens on the entire planet, she is also a huge instigator when it comes to drama between friends. If you don’t live under a rock, you have at least some knowledge of the feud that has been simmering between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry for the last few years. You are probably also familiar with the recent stint of drama between Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift over nominations for the Video Music Awards. Nicki posted a series of Tweets addressing her concerns about possible biases regarding the nominations for Video of the Year. Taylor assumed that the Tweets were aimed at her, so she proceeded to call out Nicki for perpetuating drama between female artists — Katy Perry even piped in at one point. (It has been argued that Nicki wasn't exactly making sense with her allegations of bias, given that the nomination pool for the category was actually rather diverse, but that's another issue.) The whole thing was eventually settled when Taylor finally apologized, but it was the final straw in my realization that Taylor is not only arrogant enough to think that everyone is out to get her, she actually just sucks as a person.
Behold, just a few examples of why Taylor Swift is really kind of the worst:
1. A staggeringly large percentage of her music involves the cringe-worthy bashing of boys she as been involved with, and she keeps it personal (recall this burn aimed at Harry Styles from her 2013 Grammy performance). She also has a few songs directed at people who haven't treated her right, including "Better Than Revenge,"which expresses her love of vengeance. Sorry Taylor, but when this many relationships and friendships end on what appear to be anything but amicable terms, it’s probably not them — it’s you.
2. The Katy Perry/Taylor Swift feud apparently transpired in 2013 when three of Taylor’s backup dancers decided to leave her Red tour and began working with Katy. Since the beginning of this petty war, there have been multiple instances of the singers throwing all kinds of shade at one another — some subtle and some not so much. This entire feud has happened alongside Taylor constantly preaching that women should help other women and not try to bring them down. I’m not saying Katy is in the right and Taylor is in the wrong – who knows what really happened between the two? – but Taylor is clearly fueling just the type of fire that she claims to be against. For example:
a. Left shark at concert – Her most recent dig at Katy: the brief shark appearance during her performance of Bad Blood.
b. Tweets and Interviews – Taylor has dropped quite a few cryptic Tweets aimed at Katy, and has mentioned the her bad relationship with "another female artist" in interviews (never by name but it's fairly clear that she was referring to Katy).
c. Bad Blood – Taylor wrote a song about the "bad blood" between her and Katy, then proceeded to benefit wildly from the drama by pulling in a ton of money from the song and video.
3. Her decision to remove her album from Spotify and refuse to let Apple Music stream her music if they did not give artists any loyalties for the first three months of service. Swift really seemed to be looking out for the little artists, which seems great, right? That is, until a photographer called her out for being, yet again, a huge hypocrite by taking away photographers’ rights to their own pictures and not giving them proper credit.
4. She literally has a song about crashing a wedding. Low key, I love the song "Speak Now"; it’s catchy and romantic from Swift’s perspective, but when you really think about it – who does that? How would that poor bride feel when her fiancé just dips out in the middle of their vows? And what kind of asshole guy just leaves a girl at the altar when his ex asks him to? Any why is she bashing the bride just because she happens to be dating her ex? Breaking up a wedding isn’t cute, Taylor. In fact, it kind of seems like something that someone who likes pitting women against each other would do – but maybe that’s just me.
So, go ahead and keep shamelessly jamming to T-Swift – I won't judge – but know that anyone who thinks she is an accurate depiction of feminism, that she is not a drama magnet or instigator, or that she is just an innocent sweetheart is kind of delusional.