Miss Americana
I wanna still have a sharp pen and a thin skin and an open heart.
In 2019, Taylor Swift’s career was at a turning point. She released her 7th studio album, Lover, her first album on her new record label, Republic Records, and the first album she owned. Her masters from her previous record label were sold out from under her, and she was about to embark on a venture that would change her life and cement her as one of the greatest artists in history when she chose to rerecord every album she ever put out, something no other artist has even attempted, never mind succeeded in.
Taylor Swift would also turn 30 on December 13th and she was fully aware she was no longer the ingénue she was when she started releasing music at only 16 years old. She wasn’t on top of the world the way she was during her 1989 era, and Lover seemed even less popular than her previous album reputation. On January 21st, 2020, Taylor Swift released her documentary Miss Americana on Netflix, which showcased all of her doubts about growing older as a pop star and what that would mean for her career, as well as tackling the forbidden topic of politics and bringing viewers inside the world of a fallen pop star who will never stop rising up again like a phoenix.
“I became the person who everyone wanted me to be,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
At the time Miss Americana was made, Taylor Swift did not foresee a global pandemic leading to the cancellation of her Lover tour, resulting in her writing two quarantine albums (folklore and evermore), putting out several rerecorded #1 albums, releasing another brand new album (Midnights), taking all these albums on a billion dollar Eras Tour, and now planning the release of her highly anticipated 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. While it was only four years ago that Miss Americana dropped on Netflix, it feels nostalgic looking back on a time when Taylor Swift felt her career was declining when, in retrospect, she was only getting started.
I debated whether or not I would cover Miss Americana as my final film for Women’s History Month because she’s such a polarizing pop star. When someone loves Taylor Swift, they really love her, and when someone hates Taylor Swift, they really really hate her. There are a lot of incredible women some might deem more deserving of a Women’s History Month newsletter, but the feelings of disdain toward Taylor and opinions that she somehow doesn’t deserve all her hard-earned success made me realize that’s exactly why I should cover Taylor Swift’s documentary for Women’s History Month.
“It’s a lot to process because we do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
Taylor Swift has been scrutinized more than any other artist of her generation, and even in moments when she worried she had mere years before she and her career became irrelevant, Taylor Swift “rose up from the dead” over and over again. Taylor Swift has never let the negativity and media storms stop her, and she has inspired women all over the world to continue to live their lives, follow their dreams, date whoever they want, write about it whenever they want, and shake off all the outside noise. That’s why I’m concluding my Women’s History Month series with Taylor Swift.
The Deconstruction Of A Belief System
I do a lot of analyzing when I look back on Taylor Swift’s career and how she became the megastar she is today. At the center of it all is a woman who worked harder than most other pop stars and allowed her endless creativity to shine in her songwriting, music videos, and performances. However, I always felt Taylor Swift’s “good girl image” was partially responsible for why she appealed to so many people. With all the music that’s been released throughout the decades, with some questionable messages, parents could always trust their children were safe with Taylor Swift as a role model.
Taylor understood this too, as in Miss Americana, she dives into how she operated off of this mentality for most of her life and why she ultimately had to deprogram it from her brain and build an entirely new belief system that was more sustainable for her well-being.
“My entire moral code as a kid and now is a need to be thought of as good. It was all I wrote about. It was all I wanted. It was the complete and total belief system I subscribed to as a kid,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
In her 2023 song “You’re Losing Me,” Taylor refers to herself as a “pathological people pleaser,” and this aligns well with how she describes herself throughout Miss Americana. Taylor didn’t necessarily find happiness in her endless career success but in the public’s reaction to her endless career success. She was only happy when the world was applauding her, when the academy was voting for her at the Grammys, and when her fans were screaming her name at her concerts. When the criticism came in or when there were moments that were not so pleasant, the pop star’s sense of self-worth declined.
In one scene, Taylor talks to her publicist, Tree Paine, on the phone as Tree reluctantly reveals to Taylor that her 2018 album, reputation was not nominated in any of the Big Four Grammy categories–Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist (Taylor obviously does not apply to the last category.) Tree reminds Taylor that reputation was a great album, which it was. The album was misunderstood by some, but like all her work, it was incredible. It was unique, it was risky, it touched on topics and genres she never explored before, and in retrospect, a lot of fans have decided it was actually some of her best work. In the midst of the news, Taylor couldn’t see how beloved reputation was or what a great job she’d done creating it. All she could see was that the Grammys didn’t see reputation as worthy and so she vowed she would make a better album.
An even more intense moment for Taylor was the infamous Kanye West mic steal moment at the 2009 VMAs. Taylor has avoided discussing the incident throughout the years in hopes of moving on from what should have been a moment to be proud of–the first country artist in history to win an MTV Video Music Award–but turned into a nightmare. However, in Miss Americana, Taylor opens up:
“It was so echo-ey in there at the time I didn’t know they were booing him doing that I thought that they were booing me. For someone who’s built their whole belief system on getting people to clap for you, the whole crowd booing is a pretty formative experience. That was like sort of a catalyst for a lot of psychological paths that I went down and not all of them were beneficial.”
I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan since her debut album in 2006. I can remember the first time I heard “Teardrops On My Guitar” on the radio, and I knew she was going to be a big deal. From that point on, every song she wrote, every album she released, every tour she performed on had to be better than the last and it always was. What Miss Americana reveals is why Taylor Swift was deadset on always one-upping herself. It’s not every day the music industry sees an artist so determined to keep putting out work that overshadows what they’ve previously released and accomplished. Taylor Swift is one of those rare artists that is. However, in Miss Americana, the sad truth comes out that Taylor Swift never felt good enough and never felt like she actually belonged in the industry. So, she kept working harder to prove herself.
While some artists have peaks and dips throughout their career, Taylor Swift always seemed to be going up. That is until she reached what then felt like the pinnacle of her career with her fifth studio album, 1989. Taylor was the biggest artist in the world, which made her fans love her more while her haters sat behind their computer screens, waiting for the right moment to get the entire world to turn on her. The Anti-Taylor Swift cult got exactly what they wanted when a certain rapper from her past reemerged to knock her off her pedestal.
The Fall of The Taylor Empire
Before Miss Americana, Taylor didn’t speak much about 2016, but as a fan who has stood by her side through all of her ups and downs, I can declare 2016 was the most chaotic year to be a Swiftie. Here’s a timeline of the Kimye VS Taylor feud so I don’t have to regurgitate what’s been said a million times: Feud Timeline.
“#TaylorSwiftIsOverParty was the number one trend on Twitter worldwide. Do you know how many people have to be tweeting that they hate you for that to happen?”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
Taylor didn’t do any interviews for her reputation album–the album she created in response to all the backlash– so the Netflix documentary was the first time she spoke about how hard it was for her during that time period. In Miss Americana, Taylor describes herself as feeling very lonely and bitter and even compares herself to “a wounded animal lashing out.” But as always Taylor turned to music to get her through this time period, and that’s what I always admired about her. I believe that’s the thing that’s maintained her success all these years. In a book I bought for my goddaughter called A Book For the Littlest Taylor Swift Fans: You Are Fearless, the author describes Taylor as someone who creates power from pain. That’s exactly what Taylor did during one of the darkest times in her life, and it’s what she will continue to do for the rest of her life.
“When people decided I was wicked and evil and conniving and not a good person, that was the one I couldn’t really bounce back from because my whole life was centered on it,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
After the whole affair, Taylor Swift’s good-girl image was tarnished, and she could no longer rely on the approval of others for her happiness. She was at the lowest she had ever been, but at the same time, something wonderful happened for Taylor; she met actor Joe Alwyn. Taylor and Joe were together for six years before splitting in early 2023, and while no one knows the truth, at least not until The Tortured Poets Department is released, Joe seemed to create solace for Taylor. While he is an actor, he typically avoids the spotlight and lives the kind of private life Taylor could only ever experience in her sleep.
While it ultimately didn’t work out, and Taylor ended up stepping more into the spotlight post-pandemic than she had since 2015, Miss Americana shows how Joe taught Taylor how to be happy on her own, without encouragement from the public. He was there for her when the whole world seemed to be against her, and from her songs about him, it seemed he showed her how to truly be loved without having to work for that love.
“Even though it was really horrible, I was happy, but I wasn’t happy in the way I was trained to be happy. It was happiness without anyone else’s input. It was just we were happy,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
While the world found out the truth about that Kanye West phone call when it fully leaked in March 2020, Miss Americana was filmed and released when we all just had to take Taylor’s word for it. I never doubted her once. In her December 2020 song “long story short,” Taylor sings, “Your nemesis will defeat themselves before you get the chance to swing.” Of course, she was right as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West announced their divorce in 2021, and Kanye would go on to be entirely blacklisted from the music industry after praising Adolf Hitler. Taylor, on the other hand, has only gotten bigger since her feud with the former married couple.
The Good & Bad Behind The Scenes
From her tour costumes to her iconic rhinestone guitar, everything in Taylor Swift’s life looked sparkly and glamorous, but clearly, the behind-the-scenes were much different. In Miss Americana, Taylor touches upon topics that weren’t being written about by every news outlet the way her relationships or her feud with Kanye and Kim were.
“It woke me up from this life where I used to sweat all these things, but like, do you really care if the Internet doesn’t like you today if your mom’s sick from her chemo? You’ve gotta be able to really prioritize what matters to you. For me, it’s my family and my friends,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
In 2015, Taylor revealed to her fans on Tumblr that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. She later sang about the challenges of coping with the diagnosis in her 2019 song “Soon You’ll Get Better” but went further into depth in Miss Americana. She reveals her priorities really shifted as her family, especially her mother, whom she’s always been close with, meant more to her than stressing over whatever rumors about her were floating around the internet that day.
Later, Taylor revealed something that was only ever speculated about: During her 1989 era, when she was on top of the world, she was struggling with an eating disorder. Miss Americana shows an array of videos of media outlets criticizing her for being too skinny and accusing her of promoting unrealistic body standards by hanging out with so many Victoria's Secret models. One of her critics, comedian Nikki Glaser, would later apologize and reveal that she was struggling with her own eating disorder when she made those comments.
On a happier note, Miss Americana features a dinner and wine night scene for the real fans. Taylor enjoys a night at her Nashville penthouse with her friend, Abigail Anderson. Abigail is someone Taylor sings about in her 2008 song “Fifteen”–” You sit in class next to a redhead named Abigail, and soon enough, you’re best friends.” The two have remained best friends ever since, and during Taylor’s Nashville show on her Eras Tour last year, Abigail was in attendance, and Taylor sang “Fifteen” as one of her surprise songs.
Don’t Be Like The Dixie Chics
There was a lot that Taylor aimed to do with Miss Americana, but one of the most prominent topics was her dipping her toes into politics. One of Taylor’s morals throughout her career was that she could encourage people to vote, but she wouldn’t tell them who to vote for. As a people pleaser, it was easy for her not to ruffle any feathers and not to say anything that could make anyone mad or cause any tension. In Miss Americana, she reveals that because she started out in the country music world, she was constantly warned not to be like the Dixie Chics. The Dixie Chics were massively successful in Country music until the Iraq war, when they vocally expressed their disapproval of George W Bush.
However, Taylor Swift could no longer remain neutral in politics after an incident in her life that affected her more than any criticism, VMA moment, or global internet cancellation: her sexual assault trial. Wikipedia breaks everything down Here! But the most significant thing that came out of the trial was that David Mueller was suing Taylor for millions of dollars and she countersued for $1 and won. This was the same year as the #MeToo and Times Up Movements, and because of her influential trial, Taylor ended as one of several Times People of The Year for their Silence Breakers cover.
“A nice girl doesn’t force their opinions on people. A nice girl smiles and waves and says thank you. A nice girl doesn’t make people feel uncomfortable with her views. I was so obsessed with not getting in trouble I was like I’m just not going to do anything that anyone can say anything about,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
I remember watching this trial in real-time, but it wasn’t until Miss Americana that Taylor Swift revealed how dehumanizing and debilitating the experience was. From that point forward, she felt a responsibility to stand up for what she believed in despite what anyone might say about it. Her first move was to speak out against Marsha Blackburn on Instagram in hopes others would vote against her in Nashville’s upcoming election. Taylor was furious, and we see her anger in one of the most memorable scenes from Miss Americana.
Taylor has a heated debate with her team and her father about why she feels she needs to encourage her massive Instagram following to register to vote and not vote for Blackburn. Taylor disdains Blackburn’s stance on gay marriage, but she is especially upset that the senator voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. As someone who has dealt with countless stalkers, death threats, and a whole bunch of other dangers the public doesn’t even know about, it’s understandable why Taylor felt so personally hurt by this.
Taylor has received endless criticism for talking about politics whether people wish popstars would mind their business and keep their opinions to themselves or people think Taylor doesn’t do enough and she needs to be even more vocal than she’s been. For me, Miss Americana was not Taylor cementing herself as a political activist but freeing herself from her former belief system and realizing how freeing it feels to stand up for what she believes in, even if it’s going to piss a few people off. Donald Trump, for instance, said he liked her music 25% less after she spoke out against Marsha Blackburn. Taylor, in response, laughed it off.
“I couldn’t really stop thinking about it, and I just thought to myself next time there’s any opportunity to change anything, you had better know what you stand for and what you want to say,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
What We Can Learn From Taylor Swift
For some, Miss Americana may seem like a documentary rehashing the many dramas throughout Taylor Swift’s career, but for me, it’s the story of one of the most powerful women in the world finding her voice. Taylor could teach a masterclass on rising up from the ashes, as she’s done it so many times throughout her career. No matter how much backlash she received, she never let it bring her down, and that’s why she is where she is today. It was not luck, it was because of her resilience.
“Everybody in music has their own sort of niche specialty thing that they do that sets them apart from everybody else, and my storytelling is what it is for me. I know that without me writing my own songs, I wouldn’t be here,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
In Miss Americana, we see Taylor Swift hands-on in the studio. She is not one of those pop stars where a group of executives behind the scenes are pulling all the strings. Some artists think songwriting means going into a studio and sitting down with several songwriters, offering maybe one or two lines while the underpaid songwriters craft the majority of the tune. With Taylor, she is always the one pulling the weight. In Miss Americana, she spends a lot of time in the studio with producer Joel Little. While he offers some feedback and insights, it’s clear Taylor is the mastermind behind her music.
Even though Taylor may have been inspired for the wrong reasons–constantly needing to prove herself and get the public’s validation–her determination to always do better than she had in the past is inspiring. For women who were not always let into all the rooms that they’re allowed into now, it’s inspiring to see someone break down every barrier in her way and pave the road for the female artists who will come after her.
“Everyone’s a shiny new toy for like two years. The female artists I know have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to, or else you’re out of a job. Constantly having to reinvent. Constantly finding new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny. Be new to us, be young to us but only in a new way and only the way we want, and reinvent yourself but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting but also a challenge for you. Live out a narrative that we find interesting enough to entertain us but not so crazy that it makes us uncomfortable,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
Mostly, I’ve always admired Taylor’s authenticity, which I don’t think she gets enough credit for. Nothing turns me off from a musician more than when I don’t feel like they’re being authentic. Whether they know it or not, I believe the artists who aren't being authentically themselves will always have a hard time building a loyal fanbase. From age 16 to 34, Taylor has always been herself. Her 2019 lead single “ME!” may have received criticism for being childish and not including the strong songwriting skills that she’s capable of, but I always found it to be as genuine and true to Taylor as anything else she’s ever created.
The song empowers listeners to celebrate and love themselves, not compare themselves to others, and understand how unique and irreplaceable they truly are. Clearly, this was something Taylor struggled with throughout her life, but in 2019, she was learning how to love who she is. This is the most important lesson for anyone to learn, not only women. But this song meant a lot to me at the time, and it still does. Taylor and her music have connected me to countless people, some of whom are now my closest friends. I believe this is one of her strongest purposes. She’s helped people bond over mutual music tastes and similar experiences. She is a true trailblazer, and we will not see another Taylor Swift for a long time, or possibly ever again.
Here’s just some of the criticism Taylor’s received throughout her career: she dates too much, all she writes about is relationships, she’s calculated, she doesn’t deserve her success, she’s annoying, her activism is performative, she only does good things because she gets good publicity for it. This list goes on and on.
“I want to love glitter and also stand up for the double standards that exist in our society. I want to wear pink and also tell you how I feel about politics, and I don’t think those things have to cancel each other out,”-Taylor Swift, Miss Americana.
I’ve always found it frustrating that someone so extraordinary could be met with so much belittling backlash, but that’s why I had to end Women’s History Month with Miss Americana. We may never be able to get rid of these Taylor Swift naysayers, but at this point in her career, now more than ever, it’s safe to say she doesn’t care, and she’s never going to let them stop her.
Wow great job again Gina I know how you and your sister
Love Taylor Swift .I remember you and your sister calling from the back seat play it again Daddy.Taylor thank you for all you have done for so many years.Gina you need to do an interview with her.