I Am Every Swiftie

Solidarity with those damned to dispair

Sometimes, the people we love disappoint us.

I used to wonder whether people in ancient places like Egypt and Rome really believed that their leaders were gods. Whether they could put aside common sense and convince themselves that there was something other than blood and guts hiding under the skin of some guy named Tiberius. Then I joined Twitter dot com.

“Parasocial” is a word that gets thrown around a lot lately — I’m as guilty as anyone. The dictionary defines a parasocial relationship as “a relationship that a person imagines having with another person whom they do not actually know.” That’s sixteen words. I only need two: stan twitter.

There is a very real human impulse to attach yourself to the artists who speak to you, the ones who manage to articulate the feelings you couldn’t even wrap your head around when you thought you were the only one feeling them. This person understands me, you realize. You see a piece of yourself in them, maybe a big one. Pretty soon you start seeing pieces of them in yourself. It’s like finding a mirror that can explain you back to yourself.

There’s something deeply unsettling, then, when that mirror does something you never would. When it says something you find abhorrent. That’s where it gets tricky, of course. A mirror cannot disappoint you — a human being always will. I write you this as a Van Morrison fan, and a Clapton fan, and a Pinegrove fan, and a Joni Mitchell fan, and a — I could go on, but let’s not.

About a month ago, the news broke that Taylor Swift had broken up with her longtime boyfriend (fiance?), a man whose name I don’t know and whose identity feels disingenuous to Google. Joe, I think? It doesn’t really matter. They’d been together a long time, they broke up. Fair enough, things happen. Whatever.

That’s not when everything imploded, but that’s where it started. Not with a bang, just a whimper. A few weeks later — that’s when things really hit the fan. Taylor, it seems, is now involved with one Matthew Healy, lead singer of dirtbag indie outfit the 1975. It’s a bold move, and unexpected in its lack of calculation. Taylor Swift has being a pop star down to a science, a celebrity bushido for staying above the social media maelstrom. After, famously, keeping silent about politics for her whole career, she dipped her toe just deep enough to get us all off her back. She spoke up just in time not to be accused of staying silent, and she spoke in such a way to get as many people off her back as possible.

I don’t begrudge her of this, if I’m being honest. When you’re under that much scrutiny, why start talking in too much detail about things it’s not your job to talk about? So her politics amount to one of those “in this house we…” lawn signs you see in the suburbs. Fair enough! She’s a pop singer, she’s not a political theorist. What was important to her fanbase was that she said something, and more importantly, she didn’t say anything wrong.

Now, however, she seems to have really stepped in it. Or, at least, stepped in it exactly the right way to get a bunch of people very angry on the internet. For the last several weeks, Twitter’s been the bloodiest battlefield in the Swiftie Civil War. The issue, in essence, is Matty Healy’s problematic behavior. Almost everyone seems to agree that Healy’s hijinks are just that — problematic, ranging from standard rock star stupidity to genuinely troubling. To ascribe any ideology to his nonsense or to try and triangulate any hidden beliefs therein is silly; Healy’s an edgelord, and an idiot, and probably kind of an asshole. That’s kind of all there is to it. To tally it up to anything else is giving him far too much credit. But what’s tearing #ErasTour Twitter apart right now isn’t the question of whether or not Matty Healy’s a dumbass; there’s a solid consensus there. The house has divided, you see, over Taylor’s culpability for knowingly dating a dumbass.

Teens with display names like Stream Fearless and Eras Tour 5/13/23 <333 are tearing each other to shreds out there. But the more of this I read (I’m allowed a little schadenfreude every now and again, aren’t I?) and the more Swiftie handwringing I bear witness to, the clearer it becomes that these people aren’t actually debating over Taylor’s moral purity. They’re fighting for their own.

The Swifties are finding out what it feels like to be let down by an artist who you once saw a whole lot of yourself in. When you hand someone else the keys to your identity, you can’t be blamed if you get a little twitchy over how they’re driving.

To call it “parasocial” is a little dismissive, I think, and not wholly correct either. It’s not just simple finger-wagging. People — and especially teenagers on the internet — have a tendency to let their love for an artist consume them. To let it define them. To let it become their hobby, their community, their anchor. Do I think this is particularly healthy? No, of course not. But it’s always been a part of being a music fan, on some level, magnified by the arrival of social media and then gone off the rails in the midst of a global lockdown. There are genuine, nuanced conversations that need to happen about art, artists, and where (if anywhere) the two diverge. But that’s not what’s happening on Twitter, and I have to say I’m skeptical that it ever really will be.

When you let the essence of yourself become loving somebody else, of course it’ll be hard when they let you down. It’s even harder when you have no direct way of telling them how they’ve made you feel. And so, to war.

I write all this with nothing but compassion. I write this as someone who listened to Astral Weeks on the way to get his Covid vaccine, and who still winces a little when I say I’ve been listening to Pinegrove lately. But I have to believe that what those songs stir in me is mine, and that it can’t be stolen by any famous asshole. There are people whose music has meant a great deal to me, and whose behavior has made me grimace every time I say so. To quote one of them, “you're no one 'til someone lets you down.”

So to the Swifties, I say welcome aboard. It doesn’t get better, but it gets easier. Keep your head up, and let your hero make some bad decisions. The next album will probably be better for it, anyways.