Opinion: Ready for it? America Needs Taylor Swift’s Activist Era

Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Meryl Streep, LeBron James, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Morgan Freeman. Sitting in Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters, it was always fun to hear the latest to join the list. Nearly every A-lister who made a major contribution to American culture endorsed Clinton for president in 2016. Yet one name remained elusive: Taylor Swift. To many of her fans, myself included, her silence was disappointing.
After the election, the singer-songwriter offered a defense for her choice. “Unfortunately in the 2016 election, you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement. … I just knew I wasn’t going to help,” she explained.
Perhaps Swift’s political instincts are just that much better than those of every other big name who endorsed Clinton, or, more likely, she wasn’t ready to make her international mega-brand political.
Though Republican attempts to label Democrats as Hollywood elites did not change, by the 2018 midterm elections, Swift’s political analysis did. Just before the November election, Swift used her incredible platform to encourage voters to oust anti-LGBTQIA+ Sen. Marsha Blackburn. “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” she wrote in an Instagram post that garnered more than 2 million likes. Ultimately, the Tennessee Republican won by a healthy margin, but Swift’s statement led to tens of thousands of voter registrations overnight.
Swift didn’t stop there. In early 2020, she released a Netflix documentary, “Miss Americana,” about her political awakening. In the film, she discusses the trials and tribulations of being a famous woman in America and adds missing context to her public narrative. She details arguing over political stances with her father, the decision to get political in 2018 and an all-too-relatable generational frustration with the state of politics today. Later that year, she continued to fortify her position as a global superstar not afraid to speak her mind. In the wake of the protests that swept the nation in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, demanding justice for Black lives, Swift took Donald Trump head-on, tweeting, “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump.”
It became her most liked tweet ever.
Since then, Swift has been fighting a battle of her own. She’s spent the last few years re-recording the masters to her original albums after disapproving of their sale to music mogul Scooter Braun’s company. Swift has detailed Braun’s bullying behavior toward her, and the move to re-record her albums has been widely praised as both feminist and savvy. In fact, the move was reminiscent of her industry-reshaping power plays of the early 2010s.
While Swift took time to get political, she shocked business minds and music fans alike with her early willingness to wade into the streaming wars. In 2014, she pulled her entire music catalog from Spotify, calling the platform an “experiment” and lambasting the way artists were compensated. In 2015, she demonstrated her influence by demanding Apple Music pay artists during the platform’s free-trial phase. The company caved 24 hours later. Swift eventually agreed to allow her music back on Spotify in 2017.
Yet, given her history as the queen of the streaming wars and her decided choice to get political in recent years, in 2022, Swift sat out a battle she was uniquely suited for. As the coronavirus pandemic raged on, a music icon from a different generation, Neil Young, took an important stand. He gave Spotify an ultimatum: Stop letting podcast juggernaut Joe Rogan spread lethal COVID disinformation to millions of listeners ― or pull Young’s music from the platform. More than 1.1 million Americans have died of coronavirus to date, in part the result of a concerted effort by those like Rogan who profit off of spreading disinformation about the virus. Spotify chose Rogan. It’s no surprise. The former “Fear Factor” host draws millions of subscribers; Young doesn’t. And, despite Young’s plea for other artists to join his effort, few did so.
But while Young may not have had leverage with the streaming platform fueled by young listeners, Swift had already proved she does. Swift has earned over 25 billion streams on the platform and shattered records with her re-releases. Certainly her voice would have made a difference.
My point is not to shame Swift, who has since used her voice in targeted ways, including to encourage voter registration in 2023. It’s not her job to save democracy. Rather, what seems apparent is that Swift’s so-called political awakening more closely mirrors a carefully navigated corporate social responsibility agenda than her own personal views on the news or politics of the day. In the age of accountability culture (called “cancel culture” by some), the political views come with much larger risk for the business of Taylor Swift ― one that is projected to bring in $4 billion from her recent tour alone.
I’m certain that, just as she did in 2020, Swift will once again endorse President Joe Biden as he seeks reelection. With Republicans and Fox News already attacking her daily and Trump’s camp reportedly preparing a ‘holy war’ against her, she has little to lose in taking a predictable side that she has chosen before.
The real question is not whether Swift will nominally endorse Biden again but whether she will be an activist in defense of the same democracy whose sociopolitical culture made her the biggest celebrity in the world.
Specifically, “T-Swift” shifting from a carefully managed public brand to reflect a more personal, prolonged activism on behalf of her young fans, women, and the LGBTQ+ community could absolutely move the needle in November. Of course, this choice would mark an inflection point in Swift’s career — prioritizing her purported personal values over maximized brand growth. Yet our modern reality is that even weekly political tweets from the self-titled Miss Americana could very well save our democracy this fall.
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