What Do You Love So Much About Taylor Swift?

I really respect her integrity. She’s worked hard to always better herself based on critics (“she didn’t write all her own songs”, “her voice isn’t strong enough”, etc), has been in a mentally abusive relationship (with Kanye. She sought his approval for a very long time after he interrupted her award, until just a few years ago, before coming to the realization he was two-faced). She tries to be as honest as possible. That tape that Kim & Kanye released to make her look bad? Turns out, after time passed, they admitted it was edited.

She gets a lot of flak because she writes songs about breakups, yet in interviews that focus on that point, she always brings up the point that they never ask those types of questions to male vocalists. She never names names about people songs may be about, regardless of public intrigue. She kept getting asked if she planned to settle down when she turned 30, and she flipped the tables again that they would never ask a man that question.

When Apple announced a 90 day free trial for their new Music subscription service, they didn’t intend to pay the artists during that time. She wrote an open letter to them, and it opened their eyes and they changed their minds.

When she changed record labels before Lover came out, she fought for control of her original masters. The only way she could potentially gain control of them is if she were to re-sign with the same label for an equivalent amount of albums (or something of the ilk). She instead chose to walk away, and her new label agreement includes her masters, and she’s legally allowed (and has started) to re-record songs from her first five albums. Her original masters up through reputation? They were scooped up by someone with venture capital backing, and just resold with an agreement clause that they could not even talk to her about it else the sale would be void. Here’s her statement on that.

When she was negotiating with her new label over streaming fees, her fees were going to be above the normal. So, she asked that they raise all the currently signed artists to that same level, and they did.

She’s donated money to a lot of charities, as any decent artist would, but one thing that stands out to me is that she donated $250,000 to Kesha after the ruling that would require Kesha to continue working with someone she said had raped her.

Then, there is her connection with fans. See Swiftmas, the Harvey Mudd college concert, to performing in a local tavern because a fan emailed her asking to help with his marriage proposal.

She’s also gone on record stating that she always try her best to make sure fan favorites are always performed at her concerts, because nothing stinks more than seeing your favorite artist perform music only from their most recent album. If she has to perform Love Story at every gig, so be it. I believe she mentions it in her interview with Paul McCartney via Rolling Stone magazine.

All of the above? That’s just her, as a person. That doesn’t even touch on her songwriting.

I adore good lyrics, and she does not disappoint. They are simply amazing, getting better and better with every new song or album. For me, songs that lyrically make no sense are hard to become engaged with. That has never been a problem with her writing. Her story telling is second to none, at this point.

If you asked me to pick a favorite album, I couldn’t. They are all my favorite children. The best I could do is point you to her masterpiece of a song, All Too Well. It hit right before she moved 100% over to pop (so it still has some country roots), it doesn’t have a chorus, and even at over 5 minutes, it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. It also has some of the best story telling she’s ever done, with a couple sets of lyrics that just hit perfectly.