Please Advise! Can Taylor Swift Save the World?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible. ]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Taylor Swift has a new concert movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. It pulled in US$128 million in its opening weekend. Forbes magazine says the tour itself may earn $4.1 billion while generating $5.7 billion in economic activity in the U.S. alone.

Should Taylor Swift be running things?

Signed,

Swiftiest

Dear Swiftiest,

The Book of Ecclesiastes says: “The race is not to the swift.”

Wrong again, Holy Bible. Taylor Swift is winning at everything. It’s not just that her concert tour has a larger GDP than Liberia, that her movie is creating spontaneous theatre mosh pits that would have terrified Sid Vicious, or that her apparent relationship with Kansas City Chiefs receiver Travis Kelce is demonstrating to America's most popular sports league what real marketing muscle looks like.

There’s also the fact that Swift’s direct deal with the AMC theatre chain to exhibit her concert film did an end run around the restrictive practices of American movie studios, just as they were busy attempting to force striking writers and actors into submission. Hollywood, grovel beneath the bejewelled boot of your new overlord.

Taylor Swift is clearly a cultural and economic force. Could she become a political one?

Dr. Steve is well-positioned to observe Swift as a purely cultural and political phenomenon because Dr. Steve is remarkably ignorant of her art. He knows the "Shake It Off" song, and maybe one or two others about trouble and never, ever getting back together. For Dr. Steve, Taylor Swift exists primarily as a public figure and celebrity icon.

As such, she strikes him as a remarkably positive force in public life. For one thing, in a mainstream music industry that has increasingly turned towards studio-crafted sausage links created by super producers and sung by hired karaoke vocalists, Swift writes her own songs, more like an indie act than a typical pop star. (Your personal opinion of the songs is a separate matter.)

She has paid her tour staff well while empowering her fan base and taking pains not to take herself too seriously. She took bold action to reclaim her music catalogue from a sleazy management deal of the sort that has plagued recording artists since the dawn of rock and roll. And her public policy positions have generally inspired confidence in her judgement.

Swift expressed her fear and disappointment after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. In a video clip that went viral, Swift tells her father that she doesn't care if people are alienated by her opposition to Donald Trump and Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, saying she wants to be on the right side of history.

(In response, Blackburn warned Swift that she and other musicians will be banned after a Marxist takeover of America. Blackburn was silent about a potential Ron De Santis takeover of America, but Swift is clearly heterosexual, and will probably be spared as long as she doesn't write any books.)

In a world of dysfunction, Swift exudes competence. Lots of public spheres need that. Why not make her Speaker of the House? Unlike the Republicans, Swift knows how to run a show with a cast of hundreds. She’s coming to Toronto next month — maybe when she’s done getting some indictments in the Greenbelt scandal she can help straighten out the Blue Jays.

Our current political and media climates are impacted to a depressing degree by moguls — Trump, the Kochs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg. Taylor Swift may not have enough heft to counterbalance the deleterious effects of that rogue’s gallery. But isn’t it nice to see a mighty colossus standing astride our cultural landscape who doesn’t provide regular endorsements and signal boosts for white supremacists and anti-democratic lowlifes? That we could shake, shake, shake off Musk and Trump like so many muddy droplets from a wet golden retriever. It is entirely possible that millions of young Swifties who catch her drift may descend on ballot boxes in 2024, spelling doom for Trump or whatever crackpot substitute the Republicans stand up in his place.

In fact, if her devoted fan club will allow entry to someone completely ignorant about which of her exes owned the damnable scarf mentioned in the song, and incapable of singing any of her lyrics other than “shake shake shake, shake shake shake” (and even then making unscheduled detours into the catalogue of KC & the Sunshine Band), please accept this application.

Dr. Steve would like to become a Swiftie.