Have TIME infantilised their Person of the Year?

Some thoughts on Taylor Swift's most recent interview, but rather a wider climate of music journalism that unhelpfully equates conversational 'challenge' with mean-spirited critique

In all honesty, thinking and writing about the world’s most successful pop star often makes me feel kind of… conflicted. Like many people my age, I truly believe that Taylor Alison Swift is one of the great songwriters of her generation, and the kind of shrewd marketeer that I actively teach to my Music Business students as a model for how you can smoothly transition feelings of intimacy and loyalty from grassroots to stadiums. Folklore is one of my most cherished records of the last decade, and not just because it’s the hipster choice — if you look at the kind of storytelling she adopts on ‘The Last Great American Dynasty’ or ‘Peace’, where she manages to look outside of herself with both whimsy and irony and heart, I truly believe you are looking at an absolute master at work. Alongside the undeniable dynamism of ‘Cruel Summer’ or ‘Fifteen’ or ‘All Too Well’ or even ‘Ready For It?’ (a recent fave that has only just revealed its full charms to my ears), the Taylor Swift songbook is one to hold close, a coming-of-age story that just keeps coming and coming anew.

I admire her artistry deeply, and yet I’m very aware that my digital footprint might look like I have a personal vendetta, intent to play killjoy whilst everyone else celebrates the success of a woman breaking records as (ahem) swiftly, as she sets them. However, I like to think that it’s because I believe in Taylor Swift’s talent and personal agency that I so often find myself critiquing her universe too.

Some of these issues are not always of her own direct doing, but rather the byproduct of what it means to be this impossibly famous, the possessor of so many deeply parasocial hearts. As the old adage goes, there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire, and I have written about how Swift commodities her fanbase by pulling on the heartstrings of extensive, expensive ‘must-have’ product, whilst also recognising that she speaks to an audience of commercially-neglected women who are quite happy to fork out their savings if it means there is somewhere they can go to feel safe, seen and heard in their sequinned articulations of romantic grief and self-discovery. I have been amused by the lengths her fanbase will go to burrow within the clues and potential connections between her songs, but also troubled by the lack of media literacy and rampant cruelty that they aim at anybody who dares to suggest that there isn’t necessarily a profound or wholly admirable easter egg in their idol’s every singular move. The bigger question of whether popstars should be expected to be role models/make political statements is one for another time, but it’s fair to say that I do think there is valid comment to be had in exploring the comparatively low bar of expectation that there is for Swift’s feminism, social advocacy or statement on issues that affect people outside of her immediate line of sight, even despite her unprecedented influence and demonstrable belief in narratives of meticulously strategised karma and revenge.

Nonetheless, I was not surprised (nor saddened) when TS was named this week as TIME’s Person of the Year. If the glittery Louboutin fits, so it shall be worn, and there is no denying that between the re-recorded albums and the Eras tour, she has defined the narrative of 2023, a year rich in comforting motifs of nostalgia and box office feminism and ‘lucky girl syndrome’. She rose to the occasion of her rare interview opportunity, offering frequent glimmers of the warmth and endearing, eagerly-convoluted explanations of her emotional state that have made her so beloved. I think she fielded questions about her relationship with Travis Kelce fairly, and I enjoyed the writers observations about her musical appeal: “Swift has a preternatural skill for finding the story...a narrative world, in which her music is just one piece in an interactive, shape-shifting story. Swift is that story’s architect and hero, protagonist and narrator.”

Reading it back, this observational anecdote was perhaps also the first red flag. Across several thousand glowing words, it wasn’t Swift’s answers that caused me particular concern, but rather the parts where the writer renounces their control of the journalistic narrative, describing questions that they thought to ask but didn’t end up saying aloud. I wouldn’t go as far as to call this a total puff piece, but it was quite intriguing how forthcoming the writer was about holding back — not as a result of Swift’s standoffishness (“She is seemingly unguarded in conversation”), but a deep-seated reluctance to ‘challenge’ her ‘truth’ in a way that might be perceived as combative or rude -

“She looked like a superstar who was mining her personal experience as successfully as ever. I am tempted to say this. But then I think, Who am I to challenge it, if that’s how she felt?”

On many levels, I do get it. Interviewing famous people is extremely exciting and often rewarding, but it can be deeply intimidating. It’s extra nerve-wracking when you’re speaking to someone with the influence to decide exactly when, how and why that interview takes place. There’s more pressure still when you know the artist is the kind who will read it, when her fanbase with dissect every word, and when you feel the weight of putting together a piece that fits the suitably celebratory tone of a year-end profile. As a male writer, I can imagine that Sam Lansky felt an extra degree of trepidation around wanting to respect Swift’s descriptions of her feelings, to not probe in ways that could be read as invalidating, mansplaining, or further perpetuating any stereotypes around ‘hysterical’ womanhood or self-victimising tendencies.

I hear those worries, and respect Lansky’s desire to tread carefully in areas where Swift may have already felt typecast. And yet, something in the exchange of this interview, and the way that it is described, nods to a wider issue in pop cultural journalism where we conflate challenge with aggression, assuming that a request for clarity from a very famous, successful woman is somehow a sexist ‘gotcha’ moment in disguise. The work of a music journalist is not the same as a political reporter — unless an artist is directly involved in a significant transgression or proffers controversial material in their work, it is rarely necessary to grill them with any intense rigour. And yet, I resent the notion that politely asking someone to express themselves with more nuance, or to reflect on a different perspective or viewpoint, is necessarily the same thing as invalidating their experience or being unfairly hostile and combative. Good music journalism isn’t about the ego of the writer, but I do believe that a great interview should be a conversation - one where the artist will almost always talk more, but one where provocations from the journalist help to create something more unique and distinct to that moment, pushing beyond the pre-conceived script to find a more straightforward truth. This point is magnified in Swift’s case, not depleted - for someone who has built a career on the meanings and double-meanings of her words, why not explore the weight of them?

In many ways, polite challenge — and the subsequent insight that it often yields — is exactly what both Swift and her fans deserve. If Lansky’s point was to recognise that her fanbase is made up of smart, passionate women who deserve to feel heard in their experiences, limiting the opportunities that Swift has to be reflexive is not always a kindness, but rather a risk of infantilisation, assuming that she would not want nor appreciate the opportunity to expand. Time and time again in popular culture, it feels as if Taylor Swift’s celebrity in particular is held in a frustrating double standard, where she is simultaneously understood as the most powerful, autonomous businesswoman in the Western world, and yet also underestimated as some kind of delicate (white) orchid for whom even the most well-intended analysis is shaped as purposeful insult. Had that line of dialogue been opened, there is every chance that she would have revealed the nuance of how deeply her internal feelings at the time of her ‘cancellation’ conflicted with the public perception of her having it all. Or she might have declined to answer, which would have been an interesting observation in and of itself. But with every layer of perspex that we add to the Schröedinger’s fantasy of ‘Pop Stars Beyond Critique’, we serve only to pedestal a dehumanising fallacy of the faultless idol — a persona of the year, but not a personality.

Swift has stated her delight with the piece, so perhaps my concern is unwarranted. Maybe this approach actually suits her just fine, or maybe it’s even as simple as TIME not being the time or the place. After all, Person Of The Year is a success marker, a victory lap of positive momentum. This profile achieved all of this, and was a fortifying, entertaining read for it, the kind of text that will undoubtedly be a core reference in studies to come of the exacting empire that Swift has built through talent, hard work and resilience. But given how rare these opportunities are to step inside her mastermind, I would have relished the opportunity to hear her a little better, to recognise her intellect and encourage her ability to hold court as a more active participant in a two-way conversation about her life and times. Done with trust, empathy and kindness, polite disagreement with an artist can be the most rewarding interview gift of all, creating deeper opportunities for understanding and indeed, warranted challenge. After all, there’s been no career challenge yet that Swift hasn’t faced with fortitude, creativity and ultimately, triumph — who is to say that a celebrity profile wouldn’t be the same?