Taylor Swift: Valentine’s Day Every Day

This Feb­ru­ary 12th Tay­lor Swift was fea­tured in a movie about love and rela­tion­ships, called “Valentine’s Day”. One thing that is unde­ni­able about Tay­lor Swift is that she loves her music. She also loves the expe­ri­ence of love. Her love for music and her love for romance comes through in every song she sings.

“Peo­ple haven’t always been there for me but music always has.”

“You can say that I love ‘Love’. It fas­ci­nates me.”

“Today Was a Fairy­tale”, a song Tay­lor wrote for the Valentine’s Day sound­track, dropped the third week in Jan­u­ary. It quickly became the most down­loaded sin­gle for any female artist, shat­ter­ing the record pre­vi­ously held by Brit­tany Spears.

But in spite of her amaz­ing suc­cess, it seems that Tay­lor has remained a very down-​​to-​​ earth girl. Recently, on Jan­u­ary 26th, she tweeted: “I didn’t notice until now that the per­son who made my cof­fee today wrote ‘you’re won­der­ful’ on the cup. It made my day.”

Fear­less Love

In 2008, Tay­lor Swift’s album “Fear­less” topped the charts, sell­ing more than 10 mil­lion copies. Swift has received more than 50 major music awards to date, includ­ing one at the Video Music Awards in 2009.

Every­one remem­bers that dur­ing that accep­tance speech she was inter­rupted by Kanye West who felt a need to tell the world that he thought Bey­once Knowles actu­ally deserved the award. In a moment of humil­ity, the world saw Tay­lor show self con­trol, kind­ness, and respect for the rap­per who was say­ing humil­i­at­ing things in what should have been­her shin­ing moment.

Tay­lor Swift’s describes what was going through her mind dur­ing the encounter with Kanye West at the Video Music Awards:
“Wow I can’t believe I won… This is awe­some… Don’t trip and fall…
I’m gonna get to thank the fans…This is so cool…
Oh, Kanye West is here… Cool hair­cut… What are ya doing there… Ouch…
I guess I’m not gonna get to thank the fans…”

After that moment, she went back­stage and tried hard to hold back the tears, because she had to per­form again. There was an out­pour­ing of anger from other artists who called on Kanye to apol­o­gize for his behav­ior. Later on, Kanye per­son­ally called Tay­lor and apol­o­gize. She accepted.

“I think allow­ing your­self to cry on the bath­room floor is fear­less. Let­ting go is fear­less.
Then, mov­ing on and being alright, that’s fear­less, too.”

From a very early age Tay­lor has shown her­self to be Fear­less. Her pre-​​teen singing tal­ents were dis­cov­ered through per­form­ing karaoke songs locally at fairs and events. By the age of 10 she was an award-​​winning poet. At age 12 she started play­ing the gui­tar. She prac­ticed for many hours every day. She learned to com­bine her tal­ents for writ­ing poetry with her pas­sion for music.

Her fam­ily was very sup­port­ive of her tal­ents and dreams. They even moved to Nashville, Ten­nessee, to pro­vide more opporuni­ties for their daughter’s singing career.

By the time she was 13, Tay­lor Swift had a con­tract with RCA Records but Tay­lor left when the com­pany tried to force her into a pre­de­ter­mined stereo­type of a teen singer.

Swift had a strong sense of self even as a young aspir­ing artist, and she wanted to sing and write her own songs. Scott Borchetta, of Big Machine Records, heard her singing at the Blue­bird Café and sensed she could become a pow­er­ful artist . He gave her the chance to write her own music with his record com­pany. At just 16 years old, Taylor’s debut song, Tim McGraw, vaulted her into the music spotlight.

Respect

Tay­lor Swift, like all teenagers, is learn­ing to nav­i­gate the world of love. That can be even harder for Tay­lor because she is a celebrity. One tool that Tay­lor Swift uses to pro­tect her heart is self respect. Tay­lor believes in her­self. In her music you can hear that her heart is full of ideas, hopes, dreams and heart­break. She under­stands what its like to feel like you are invis­i­ble, and she under­stands what it feels like to have her heart bro­ken by unre­quited love.
“When I was a lit­tle girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charm­ing and he’s every­thing you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wear­ing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you real­ize that Prince Charm­ing is not as easy to find as you thought. You real­ize the bad guy is not wear­ing a black cape and he’s not easy to spot; he’s really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has per­fect hair.“
— Tay­lor Swift,
Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine
And through her music Tay­lor is able to express these feel­ings to her fans. Rather than need­ing to express her­self by wear­ing tight or ridicu­lously reveal­ing clothes, putting up an over-​​sexed image, or get­ting into & stay­ing in immoral rela­tion­ships with guys who hurt her, she chooses to move on and let go. In her songs, we can often find some­thing of our­selves to iden­tify with.
“My goal is never to write songs that my fans can’t relate to.”
- Tay­lor Swift

Rela­tion­ship Rebellion

Tay­lor Swift is lead­ing a very spe­cial rev­o­lu­tion. It’s not a rebel­lion based on fight­ing par­ents and injur­ing her­self through the same old pre­dictable Hol­ly­wood pat­terns of self-​​destruction. Instead, she’s revolt­ing against Hollywood’s demand that she destroy her mind, body, and soul in order to fit in with all of the other celebri­ties. Swift tries to live out her belief in her­self and takes care of her­self.
“I rebelled against my record label when they wanted to shelve me, and I’ve rebelled against peo­ple try­ing to push me around in the record­ing stu­dio. To me, that’s always been much more excit­ing than going out and get­ting drunk. I remem­ber at high school try­ing to cheer up my girl­friends who were cry­ing in the bath­room after some party when they couldn’t remem­ber who they’d made out with the night before. You see, I don’t ever want to be that girl in the bath­room cry­ing.”
– Tay­lor Swift to the Brit­tish mag­a­zine, Seven

Even though she rebels against the stu­dio, Tay­lor hasn’t had the desire to rebel against her par­ents.
Taylor’s par­ents have worked hard to teach her about what is really impor­tant in life. On her 18th Birth­day Taylor’s par­ents threw her a party in Nashville with 200 guests:
“This is our gift to her,” said Taylor’s mother, Andrea Swift. “She knows the real gifts in life are rela­tion­ships.”
Tay­lor has writ­ten about the love she feels for her fam­ily in her music.
“I have an excel­lent father
His strength is mak­ing me stronger
God smiles on my lit­tle brother
Inside and out, he’s bet­ter than I am.”
– “The Best Day”
writ­ten and pro­duced
by Tay­lor Smith
She also rebels through her music when she says that the guy who she’s dat­ing and loves needs to treat her with respect. The idea of being a “princess” is frowned upon in our soci­ety at times. Women are told by mod­ern soci­ety that being treated like a “princess” by a guy is a sign of weak­ness, and that they need to give that up if they want a suc­cess in their career. Tay­lor shows us that we can chal­lenge those assump­tions.
In her songs she says that she wants the fairy tale soci­ety tells her to reject:
“You’ll be the prince
and I’ll be the princess
It’s a love story
baby, just say yes”
– “Love Story”
writ­ten and pro­duced
by Tay­lor Swift
Swift works hard to show through the way she lives her own life that a real fairy­tale is pos­si­ble by choos­ing to respect her­self and by rebelling against society’s demand for self-​​destruction.

Express your­self

Tay­lor Swift is an exam­ple of some­one who reflects con­fi­dence and inner hap­pi­ness. In her songs we see the many rejec­tions, not being cool & not fit­ting in; she fear­lessly shows vul­ner­a­bil­ity.
“When all you wanted was to be wanted
Wish you could go back and tell your­self what you know now
Back then I swore I was gonna marry him some­day
But I real­ized some big­ger dreams of mine
And Abi­gail gave every­thing she had to a boy
Who changed his mind and we both cried
‘cause when you’re fif­teen and some­body tells you they love you
You’re gonna believe them”
- Tay­lor Swift, “Fif­teen”
Tay­lor Swift wrote this song about her friend who let go of her self-​​respect to feel a moment of “love” from a boy and lived to regret it. Tay­lor saw her friend’s pain and vowed to her­self that she wouldn’t let that hap­pen to her. So instead of depend­ing on oth­ers to make her feel loved, Tay­lor Swift has cho­sen to pas­sion­ately pur­sue a music career and develop every­thing she has in her self – all of her talents.

What tal­ents do you have? What are your passions?

“The les­son I’ve learned the most often in life is that you’re always going to know more in the future than you know now!” - Tay­lor Swift

So what have you done this week to build your fairy­tale future?