Say what you want about the politicians of 1964, but not one of them looked at the early flowering of Beatlemania and thought they’d better pepper their speeches with references to “From Me To You”.
The arrival of Taylor Swift on our shores, however, has occasioned some quite remarkable pretzelling from our media and political class to shoehorn into their work a click-farming Swift reference.
News
The initial Eras tour announcement kicked off a round of international reporting on how it could save little old Australia from a recession, and while we’d sort of quibble about its status as “news”, the arrival of her private jet last week did take up prominent real estate on the homepages of some of our country’s biggest newspapers.
Asbestos — the Taylor Swift of carcinogens — has been found in the mulch of several schools in New South Wales, but NSW Environment Protection Authority chief executive Tony Chappel wanted to place any possible health impacts on children in its proper context.
“All of our tests at Olympic Park are negative,” he said. “I can say with certainty that the harbour city is ready to welcome Taylor Swift with open arms.”
Then there’s the mind-bogglingly awful headline choice in the reporting of a car accident that killed one teenager and left her sister in a coma.
Commentary
In what could be termed a leisurely stroll of a piece on the new FX series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, ABC presenter Virginia Trioli is very upfront about just what a stretch her Swift reference is:
Absorbing as the series is, it’s impossible to watch these wealthy, stylish and smart women spin themselves into ever-diminishing pools of booze and chiffon without thinking of another bird of a feather who has just landed here and draws all attention to her: one just as smart, stylish and accomplished as them but who refuses to be caged.
And what do these brilliant swans and the enormously talented Taylor Swift have in common? Absolutely nothing.
Observing “it’s a remarkable contrast to draw”, Trioli applies a Marxist (?) critique of Swift:
The dependence that makes the Swans so irresistible to so many men is precisely what’s missing for the countless Americans enraged by Swift’s dominance of music, popular culture and just about everything else. She seizes control of her life, her music, the means of production and the narrative of her love life — good or bad.
A piece with the headline “What Anthony Albanese can learn from Taylor Swift in a fragmented world” was a statistical inevitability, one suspects. Guardian Australia took up that hook with gusto, providing such feedback as:
The first lesson is about collaboration. Taylor Swift’s career has been a journey from country starlet to mainstream popular success with forays into rock, synth-pop, hip-hop and, more recently, the edges of independent music.
The Guardian also gave us “The A-League glimpsed its wildest dreams when Taylor Swift came to Melbourne”, which tries to imagine a universe where Australia’s domestic football league is popular.
Nine managed to make Swift the shakey scaffold for a piece about the challenges facing Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock via Bullock’s mild response to a question about the potential inflationary impacts of Swift’s tour.
Leaders
Anthony Albanese has been relatively quiet about Swift during her visit, especially given she came up second on his 2023 “Spotify wrapped” and he has a long history of professed fandom. It was her lyrics, rather than, say, Billy Bragg’s, that he reached for during the “gotcha” era of his election campaign: “Here is a Taylor Swift comment for you. My theory is ‘Shake it off’,” Albanese said at the time.
It may be too much to hope that he’s learnt from the limp attempts of other politicians, up against hard-right figures, to co-op popular culture — or perhaps he simply heard himself saying “the Tay-Tay fever is here” on Gold Coast radio last June.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, for his part, has kept private any views on whether Swift should have followed up “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” with a song highly in favour of getting back together.
But given the addiction Australian politicians have to quoting Swift — her lyrics have graced Hansard no fewer than 28 times since 2015 — we can only assume it’s a matter of time before Dutton makes a “Nice to meet you, where you been?” reference to Albanese’s frequent overseas trips.
