As the megastar kicks off the UK leg of her world tour, Emily Cronin says the fact she’s a try-hard is just another reason to love her
THERE’S HER songwriting. Her storytelling. The way she can place a highly specific personal experience under a microscope and, in analysing it to a cellular level, transmute it into something universal. Her willingness to remain vulnerable in the face of years of scorn. Her apparent good cheer in light of the above. Her collegiality with other artists (most of the time). Her industry-moving defence of the value of art. Her commitment to female friendship. Her implausible and persistent belief in love and happy endings. Her elevation of girlhood into a dominant cultural force.
There are so many things to admire about Taylor Swift, but top of my personal list is this: she represents the triumph of effort over cool. Which is to say that in a world that still expects women to do it all and make it look easy, Swift shows her work. She has never (not once!) pretended that she doesn’t try her hardest at everything she does. For some, being seen to want something and to be frank about going for it still elicits disdain. They recoil from the earnestness of it all. But I maintain that it’s good to care, to try hard and not try to conceal that. Swift tries hard and she doesn’t apologise for that.
Consider the context. Around the time Swift was recording and promoting her early albums in the late 2000s, early 2010s, the leading aesthetic was ‘model off-duty chic’. The look was Alexander Wang ripped T-shirts, leather leggings, biker jackets and smudged black eyeliner. It was a style that came down to appearing as though you’d just rolled out of someone’s bed, picked clothes up from the floor, pulled them on and styled it out.
Meanwhile, Swift was busy rewriting Romeo & Juliet, singing about high-school rejection and telling haters that while all they’d ever be was mean, she’d go on to bigger, better things. Did she ever. Even now, when we’ve traded model-off-duty vibes for a veneration of ‘effortless’ style, here’s Swift, singing in Mirrorball, ‘I’ve never been a natural/all I do is try, try, try.’ Here’s Swift, writing out a page of American football rules to swot up on before watching Travis Kelce play. Here’s Swift, rallying the troops (Blake Lively, Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, et al) to console a fallen soldier (Sophie Turner) with another dinner out in Manhattan. From songwriting to footballspectating to friend-bolstering, she greets
everything with an earnestness and head-girl energy that’s miles away from ‘French girl cool’. That goes for her shows, too. You may not have noticed, but Swift doesn’t really dance. She’s more of a rhythmic walker. But she’s practised the choreo like crazy and she hits every mark.
