Why It Would Actually Suck To Be Taylor Swift
It may seem crazy, but there are actually lots of drawbacks to being any celebrity. They all deal with tabloid speculation, relentless paparazzi, and constant pressure to be perfect. But Taylor Swift isn't just a celebrity, she's a supernova. And while getting her start at the young age of 14-years-old is undeniably impressive, it also makes her a child star. Combine that with the way she's chosen to weave her personal drama into her music, and that's two strikes against her according to Tay-haters. So while she may seem to have it all going for her, there are actually many reasons it probably sucks to be Taylor Swift.
It's impossible to date her
The subject of Taylor Swift's love life is as pervasive on the internet as cat photos and random quizzes. People just can't get enough details about Tay-Tay's trysts, which has to be an immediate turn-off for potential suitors — not to mention, super intimidating.
And that's not just our speculation. Swift suggested this notion in a 2013 interview with Hello! "At least I suppose it might [be intimidating]. It's not like I would look at a guy and say, 'Hey, are you intimidated by me?' I think that would be highly uncool on my part. I tend not to be the one to start conversations with guys, anyway. I'm a little more old-fashioned than that," she said. We can't blame guys for being intimidated — after all, she is worth an estimated $250 million.
And look at what actually happens to the guys who manage to crack Taylor's old-fashioned code of courtship. Most have received Taylor's scorn via song, although the only revenge track she's ever publicly copped to was "Forever & Always" about Joe Jonas. Her relationship with Calvin Harris, one of her longest ever, clocking in at just over a year, ended with him having a literal meltdown on Twitter. She then moved almost immediately into a high-profile romance with actor Tom Hiddleston, who at the time was rumored to be a front-runner to get cast as the next James Bond. That buzz got obliterated the second Hiddleston was caught swimming in a tank top with "I [heart] T.S." written on it. Though he later explained the whole thing was a joke, it serves to highlight how radioactive a wrong turn as T-Swizzle's boyfriend can truly be.
Being her friend means you're also constantly "feuding"
With her "Bad Blood" video, Swift famously introduced her "squad," which by outward appearance would seem to be an unconditionally loving group of girlfriends. But if the tabloids are to be believed, these ladies have every reason to be as frightened as the men who dare to date Swift, that at any second Tay could turn on them and start sharpening her pencil for a lyrical attack. Squad member and model Gigi Hadid probably felt this pressure the most during the fallout of Tay vs. Kimye, the scandal over Kanye including Taylor in his "Famous" video.
Though Hadid remained mostly mum on the situation, she was forced to tweet a response to fan backlash after she was seen at Kanye's Yeezy Season 3 fashion show, according to Billboard. She wrote, "My attendance somewhere does not mean I agree with everything being said in the music playing there. My friends know of my loyalty." Of course, Hadid is also BFFs with Kendall Jenner, Kanye's sister-in-law, which speculators like to believe complicates things even further — except none of it is even remotely real. Throughout and after the "Famous" scandal, Hadid has been seen multiple times with both Jenner and Swift.
The only supposed "friend beef" of any real substance with Swift is the ongoing bad blood between she and Demi Lovato, who has gone out of her way to shade Swift on several occasions. But even their supposed friendship was an exaggeration according to a source close to Swift who told E! News, "They both have never been really good friends." So despite the fact that Lovato was never that chummy with Swift to begin with, they're constantly and mistakenly labeled as feuding former friends.
She gets criticized for everything, even what she doesn't do
Taylor Swift has definitely done some dirt worthy of a healthy side-eye, like the time she jumped the gun and called out Nicki Minaj over a tweet that wasn't even directed at her. But she also catches heat for just about everything that comes out of her mouth, and perhaps more unfairly, for what she remains silent on.
Infamously mum on politics, Swift posted a photo of herself on Election Day to Instagram with the caption "Today is the day. Go out and VOTE." A simple encouragement to engage in the process, and obviously not an endorsement of any specific candidate, right? Well, detractors and supporters chose to assign their own preferred narrative to Swift's intentions, according to Vox. It was either, "Boo! Too little too late!" or "She's wearing a sweater that looked like one that Hillary has!" (Seriously, the internet has way too much time on its hands).
But what about when Swift does speak out for a cause? By most accounts, Swift's refusal to license her music to both Spotify and Apple was viewed as a brave wielding of her considerable influence in the industry, as well as show of solidarity to her fellow artists who were all getting shafted with the laughably dismal streaming revenues. Even after she offered the logical argument that "we don't ask you for free iPhones; please don't ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation," people still found a way to attack Swift's rightful intentions to protect her products.
According to Communities Digital News, Swift suffered social media backlash for also attempting to trademark certain lyrics as well as stopping people from marketing products using her lyrics without permission. So which is it? Is she too outspoken, or not using her considerable voice enough? Apparently she can't have it both ways.
She may have already peaked
Taylor Swift's 1989 (released in 2014) is generally considered her magnum opus. Not only was it her first album to fully shift into a 100 percent pop format, effectively shedding her country roots once and for all, but it also earned her basically every important music award there is including the Grammy for Album of the Year, the iHeartRadio Music Award for Album of the Year, and the American Music Award for Favorite Rock/Pop Album of the Year. It was also the "fastest selling album in 10 years," according to Billboard, who reported that it made $5 million in sales over the course of 36 weeks in a time when the music industry has almost completely shifted to streaming and subscription models, rather than aiming for direct purchasing.
Then there was the tour for the album, during which Swift called on what seemed like every celebrity she'd ever met make to make a cameo. There were famous musicians, of course, ranging from Wiz Khalifa to Mick Jagger. But there were also a string of unconventional special guests like Dwayne Wade, Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock, Matt LeBlanc, and the World Cup Champions U.S. Women's Soccer National Team with Heidi Klum for some reason, because that all makes total sense for a Taylor Swift concert, right? Seriously, there isn't usually that kind of random celebrity turnout except in the event of a tribute or memorial show, which is why we're wondering if Swift wasn't slightly aware that if the rest of her career was only going to be downhill from there. If so, and we're honestly not rooting for that in any way, at least she peaked in the most glorious blaze of celebrity friendship humble-bragging of all time.
People are rooting for her to fail
Aside from the general anticipation that certain cynics hold for watching a child star implode, Taylor Swift is the subject of a disproportionate amount of haters waiting for her to fail. She even wrote the song "Shake it Off" in an obvious rebuke to the legion of haters out there, but the ill-will toward her still seems limitless. A quick Google search of the phrase "Taylor Swift hate" returns list after list of reasons to dislike a person who, in reality, is just a pretty girl singing songs that she wrote.
While this kind of steady negativity would be enough to derail most normal people, Swift somehow keeps an amazingly grounded perspective about it all. "I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12-year-old. So I got to live an actual life. And I've kept that mentality. Just because there's a hurricane going on around you doesn't mean you have to open the window and look at it. You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things, either way you're obsessed with yourself and I'm not – you can become unhinged so easily... So I distance myself, because I feel everything," she told Glamour UK (Via Music News). But wait, isn't writing a song addressing all the hate pretty much the exact opposite of ignoring it? You know what? Never mind. We're not here to board the hate train.
She needs drama in her life to write music
As we previously mentioned, some of Taylor Swift's most popular music comes in the form of vaguely disguised revenge letters to her exes. Though she's only ever publicly identified one subject, Joe Jonas, she did once tell MTV the following: "I like to write personal songs. I like to write songs that are very obviously about people. It's kind of hard to change your stripes. I like to write songs about love, and I like to write songs about relationships, and I like to write songs about boys." So there's no doubt that T-Swizzle mines her most intimate relationships for material. But she does actually have some songs that aren't about boys. Shocking, we know. Although even in those songs, the drama is present.
For example, her seemingly innocent song, "The Best Day," which she wrote as a loving tribute to her mom, contains the lyrics "I'm thirteen now / And don't know how my friends / Could be so mean / I come home crying and you hold me tight and grab the keys." In other words "Thanks for dealing with the nightmare that is teenage me, mom!"
And of course, there's the infamous, "Bad Blood," her alleged Katy Perry diss track that addressed their long-standing feud that was reportedly sparked over attempts at sealing each other's backup dancers. With that in mind, don't the lyrics, "Did you think we'd be fine? Still got scars on my back from your knife / So don't think it's in the past, these kinda wounds they last and they last," sound a tad over the top? Seriously, "Band-aids don't fix bullet holes?" How about you chill out for a second and post a Craigslist ad for some new dancers, Taylor? We're sure there are plenty more out there.
She is a meme factory
From her awkward reaction faces at awards shows to the endless repurposing of her lyrics, the internet has shown a creative streak a mile wide when it comes to the meme-ification of Taylor Swift. Most are done in innocent fun, like the "Sad Taylor Swift" meme in which the singer was candidly photographed looking glum on a bench, an echo of the legendary Sad Keanu meme. But there was one particular meme with which Swift couldn't have been too thrilled. Simply and brutally titled, "Taylor Swift Hitler," it's a bastardization of the line "It feels like a perfect night to dress up like hipsters," from the song "22" off of her Red album. Needless to say, tiny mustaches were drawn, Nazi paraphernalia was Photoshopped in, and the distasteful meme was born.
Obviously, Swift didn't give "Taylor Swift Hitler" the time of day, but she was a good sport about "No its Becky," the meme born of a Tumblr post where a user posted a photo of a young Swift along with a phony story claiming the young woman was "Becky," who "supposedly died from overdose after snorting marijuana at a party one night," according to Know Your Meme. After one user insisted the photo was Taylor Swift, someone replied, "no its becky," and just like that, another meme entered the interwebs. The real Taylor Swift approved and took the whole thing to stratospheric levels when she then posted a photo of herself wearing a shirt with the words "no its becky" on it to her own Tumblr. According to MTV, the internet survived the chaotic excitement that ensued, and according to us, we all need to find something more productive to do with our free time.
She's already a crazy cat lady
Even though we've suggested that Taylor's preference for penning vengeance tunes could possibly hinder her love life, we don't actually think dudes wouldn't jump at the chance to date her. But once they learn about the cats, that could change. To say Taylor Swift is obsessed with cats is like saying Donald Trump thinks highly of himself. Although at the time of this writing, she only owns two of her own, named Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson, Swift has taken her cat craze to serious levels.
According to Buzzfeed's "17 Times Taylor Swift Was The Cat Lady You Aspire To Be," she's basically touched on every crazy cat lady cliche known to man. She's dressed them up in costumes, done photo shoots with them, admitted she's "in a relationship her cat," and incorporated them into her wardrobe. She even got into an uncomfortable exchange with actor John Cleese on The Graham Norton Show when he inadvertently offended Swift by saying her cat, Olivia, was "the weirdest cat he's ever seen." On top of all that, she's tweeted, "It is a daily struggle for me to not buy more cats," so the writing is all over the wall on this one. Taylor got Meredith in 2011 and Olivia in 2014. If she keeps acquiring cats at her current rate, she'll have six by the time she is 40, and we're honestly not even sure she can wait that long. So fellas, if you're planning on spitting some game to Taylor Swift, stock up on the Zyrtec and lint rollers. You're going to need them.
Seriously, don't worry, Taylor Swift will be fine
We've talked a lot of smack here, but let's be real. There are worse problems in the world to have than those of Taylor Swift. As we've previously mentioned, she's insanely wealthy, has a celeb friend contact list to die for, and a love life so interesting people actually pay her to hear about it. So, save those tears for Tay-Tay, because she's now been in the game for half of her life, so she knows how to rise above it all. In fact, she told Vanity Fair that she has her own version of a reset button in her head that reminds her how golden her life actually is. "You know what I always do?" I have my sanity button that I push. I push this button that's like 'Stop complaining, your life's great, stop, do not complain about this life, stop, this life is amaaaazing."
Keep doing you, Taylor, but do us a favor and hurry up with your Tom Hiddleston song. We even thought of the name for it to give you a headstart: "Bond Broken." You're welcome.