The idea that music is universal is a truism that, for years, was embraced by the left. Whether it's Beethoven, the Beatles, or Stevie Wonder, everyone, no matter their race or ideology, loves a great tune.
Anything that cool and democratic has to be ruined by the left. And so writing in Pitchfork, critic Vrinda Jagota attacks pop queen Taylor Swift, who is currently promoting her new album, "Reputation."
Swift, argues Jagota in "On Loving Taylor Swift while Being Brown," has white privilege, didn't vocally support Hillary Clinton, and favors people who don’t have brown eyes.
Jagota, whose heritage is Indian, writes about loving Swift’s music as an “Asian-American” girl:
At the time, we didn’t realize that as a white woman, [Swift] could weaponize her position as a victim when she felt wronged by people of color. Back then we didn’t have the language, let alone the life experience, to really understand how Swift’s racial privileges affected her music.
Now Jagota is “woke” and sees just how Swift “weaponizes” her music. Swift has had the gall to criticize black artists Nicki Minaj and Kanye West. She also was silent during the last election:
For all this talk about feminism and solidarity and girl squads, Swift went notably silent during last year’s election, while her peers like Katy Perry and Beyoncé went to bat for Hillary Clinton. By not denouncing Trump, it seemed to many people that Swift was tacitly condoning him. This emboldened right-leaning Swifties, including white supremacist fans and publications, who have since adopted Swift’s lyrics on social media and praised her as their 'Aryan Goddess.’
Then there is Swift’s “obsession with eyes. Nearly every Taylor Swift album uses eyes as symbols of intimacy and beauty.” (Yeah, no other pop artists have ever done that.) Most of the time, these eyes are green or blue. Jagota says:
Swift has only swooned over brown eyes in her lyrics once, in ‘Speak Now’ cut ‘Superman.’ Consuming Swift’s music as a brown person, then, can mean implicitly accepting that your body is not worthy of poetry. It means projecting the specifics of your life onto a line about ‘mosaic broken hearts’ and then being jolted to the realization that it’s not actually about your heart or your love or your eyes.
Jagota has more to say about Swift's alleged glorification of whiteness:
There’s the way Swift has positioned brunettes as promiscuous rivals in her videos again and again. Or her nostalgia for a glamorous (and very white) past, exemplified via a romanticized depiction of colonial-era Africa—featuring virtually no black people—in her ‘Wildest Dreams’ video.
Pop music was once considered a great equalizer, with people from all over the world able to unify under its magic. Now, it’s just something else to be poisoned by the left.
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