Taylor Swift’s (Great) New Tour and Why She’s the Only One Who Can Unite America

“Tonight we will have an adventure, one age at a time. We’re going to explore the last seventeen years of music that I’ve been lucky enough to make.” It’s eight o’clock in the evening when Taylor Swift takes the stage at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, in the first leg of his Eras Tour. It will come down three hours and fifteen minutes And 44 songs later, just to make it clear that his is not a tour like any other. And it’s not: the show is reminiscent of a musical by Broadway, with the lineup divided into acts, grouped by era for each of Taylor Swift’s ten studio albums, and for each stage of her career here is the look, the atmosphere, the costumes, the colors and the mood of that particular moment. A kind of self-celebration that has garnered rave reviews in all places in all lakes of international music critics.

Taylor Swift’s power isn’t a matter of opinion. First of all, the data: with 50 million records and 50 million singles sold worldwide, is one of the best-selling music artists in history. But, to understand her impact, just think of the fact that the protest of her fans for the policies of ticketmastersthe site that sells 70 percent of concert tickets in the United States, has led to aUS Congressional investigation which highlighted the monopoly of the platform.

Ten years ago, American journalism guru Barbara Walters stated: «Taylor Swift is the music industry». Today, the analysis confirmed, a new definition is added: Taylor Swift is the only personality capable of uniting America today. According to the US market research firm Morning Consult, 53% of Americans consider themselves fans of the country singer-turned-pop powerhouse. And Taylor’s fan base spans all political orientations: 45% of her fans voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and 58% for Biden.

It might seem like a detail, but it isn’t in a country where the political polarization has never been so dramatic, since the storming of Capitol Hill to today. Maybe, asks the times, «an artist known for her open-hearted songs about love, heartbreaks and femininity, has she found the key to speaking her mind, managing to bridge America’s cultural and political divide?». Ana Castillejos, co-host of 13: A Taylor Swift Fan Podcast

, thinks so. “Taylor has the unique talent, as a songwriter, of making anyone feel like a protagonist in the story she’s telling about her, regardless of her political or economic background,” she said.

But how do you explain thebipartisan allure by Taylor Swift? In the past, the pop star had kept very far from politics, in an interview with Time he explained in 2012 that he didn’t want to influence anyone. Before the 2016 election, she declared herself a fan of Obama. With her 90 million Instagram followers, she was expected to join the likes of Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez and Madonna and back Hillary Clinton in the head-to-head against Trump. Surprised: she never did. So much so that at that time she asked the question «Who will Taylor Swift vote for?» had become a top search on Google.

The result of this silence was that both on the left and on the right many pulled her by the jacket. Including some white supremacists, who had adopted her as their pet and went around saying Taylor was just waiting for Trump to be elected before going public with her far-right views. In 2017, the singer’s lawyers threatened legal action against a blog that linked her to white supremacist culture.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift continues in fact to take sides in favor of gun control, gay marriage and the right to abortion, all historic battles of the Democrats. She and she managed a miracle: keeping her popularity intact among traditionally Republican fans of country music. Taylor is not only the American music industry, but she has also managed, with the same intensity, to enter the heart of those who literally hate each other in her country.