Is Taylor Swift’s New Album Bad Enough To Trigger Class Consciousness?

Everybody’s got something to say about Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” ― especially the more class-conscious Swifties.

For every Swift fan singing the album’s praises, there’s one more calling the pop star out for everything from punching down (on one track, Swift appears to take shots at another, less commercially successful pop star Charli XCX), to being an out-of-touch billionaire who sometimes seems to have a case of arrested development.

“‘I like my friends cancelled’ is the most tone deaf lyric a white billionaire with MAGA friends could release in this climate,” one woman tweeted about one track. (On the MAGA pal charge, Swift is frequently seen in the company of WAG Brittany Mahomes, who President Donald Trump personally thanked for “defending” him last year.)

There’s heavier charges, too. Some have even suggested certain lines evoke anti-Blackness.

But it’s questions about Swift’s selective activism and “woe is me” lyrics while being a billionaire that seem to have the most sticking power: This album is so polarizing, it’s causing some Swifties to consider if there’s “no such thing as an ethical billionaire,” maybe they have to include Taylor, too.

Erika Abdelatif, the co-host of the childfree show Dinky Podcast, is among them.

“I’m a fan ― I even flew to Scotland for the Eras Tour ― but Taylor has felt out-of-touch lately,” she said. “I’ve actually had a hard time feeling any support for her these past few months.”

Abdelatif understands that celebrities like Swift are under enormous pressure and scrutiny, but said Swift’s silence since the election is deafening: The singer said nothing about the destruction and chaos happening in the world right now, from migrants being forcibly kidnapped by masked ICE agents, to Palestinians starving and dying as Israel’s aid blockade continues.

“I don’t expect celebrities to be political or foreign policy experts, but the past few months have felt like her only concern is selling us a plethora of vinyl variants without considering that a lot of Americans don’t even have $500 in their emergency savings.”

The album rollout felt like a soulless cash grab to many fans: Before any song was released, Swift sold eight exclusive vinyl variants on her site in different colors with various names (“Sweat And Vanilla Perfume Edition,” “Summertime Spritz Pink Shimmer Edition”). Fans could also buy eight CDs and a keepsake cardigan sweater that came with another exclusive CD.

Then there’s the punching down of other female artists (on “Actually Romantic,” which fans suspect is about Charli XCX]), the possible swipes at her fiancé Travis Kelce’s ex and the unironic lyrics about “bitches.”

“It feels like society is trying to push women back into traditional roles, and amidst all this, Taylor released songs that punch down at women who have less power and privilege,” Abdelatif said.

At the very least, Abdelatif thinks Swift appears morally ambiguous in a moment when fans are demanding moral clarity. If Swift wasn’t going to engage in politics, others wish she had leaned into pure unadulterated escapism.

“In a world climate like this, if you’re going to drop a new album called ‘Life of a Showgirl,’ I want to be gone from reality. I want to be lost in this world that you created with glitz and glamour,” singer-songwriter Julie Lavery said in a viral TikTok, before singing a country song she wrote in response to Swift’s latest album.

In it, Lavery takes direct aim at Swift’s lack of social consciousness.

“The world is burning down, but your new album’s out and you won’t let us forget [that ] there’s a new limited edition at Target,” Lavery sings. “How could you be so blind, to think that this was the right time to drop the same old boring, so self-serving ‘Life of a Showgirl’?”

In many ways, the parasocial relationship with her fans that built Swift’s wealth is to blame for this heightened criticism. It’s Swift’s penchant to play the underdog and overcome bullies and barriers that so many fans relate to ― her “journey from victim to voice” arc ― said Andrew Ledbetter, a Swiftie and professor of communication studies at Texas Christian University.

“But this new album doesn’t seem to be evoking that sense of emotional resonance for a significant portion of her fans,” Ledbetter explained.

“Calling her own artistry unique (on ‘Elizabeth Taylor’) and immortal (on the title track) emphasizes Taylor’s superiority and makes it less likely that they feel she empathizes with their weaknesses and challenges,” he told HuffPost.

It’s not that she hasn’t subtly, and not so subtly, dipped into political and feminist issues before. The lyrics of 2019′s “The Man,” for instance, have Swift suggesting that if she were a man, she’d easily dodge criticism, and that people wouldn’t view her as anything other than successful.

Swifties aren’t a monolith, but many are politically engaged and concerned about how Trump’s second term impacts marginalized communities. In an era of “eat the rich” memes, some fans of Swift are newly class-conscious.

Swifties wanted their favorite pop girlie to go along for that ride, too, but instead found her in her celebratory era. As Constance Grady wrote in Vox, “Taylor Swift is done pretending she doesn’t absolutely love this life.”

Instead of class consciousness, it’s more accurate to describe most Americans as class-unconscious ― and they like it that way, said Brian Donovan, a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas who teaches a course called “The Sociology of Taylor Swift.”

There’s been pop culture moments that hint at some class consciousness over the last few years: The current appetite for shows like “Succession,” “White Lotus,” and “Industry” “suggest that wide swaths of the American public take pleasure in stories where the ultra-rich are proven to be loathsome and incompetent,” Donovan said.

But by and large, most Americans are comfortable avoiding conversations about class.

“Our way of life is deeply shaped by class, but we often have a hard time seeing it in those terms,” Donovan said. “We have our favorite singers and TV shows, but we often misrecognize our fandom as purely personal taste instead of something related to our position in the class hierarchy.”

Pop culture rarely breaks through that dynamic, the professor said.

“There are notable exceptions, like the punk movement’s critique of Thatcherism and Reaganism in the late 1970s and 1980s,” he said. “The critique was biting, but its influence was limited.”

Though deeply felt and critically lauded, even Bob Dylan and Springsteen’s critique of class inequality stopped short of a radical demand for social change.

Swift is no Bruce Springsteen. Asking her for a biting social commentary, a “Born in the U.S.A.” or an “Atlantic City” was probably never in the cards. It takes a deft hand to say “there should be no billionaires” when you’re one of the most well-known billionaires around.

And as Donovan said, “Hoping that an album titled ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ will address America’s lurch into authoritarianism seems painfully unrealistic.”

By staying relatively apolitical, Swift gets buy-in across political lines. The reality is that only a portion of her audience cares to track her jet usage or debate the environmental impact of her umpteenth vinyl record release or her worldwide “Eras” tour.

“Taylor Swift is not a political writer. Rather, she is an astute writer of confessional songs that speak to millions,” said June Skinner Sawyers, a journalist and author of “We Take Care of Our Own: Faith, Class, and Politics in the Art of Bruce Springsteen.”

As for the claims that Swift is out of touch, Skinner Sawyers wonders: out of touch with whom? Where some see “self-serving,” Skinner Sawyers sees Taylor just being Taylor.

“Arguably, she has been living in a cocoon for years ever since she convinced her parents to leave the Christmas farm in Pennsylvania and move to Nashville,” she said. “Millions may think of her as their bestie from afar, but she is also a businesswoman who writes and sings about whatever she wants. We shouldn’t forget that.”

Stephanie Burt, a professor of English at Harvard and author of “Taylor’s Version: The Musical and Poetic Genius of Taylor Swift,” agrees. Though Burt thinks it should be noted, Swift does do a lot of charity work she doesn’t want to publicize. (Word usually gets out due to her level of fame.)

Those efforts “don’t make capitalism awesome, nor the existence of a billionaire class defensible ― it’s not, and it’s not, and I wish Taylor agreed ― but asking this great songwriter to address that subject directly is like asking a master electrician to fix your teeth,” Burt told HuffPost.

In other words, Swift is great at some things ― 10-minute takedowns of probably-Jake Gyllenhaal, for example ― but not that thing.

As a Swiftian scholar, Burt does wish Taylor, as a person with a great deal of privilege, would use her platform to comment on the state we’re in: A letter to fans about the hardline tactics of ICE against immigrants and refugees, for instance, or something about the need to run for local office, perhaps while name checking “Run for Something,” the org that formed after Trump first won the presidency in 2016 that recruits and supports young progressive candidates.

But then, Swift did try to make a political difference in the late 2010s and her candidates lost.

“Then again in 2024 [Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris] and they lost again, so she might well feel burned,” Burt said.

“Ultimately, do you really want Taylor Swift to write a song about how much she hates the fact that we now have masked secret police?” the professor said. “If you want political anthems, Grace Petrie’s right there. If you want pure escape, ‘Brat’ [by the aforementioned Charli XCX] is there, too. Or even revisit Taylor’s ‘1989.’”