Why Taylor Swift has become my muse
In my love-her era.
Last Sunday while watching the Grammys, I found myself marveling at the inspiration that is Taylor Swift. I didn’t immediately know if I should write about this because 1) who would care? and 2) what hasn’t been written about Taylor Swift?
But I changed my mind because writing my version is exactly what Taylor would do. Her brilliance is in her ability to tell a personal story in a way that feels unique and universal at the same time. From stories about growing up and self esteem to gender roles and relationships, hers are life experiences we each know all too well.
My appreciation (obsession) for Taylor Swift comes at a time when I’ve been especially drawn to role models who are in the same life stage as me. It’s not easy to find examples of iconic women in their mid-thirties who are objectively admirable and strong and smart and successful even if they are not married or mothers, whether or not they see that in their futures.
Not only because we’re both in our finally-found-our-football-player era, I feel like Taylor and I are experiencing this phase of life together.
I started focusing on Taylor Swift four years ago at the start of pandemic, when I watched Miss Americana. At the time, I was in the throes of a breakup, and in search of sparkle that only a pop artist can offer. I was fascinated by her career journey, intrigued by her love stories, struck by her challenges with body image, and impressed by her political foray.
Without even going deep on her music, I already knew we had one very important thing in common—our love of words.
The act of writing has always been therapeutic for me, but in the early pandemic days, Taylor Swift’s writing became my therapy. Lover was Taylor’s most recent album at the time, and I started listening to it on loop while doing extra-long runs on weekends (I may have been running 16 miles while singing her songs before she was). As I confronted my heartbreak and quarantine loneliness, her music encouraged me to forget he existed. When Folklore dropped in July, my runs got longer, and by autumn, I was convinced he was just perfectly fine.
Most of us have a breakup that sounds a lot like at least one of Taylor’s twelve. But she has more to offer than therapy at the cost of a Spotify subscription. Beyond being a Kobe-endorsed top-of-her-game artist, Taylor Swift is also just sort of genius.
From releasing fire vault tracks (and inventing the vault to begin with), to dropping easter eggs everywhere, to literally breaking Google with a cryptic instagram caption, she doesn’t just make music, she sells magic. She owns her work (especially after 2021), and in doing so, she owns her story and what she stands for. She is a certified mastermind.
She is also an inspiring workhorse. During one of her shows in Tokyo this week, she described her continuous creative process.
I’ve been working on Tortured Poets since right after I turned in Midnights. I’ve been working on it for about two years. I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour and when it was perfect—in my opinion when it’s good enough for you—I finished it and I am so, so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it.
This is a person who loves her work endlessly. And we love her for it.
On top of it all, she shows up for her girlfriends, celebrates her competition, supports her partner and his career, and is just a wholesome human.
Last February, I started searching for easter eggs in my own life, with the goal of uncovering clues to what a meaningful and fulfilling career looks like for me. Through radically honest conversations with myself, mentors, and a really great career coach, I started to define what purposeful work looks like at this stage of my life.
Whenever I expressed the cynicism that perhaps work is just work, my career coach would assure that I can and should expect to wake up feeling excited, inspired, and challenged (in a good way) by my work day.
I wouldn’t know what I was searching for until I found it, but toward the end of the year, I was closer to it than I’d ever been. Around this point, TIME published Taylor’s Person of the Year interview, where she was described as being at the peak of her career.
“This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.”
In just one sentence, she described exactly what I was searching for—a feeling of fulfillment and freedom in my work.
What’s aspirational to me about Taylor isn’t the fame or wealth she’s collected, but the fact that she’s found purposeful work, and that (as my career coach would insist) any of us have the ability to do the same. She sells the promise that fulfillment can be found in work, and inspires us to keep reaching and believing.
Last Sunday when Taylor made history by winning her fourth album of the year award, she shared, in the most humble-Taylor way possible, that it was not at all the best moment in her life.
I would love to tell you that this is the best moment of my life. But I feel this happy when I finish a song, or when I crack the code to a bridge that I love, or when I’m shot-listing a music video, or when I’m rehearsing with my dancers or my band, or getting ready to go to Tokyo to play a show. For me the award is the work. All I want to do is keep being able to do this.
Unlike other recipients who described the years of work for which they deserved the award (which I also respect), her message was an example of the oft-cited cliché, “find a job you love and never work a day in your life.” But she referenced it with the fresh twist that we’ve come to define as classically Taylor.
The happiness she describes is one that each of us can design into our own lives, if we’re willing to put in the work and embrace the process. And that felt worth writing about.
Here’s to finding happiness in our day-to-day work, to never expecting yet always respecting acknowledgment, to transcending the need for external validation, and to doing it all in the way that is most authentic to us. We’re ready for it.
Very interesting read. Couldn’t agree more on finding fulfillment in work without external validation.
Jayashree
Be the change you seek… YOU are your own best muse. 🪞