Taylor Swift Is a Good Thing. Full Stop

There are many things to be upset about on planet Earth, circa 2024—extreme political polarization, a metal health crisis, retreating glaciers, to name a ludicrously compressed few—but Taylor Swift is not one of these things. In fact, it’s not hard to make a case that Swift and her wholesome romance with Travis Kelce is, in fact, exactly the weighted blanket we need at this anxiety-riddled moment in time. Unfortunately, a few people out there are trying to ruin Swift for the rest of us.

It’s true, Swift herself has likened her presence to “a monster on the hill,” in her song “Antihero,” getting at the reality that wherever she goes, a circus follows. It seems inevitable that a Taylor Swift–NFL super–alliance would ruffle some feathers, that a subset of football fans would accuse broadcasters of spending too much time lingering on shots of Swift at the game. (They’re not.) And now, a group of right-wing media personalities is peddling conspiracy theories about Swift as a Biden operative, a Pentagon asset, largely because she chose to support Biden in 2020.

But a ginned-up Taylor Swift culture war isn’t what anyone needs right now. If the circus around Swift gets to be too much, and Swift steps back from public life, we stand to lose one of our last remaining cultural touchstones, a conduit for genuine fun and a woman whose art helps us feel our feelings.

Taylor Swift is one of the most well-liked people in America (and that’s putting it mildly), not unlike fellow singer Dolly Parton before her. An NBC poll measuring favorability had Swift outranking both Biden and Trump, at 40 percent, and also everyone else on the list. Her Miss Americana appeal crosses lines of age, race, community, and even political party, to a degree. Men and women alike report warm fuzzies for Swift in large numbers.

As a topic of conversation, no one will look at you blankly or pelt you with a dinner roll if you talk about Taylor Swift at your holiday dinner table, unlike many other subjects previously deemed “safe.” Swift is kind to her fans, generous to her employees and must certainly be the world’s most famous fancier of cats, in particular Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson, and Benjamin Button. A global pop star who adores her cats is pretty human and endearing (unless you’re a dog lover.) If you’re not swayed by the cat thing, consider her Eras tour, which reportedly added $5.7 billion to the country’s economy. The number’s so impressive it’s easy to overlook the fact that she moves money by moving people.

The Swift/Kelce romance has even helped dads and daughters bond. A football game that might have been a snooze a few months ago is suddenly appointment viewing for a lot of new young fans, including daughters who came for the shots of Swift, and stayed for… the shots of Swift, but also for the football. The street goes two ways, as football-fan parents find themselves succumbing to the lure of Swift’s music through the eyes of their kids.

Connections these days are precious. We live in a fractured culture with a shrinking number of common touchstones. But odds are, someone with whom you have little in common halfway across the country enjoys some of Swift’s music, just like you do. That’s a comforting thought. We’re a long way from a 1950s family huddle around a black and white TV to watch the one show after dinner that everybody else in the country was watching, too. But if we are watching TV together, we’re likely to be watching Taylor Swift kissing Travis Kelce after the Chiefs won their playoff game, to escape our worries and allow ourselves to lighten up for a minute or two.

As if we didn’t already know, the Washington Post recently declared: Fun Is Dead. The news may be greatly exaggerated, but the Post wasn’t alone in their post-mortem. NPR recently offered expert advice on how to have more fun. The very existence of a story like this suggests that something depressing is going on.

But you know what is fun? Bonding with your kid about Taylor Swift and football while you watch the game together. Taylor Swift nights at the dance club or your living room. Richie, singing along to Swift’s song “Love Story” in a surprisingly emotional episode of The TV show “The Bear.” (Side note: Hard to imagine this scene being half as good with any other song.) Watching a real-life love story between a superstar pop singer and her pro-athlete boyfriend unfold before your eyes on the field of a football stadium. Seeing your kids get dressed up—or getting yourself dressed up—for the Eras movie or the Eras tour. Or, like my family, finding out the guy who gave up his seat so you and your daughter can sit together on the flight to Chicago is still in a good mood because he flew to L.A. to see Swift’s Eras tour and it was “life changing.” You could see the glow.

Imagine, if you would, a world in which Swift decides to get away from the trolls and withdraw from public life. A world without her enthusiastic engagement with her fans, her determination to give her audience a once-in-a-lifetime experience at her shows. A world where we can no longer witness the inspiring evolution of her voice as a singer/songwriter, a citizen and a woman. If they act in tandem, Swift’s fans have the power to shut out the noise and let Taylor be Taylor. Because a world without the Swift who makes us happy just by being herself, out loud, would lose some of its music.

Veronica Rueckert is the author of “Outspoken: Why Women’s Voices Get Silence and How to Set Them Free.” Her work has appeared on NPR and in The Washington Post.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.