Fans’ Expectations of Taylor Swift Are Chafing Against Reality
The singer’s collaboration with the rapper Ice Spice has launched a new debate about what she owes her ultra-devoted audience.
Three songs have been playing every night before Taylor Swift has taken the stage on , and each one seems to convey a different message. One track is Dusty Springfield’s cover of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” a classic assertion of female independence. Another is Lady Gaga’s “Applause,” a pump-up jam in which a celebrity confesses her hunger for approval. Then there’s Ice Spice’s “In Ha Mood,” a recent hip-hop song whose presence shows, among other things, that Swift is paying attention to what’s hot in pop culture—an important fact to keep in mind when evaluating the controversy now brewing around
