Feminism in the Music Industry
The
Taylor Swift Effect.
How has her career challenged the discourse about authorship, production, and female musicians?
In 2019, Taylor Swift's 13-year contract with record label Big Machine Label Group expired. A contract the singer first signed when she was only fifteen years old. Within this contract BMLG acquired $300 million dollars, from the songs Swift had recorded. Once the contract was up, Swift negotiated new deals to allow all future albums be owned by her, but all previous albums would be owned by BMLG- or so she had understood.
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Unbeknownst to Swift, the label would sell her six studio albums to another entrepreneur, Scooter Braun; despite an ongoing negotiation for Swift to personally buy back her master recordings. The entire controversy brought to the mainstream a struggle many artists have within the industry owning the work they penned.
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Thankfully for Swift, a legal loophole has allowed her to reproduce those albums under the name "Taylor's Version", however not all artists- especially women in the industry, have the same resources as Swift.
Arguments & Findings
Taylor Swift, her career, and her work represent a feminist ideology and rebellion against the male driven industry she has succeeded in.
In popular feminist theory, a reclamation of self is an essential theme. This builds on the idea that autonomy can be a process of self discovery. The fact that “I” and “me” are the two most common words in her entire discography, reinforces the idea that her ‘journey’ throughout her albums are inwardly focused.
Full corpus themes,Voyant Tools
After a full analysis of Swift's entire discography, it is evident that possessive pronouns are prominent throughout her work. This is important in framing Swift as a feminist author. From fifteen to thirty, her journey of self is continuously documented. Her body of work offers a story of growing, learning in her own identity. Additionally, listeners can center themselves in her work feeling validated in their own journey of self.
The genre change from country to pop brought many changes including collaborators, audience growth, and media perception.
"Speak Now" 2010, themes, Voyant Tools
"Reputation" 2017 themes, Voyant Tools
"Speak Now" is an album entirely penned by Taylor Swift during her Country era. The themes within the album include, "time", "love", "grow[th]", and concepts of the mind and being away. This third studio album was written during her tour for her second studio "Fearless". The album was written as a direct rebellion against critics who said Swift wasn't a real artist, because her songs weren't written by her; Swift was 21 during the release of Speak Now. Despite the critics not being correct, as Swift had co-authored all of her previous albums, this album skyrocketed her to even more success.
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Taylor Swift's transition into the Pop industry brought even more criticism. Pop music in America is already a very polarizing industry. In Ann-Derrick Gaillot poses the industry as being focused on selling records writing, "When a pop artist speaks on why they wrote a certain song, the answer is rarely, 'Because of my contractual agreement to a record label that needed something to sell.'". This is a vital switch-up in the understanding of Swift as an artist.
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We can see this switch in her sixth studio album, "Reputation" which was released in 2017. This album has the most collaborators of all her previous (and future) albums with famous pop producers like Max Martin and Shellback. Two men who have produced for The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Cyndi Lauper, Katy Perry and many other huge pop names. The album, while being one of Swift's best selling albums, missed the mark for critical acclaim getting snubbed for major awards including the Grammys. The major themes presented within the album include "bad", "good", "things", and wanting. A complete 180 from her self-authored album mentioned before.
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This album is the final album produced under Big Machine Label Group, and could have been a catalyst for the lack of control Swift felt with her work.
There are only five songs in her entire discography that are not written by Swift, only during her Pop era​​
Songs not written by TS, themes, Voyant Tools
Max Martin is a major songwriter in the Pop music industry, behind hundreds of Billboard Top 100 hits. He was also a main collaborator in Taylor Swift's pop music era. When analyzing, Swift's career it is important to remember that her position as a co-author in all of her albums is unheard of in the genre. Swift remains in control of the stories each album tells. Additionally, the songs on her album that are not written by her do not portray any sort of story or thematic element. Moreover, the songs not written by Swift are focused on catchiness and radio playability. This is likely a push from her label to sell more singles and album sales.
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In a discography of 164 songs, only five not being written by her prove she is in control of the themes she is telling. Even further, three of the songs not written by her were very successful monetarily. The monetary success was not important to Swift, it was more important to remain a co-author of the songs she was singing. It was more important to maintain herself as an author.
Methodology
The following is a step-by-step analysis of how the data was collected, organized, and analyzed using Voyant Tools
#1
All of the lyrics were collected using Genius lyrics and compiled into one large spread sheet. Each song was organized by Song Title, Album, Year, Lead Authors, and full lyrics. One of the limitations of this method would be relying on another source of data for all of this information which could result in misunderstood lyrics or outdated information.
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#2
After organizing the texts into spreadsheets, the lyrics were then transformed into txt files which can then be used for analysis with the digital humanities tool Voyant Tools. This was a painstaking process which included hand typing and retyping any spaces, additional information, and punctuation errors.
#3
Finally, the lyrics were able to be analyzed for content using Voyant Tools. Specifically, the tools used were Document Terms, Stream Graph, and RadioTerms. This tool was a bit buggy at times, getting stuck on reoccurring filler words like "and", "the", and "oh". Overall, the tool was effective in comparing themes throughout the documents because of the many tools offered.
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The tools were chosen because of the ease of use with the huge txt files and ability to export data for presentational use.
Resources
Anderson, Ellie, et al. “Feminist Perspectives on the Self.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 19 Feb. 2020, plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-self/.
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Bruner, Raisa. “Why Is Taylor Swift Re-Rerecording Her Old Albums?” Time, Time, 25 Mar. 2021, time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording-old-albums/.
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Gaillot, Ann-Derrick. “Pop Music Sold Us on Consumerism, One Single at a Time.” Vox, Vox, 21 July 2021, www.vox.com/the-goods/22585138/pop-music-consumerism.
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“Max Martin: The Secrets of the World's Best Pop Songwriter.” BBC Culture, BBC, www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191119-max-martin-the-secrets-of-the-worlds-best-pop-songwriter.
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Parks, Lisa, and Nicole Starosielski. Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures. University of Illinois Press, 2015.
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Pollock, Valerie. “Forever Adolescence: Taylor Swift, Eroticized Innocence, and Performing Normativity .” Scholar Works, Georgia State University, scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1099&context=communication_theses.
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Spanos, Brittany. “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta: What the Hell Happened?” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 10 July 2019, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-scooter-braun-scott-borchetta-explainer-853424/.