US senators pepper speeches with Taylor Swift’s lyrics
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Taylor Swift fans protesting against Ticketmaster in front of the Capitol in Washington DC on Jan 24, 2023.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
WASHINGTON - After Ticketmaster’s presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour buckled under intense demand last November, many fans were left ticketless and heartbroken that they might not be able to hear Swift’s lyrics sung in stadiums across the United States.
On Tuesday, fans could hear many of those lyrics issuing forth in a slightly more subdued arena: Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.
Snippets of both Swift’s recent chart-toppers and her deeper cuts sprang drolly from the mouths of senators during a hearing in which members of the Judiciary Committee from both parties cast Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, as a monopoly.
“Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say: ‘I’m the problem. It’s me,’” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, quoting Swift’s Anti-Hero. Senator Amy Klobuchar referred to the 2012 album Red to explain that consolidation within an industry was a problem the United States knew “all too well”.
It was a bipartisan effort. Senator Mike Lee credited his daughter as his inspiration for invoking Swift’s lyrics on at least three occasions. Mr Lee leveraged Swift’s 2014 hit Blank Space to characterise restrictions on reselling tickets as “a nightmare dressed like a daydream” and concluded one set of remarks with a question Swift posed on her most recent album, Midnights: “Karma’s a relaxing thought; aren’t you envious that for you it’s not?”
The lyrics were an unsubtle play for virality from politicians, who are increasingly aware that becoming a meme can also help get a message across.
“More and more, they’re leaning into these moments of viral potential,” said Dr Ioana Literat, an associate professor of communications at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Mr John Fetterman’s successful Senate campaign in Pennsylvania signalled to many politicians that embracing humour online can win votes, Dr Literat said. But the strategy does not always work, she added.
“It can also be perceived as a kind of desperate, inauthentic attempt to create these kind of connections and to connect to youth culture,” Dr Literat said. She saw the senators’ use of Swift lyrics as a play for young voters that landed awkwardly, pointing to commenters on TikTok who remarked that aides must have written the senators’ statements for them.
“As the kids say: cringe,” CNN anchor Don Lemon said, reacting to a compilation of the senators’ remarks. NYTIMES
