The Swift Connection
Part 2: Taylor offers connection and understanding, but we can do better in the church
Previously I wrote about teenage girls relating to Taylor Swift’s music: Her lyrics are highly personal and highly reflective of our current cultural moment, so teenage girls tend to find them highly relatable. This is big for teenagers, who developmentally are discovering and experiencing pain, emotions, and dreams in many new ways.
It’s also important for females in particular, since we internalize our stress and turn to others to cope. Females look for connection, especially with others who make us feel understood, in order to cope with stressors - and Taylor fits this ticket. She puts to words experiences that teenage girls relate to, and they in turn feel understood, almost as if they had actually turned to someone in real life to help them cope. (Moreover, the connection they feel to Taylor goes beyond just her relatable lyrics, but that’s a topic for a future post in this Taylor Swift series.)
I think teenage girls are particularly looking for this amidst the current mental health crisis amongst our teens. The mental health crisis, as many have noted, is also related to the current loneliness epidemic. It’s a crisis of connection, which has been complicated by social media and was exacerbated for many teens during the height of the pandemic. It’s possible that some are so desperate for connection that even listening to someone being vulnerable in song lyrics, as Taylor does, feels like a form of connection. While it’s not actually sitting with someone, sharing vulnerability and connection in real time, it’s at least something that feels real and meaningful compared to the lack of connection in their lives.
Her music also allows them to externally express (as in, sing with emotion) their internal feelings. And yet another dynamic enters the picture when girls collectively enjoy Taylor’s music together. Whether teen girls are belting her songs out in the car or joining thousands of others at one of her shows, “scream-singing [Taylor’s music] offers a meaningful catharsis,” as one female Biblical scholar puts it. “When millions of women find resonance in a tale that sounds an awful lot like your own, when they belt it out in unison, the attempts of those ‘judgmental creeps’ to silence you and isolate you lose power.” In these settings, girls find connection with Taylor and with each other.1
Not too long ago, I asked some girls in their teens and 20’s from former youth groups what Taylor songs they most resonated with. Many of the songs they mentioned carried a theme of struggling in the face of pressure - a pressure to perform, to appear happy, to do it all yourself.2 Teen girls are resonating with these lyrics, and as a result, connecting to Taylor and to others who also resonate with her music.
So why does this matter? And what’s a youth leader or parent to do? At this point, I’d offer a few suggestions.
Listen. When teens love Taylor’s music, ask what they resonate with in her lyrics and why. Listen without judgment and without trying to fix their problems. Don’t listen just to the surface problems and offer simple answers. Listen long enough to hear what’s beneath.
Study. Taylor’s lyrics reflect what many girls and women are feeling. Study them so that you can speak into the longings, hardships, and brokenness that they reflect. Going back to the title of my first post in this series, this is a way Taylor’s music can be a “gift” to us - it offers us insights we can use for kingdom purposes.
Offer connection. I think the sense of connection with Taylor and other Swifties is a huge part of the Taylor Swift phenomenon. God made us as relational beings, and we need connection and relationship with others! Therefore, offer teens resources for connection and for the stress and pain that they resonate with. Point them to the Psalms, which also express pain and stress through the lens of faith, and to the Gospels, where Jesus sees and moves in compassion toward people in pain. Help them connect with Jesus and with his people amidst their stressors.
Name their pains and stressors. Taylor is giving teens words for hardships they face - so what if we in the church aimed to do a better job than Taylor at this? We all need places to process and speak about the pressures, stressors, and pain we face. The biblical scholar noted above, however, draws our attention to the reality that Christian spaces (and certainly contemporary Christian songs) are often not addressing many of the particular pains that Taylor does. What if we actually engaged those topics and gave girls space to share openly, cope with their stress, and find new ways to navigate it? This would offer girls a place to feel understood, to find connection, and to hear about Biblically faithful ways of navigating their hardships (rather than, say, Taylor’s ways of navigating hardships). God cares about their pain and is angry about injustices they face. What if teen girls knew that even more than they knew Taylor’s feelings on the matter?
I’ve got more to share about Taylor, so stay tuned for future posts.
Of course, the energy at her concerts is a rabbit trail of a topic itself. Suffice it to say I’ve heard several people who have gone to Taylor’s concerts refer to the collective euphoria that they participated in there (or observed there, for the non-Swifties who attended but still noted it). Even seismologists have noted the immense energy at her concerts.