Swiftology 101 with Brittany Spanos & Dr. Elly McCausland

High Low with EmRata

Sony Music

Self-improvement, Education, Society & Culture

3.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There’s a lot to learn from polarizing pop star Taylor Swift. I speak to two Swifties who have infiltrated academia, teaching two very different college courses based around Swift — her catalog, her business savvy and what she represents. Senior Rolling Stone writer Brittany Spanos, who says “Taylor Swift is a loaded phrase,” created and teaches Topics in Music: Taylor Swift at NYU’s Clive Davis School of Music at the Tisch School of the Arts. She speaks to what Taylor represents, her fandom, and how and why Taylor has been dismissed and discredited over the years. Dr. Elly McCausland teaches Literature: Taylor’s Version, which draws parallels between Taylor’s lyrics and some of the literary greats. She speaks to the backlash she’s received after her course was announced. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I've heard you refer to the words Taylor Swift as a loaded phrase, why have you said that?
0:04.8	There's a lot of divisiveness with it. I think especially I'm mixed and black and so even just
0:09.4	telling people sometimes that I listen to Taylor Swift, they're like, what? Very confused by it.
0:13.8	I think there's an idea that her music is only for white women and for white women who don't
0:18.9	have a grasp of gender and politics and things like that and there's an idea that she's also
0:24.2	someone who can't keep a man who's only singing about that and that's not a fair assessment.
0:30.1	Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of High Low with Amrata. My producer here has me
0:40.6	saying, hi, it's me, the problem it's me, which is on theme for today's episode because we are
0:48.9	talking about Taylor Swift. Tuesdays we have a interview with the guest and on Thursdays we do a
0:55.3	solo episode called Amrata asks where we talk about any type of topic, something that's been on
1:01.6	my mind lately, whether it's first dates or what we're talking about today, which is Taylor Swift,
1:09.1	a clip of me from the Troys of On episode went a little viral on TikTok. There was a lot of media
1:16.9	pick up on this quote where I jokingly called myself a misogynist for formerly not liking Taylor Swift.
1:26.3	All these people picked the quote up and were like, Emily Ranakowski says that if you don't like Taylor
1:30.9	Swift, you're a misogynist. I was kind of kidding is the truth, but I do actually believe that there
1:38.3	can be some misogyny ingrained in disliking what Taylor Swift represents in the world.
1:46.4	There's so much we can learn from Taylor Swift, not just what she represents in the culture and how we
1:53.2	can, what she reflects back on us by the way we respond to her, but also about her business savvy
2:01.3	about the way she has taken ownership of music and also just simply the way she writes songs.
2:10.2	The truth is that Taylor as a phenomenon and as a person has a lot to teach us about ourselves.
2:17.2	I've had quite a few guests on the show before that have talked about how Taylor has inspired
2:23.6	them, not just in her artistry, but also in her business practices. I think the way that she's
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sony Music, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Sony Music and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.