Taylor Swift is one of the most successful pop stars of her generation and has the superlatives to prove it: She is among the most popular touring artists of the past 25 years, the most streamed artists on Spotify, and has the most Grammy nominations for song of the year.
Her Eras tour grossed $2 billion, demonstrating not just that her fans are legion but also that they’re willing to spend their life’s savings on her. So why is being a Swift fan considered by a small but vocal contingent on social media to be so, well, embarrassing?
On Reddit, some of Ms. Swift’s fans discuss their decision to “hide” their love for her, while her detractors decry Swifties as music fandom’s version of “Disney adults.” And on TikTok users have compiled rankings of the cringiest moments involving Ms. Swift and her devoted fan base. (A representative for Ms. Swift did not comment.)
This could, of course, just be the natural life cycle of any stratospherically famous female pop star. Or, according to Georgia Carroll, who has a doctorate in sociology and has specifically studied Ms. Swift’s fan community, it could also be a clash between aging millennials and their Gen Z counterparts.
“I think it’s the combination of the come-down from her being the hottest ticket with the Eras tour combined with us millennials facing our place in the wider cringe world,” Ms. Carroll said.
“We still wear skinny jeans and use the cry-laughing emoji, and, you know, we just have to admit that we’re no longer the cool kids, as hard as that can be,” she said. “Somebody who’s 36 — even if they are Taylor Swift — is never going to be the coolest person in the world to a 17-year-old.”
With her confessional lyrics and earnest devotion to her craft, Ms. Swift has also long been the world’s foremost ambassador of millennial cringe — and if everything is embarrassing now, then liking someone unabashedly is certainly cringey as well.
And Ms. Swift is nothing if not self-aware.
In a 2022 graduation speech at New York University, Ms. Swift gleefully announced her commitment to cringe and advised the students to follow her lead: “Learn to live alongside cringe,” she said. “No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term cringe might someday be deemed cringe.”
But despite her career-long embrace of the awkward and the embarrassing, the discussion of Ms. Swift’s cringiness hit a fever pitch in the fall, when she released her polarizing new album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Featuring what has been interpreted as odes to her fiancé Travis Kelce’s manhood and a diss track aimed at a fellow singer, Charli XCX, some critics called it “embarrassing” and “a masterpiece of cringe,” while others deemed it “a catchy and substantive but unflashy album.”
This is hardly the first time Ms. Swift has faced public scrutiny. In 2016, many on social media loudly turned against her during her widely publicized feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
Maggie Burnett, a 30-year-old brand strategist and content creator from Peoria, Ill., said in a recent interview that although she had long identified as a Swiftie, she became disillusioned with the pop star after attending the Eras tour.
In a widely shared TikTok video that Ms. Burnett posted in August, she said the Eras tour had made her realize that Ms. Swift “isn’t just a person — she’s a business,” adding that the realization had left her feeling disappointed and questioning the “incredibly successful parasocial relationship” the singer shares with her fans.
For Ms. Burnett, what is unpalatable about Ms. Swift’s public persona is that it hasn’t evolved in step with her rising star.
“I feel like she kind of still embodies and lives in this idea of this kind of dorky high school girl who’s not popular, and that couldn’t be further from the truth, right?” Ms. Burnett said. “She’s the biggest pop star on the planet.”
Ms. Carroll agrees, saying that for the past few years many of Ms. Swift’s fans have been grappling with how to reconcile the star’s relatable image with her lived reality.
“A lot of conversation that I see among fans is that she’s still trying to come across as that relatable, quirky, girl-next-door kind of vibe,” Ms. Carroll said. “But it’s like, OK, you’re a billionaire, you’re marrying Travis Kelce. I’m happy for you, but it’s not the most relatable thing in the world. And to some that can also feel a bit cringe.”
Of course, despite the mercurial tides of public opinion, many other fans refuse to feel embarrassed for appreciating Ms. Swift.
“I see just a vulnerability and authenticity there that I don’t see in many other pop stars,” said Alahni McGahee, a 28-year-old human-resources professional who lives in Philadelphia and identifies as “a humungous Swiftie.” Ms. McGahee appreciates that the singer is open about her own foibles. “She’s never afraid to put herself out there,” she added.
In a TikTok video that Ms. McGahee posted after the release of “The Life of a Showgirl,” she argued that Ms. Swift was successful because of her embrace of millennial cringe, not in spite of it.
“People don’t understand that that’s what makes her appeal to people like me, people who have always been on the outside of coolness,” Ms. McGahee said. “To see someone take control of that narrative so completely and embrace it is always something I’ve been searching for, and I found it in her.”
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