Letter from the Editor: Why T. Swift should be appreciated by every generation

By Courtney Warren

Taylor Swift. 

I love that those two words illicit a response from someone, no matter who you’re talking to. I tried explaining it to my dad, and the best I came up with is that Taylor Swift is the Beatlemania of my generation. We are seeing history being made right this moment, and, whether you like her music or not, there is no secret that she is a brilliant writer. Her lyrics are words that colleges have been able to create entire courses around. I myself taught figurative language using ONLY her lyrics. 

If you’ve never been a writer, I’ll let you in on a secret, it’s hard. Words don’t just come easily. They have to be slaved over, written, rewritten, slashed in red…shoot, even Faulkner had to be rip roaring drunk to create. That being said, I think with the traveling art show coming into Canton and our love and support of all artisans, it’s important we remember that art comes in many forms. 

Art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” I absolutely love this, and I think the idea of art is underappreciated. Why is it that art is the first thing cut in public schools, but the first thing we reach for when we’re grieving? We read poetry at funerals but censor it when teaching it in classrooms. We spend thousands of dollars decorating our homes with art but give the art teachers $200 a year to fund their classrooms for a year. 

My best friend is an art teacher. Do you know what she can do with $200? I’d be able to get through one month, but somehow, with her art teacher wizardry, she makes it work. 

But Courtney! Taylor Swift isn’t art! She just writes break up songs about the many boys shes dated!

I hear you. 

And when you went through that heart wrenching break up…you know the one…the one that left you on  your knees on the bathroom floor thinking you’d never breathe normally again…what comforted you? What did you do to drown out the silence? 

One can only take so much of Sinead O’Connor before they snap. 

I have a bulletin board on our 7th grade hallway right now that’s call “Frost or Swift?” So let’s play a game. 

I’ll give you a phrase, you guess if it’s the famous poet Robert Frost, or if it’s the famous singer/songwriter Taylor Allison Swift. The answers will be at the end of the article. 

There’s a reason David played the harp. There’s a reason the Pslams are also hymns. Music is something we can feel in our heartbeats. We were created by an ultimate Creator. If He is alive and lives in us, then were we not created to also create? 

I’m an artist, and my medium happens to be words. I don’t pretend to be the greatest and I definitely don’t pretend to understand other mediums. I attend art exhibits with that same art teacher best friend and ask “tell me how this is art.” I ask this not because I don’t think it’s art–the opposite, actually. I want her to teach me. What did this artist do that I need to notice and appreciate? What are the skills that my untrained eyes would overlook?

Whether Swift is your cup of tea or not, there is no denying she meets the criteria of “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” I encourage you to branch out. Try a few of her songs. Listen to her words. 

Appreciate art, the process, the artists, and be sure to visit the traveling art show here in Canton! 

QUIZ TIME: 
1. Beneath the chandelier of stars and atmosphere/ Tangled like roots on the ground. 
2. You were forever finding some new play
3. Visions of half the world burned black/ And in the unshrunken yellow in smoke
4. Walking through a crown/ the village is aglow
5. The empathetic hunger descends

Music matters. Art matters. 

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Answers:            1. Swift            2. Frost            3. Frost            4. Swift            5. Swift