Taylor Swift Through The Lens Of Semiotics And Marxism
Known as the young and promising country singer with a sweet girl-next-door persona; now coined as the “Queen of Snakes”, following her feud with several other celebrities such as Katy Perry and Kanye West, Taylor Swift is probably considered as one of the artists who evolved drastically through time. This can be noticed from her genre, to subject of songs, and even in her album covers. This paper will read Taylor Swift’s album covers through semiotic analysis. The album covers that will be used were her 2006 Taylor Swift album and her 2017 Reputation album.
Also, this paper would also like to underline concepts of capitalism on the current ticket buying scheme propagating in her concert tours. Adorno’s view about popular music will also be analyzed by reviewing her music through his 2009 essay ‘on popular music’. In her 2006 Taylor Swift album, there are many signifiers present in which I would like to narrow down to the picture, font style used and the colors displayed. The picture itself is a sign,which is a representation of her actual album. Her actual album is a real object in the world — or in other words, it is the referent.
In the album cover, we can see several signifiers. The first signifier is the word “Taylor Swift”. It is written using a cursive white font. I think that the font type, style, and size in this cover was specifically chosen for aesthetic purposes. The font compliments the picture of Swift wherein it displays elegance and femininity. Furthermore, the choice of typography, gives off a “young-and-sweet” vibe depicting Taylor as a young 17- year old girl about to graduate high school by that time. The second signifier that we can see is the dominant colors used in the album cover: green and blue. Both colors signify the colors of the earth; blue being the color of the sky, and green being the color of the grass. When I see those colors, my first immediate thought was “countryside”. Thus, both colors refer to the genre of music she was focusing in, country music.
Moreover, Swift also wore a nude colored clothing, which further indicates a close kin to nature. Another important signifier in this cover is Swift’s makeup. Upon looking online, a “country-look” typically involves nude and earthy colors. The overall look signifies “simplicity”, in contrast of the “high-defined” fashion of urban people. So, by decoding the signifiers present in the sign, we can derive a meaning of who and what is Taylor Swift. In 2006, Taylor Swift is a young female singer who sings country music and that she wants to be perceived as a sweet girl-next-door. On the other hand, her 2017 representation is the polar opposite of her 2006 image. The words “reputation” — which is also the album’s title is symbolic. The first signifier present is the word “reputation”. When we compare with the previous picture, we can see a drastic difference. In 2006, Swift chose a font which implies femininity, meanwhile in 2017, she chose a font which implies values of masculinity. The font she chose for this album is a serif type font, which gives off a feel of structure, hardness, and integrity. There are only two colors present: black and white. Black associates with power, authority, and strength.
On the other hand, white represents openness. It associates with something that is righteous and good. The color-scheme implies dominance and mirrors her look which suggests strong attitude. The semiotic analysis was made possible by establishing differences and not through a one to one relation to things as mentioned by Saussure. Together with the changes mentioned in her album covers come her sudden shift of genre from country to pop music. It seems like her diaristic way of writing and guitar strumming has now completely shifted to electro pop beats and repetitive lines, which is now considered as the thing in the music industry. From this move, we can see that Taylor Swift’s music has become homogenous and predictable, leading us to see Adorno and Horkheimer’s view on culture industry as identical and predictable. Even though these facts exist, the acceptance of the market is still prevalent supported by millions of dollars in revenue for Swift’s music. This is due to the reason that Swift always try to repackage her music. With Taylor Swift paving her way to pop music now, increased support from the fans are prevalent, thus making it a good opportunity to increase earnings, reflecting the capitalist way of doing it.
Recently, Taylor Swift’s way of selling tickets to her concert tours restricted having a middleman by directly buying from her website. Apparently, this has come to a mode wherein the purchase of merchandise happens first to ensure a leading order in the line till the tickets come out. With this system, people with buying power ensures a slot already due to their capability of affording the merchandise. Here, we can see the inequality or social divide present as stated by Macruse in which he said that democratization of culture results for the blocking of demand for full democracy and stabilizes the prevailing social order. Apparently, the capitalist system still controls us by leaving us with no choice but to conform to the same spoon that we get fed with.
