Before today, Taylor Swift had the coolest friends a house in Rhode Island can buy. Now she has one thing that’s even better: a byline in the Wall Street Journal.
Swift is one of several contributors to a package of the Journal‘s called “The Future of Everything” in honor of the paper’s 125th anniversary. She was given the task of speculating on the future of music. Like every single one of her songs, the future of music comes back to one very vague concept: L<3VE. Taylor thinks love – and feminism – will save the struggling music industry:
My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet…is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.
She believes that fans will save musical artists with their obsessive fandom and desire for selfies, explaining that she’s managed to keep her supporters by “constantly providing them with the element of surprise” during her performances.
We should keep one thing in mind, however, as this focus on celebrity and emphasis on relationships with musical artists grows: what they produce should never be free:
Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.
Details of exactly what this future will look like in a world where people don’t buy records like they used to are rarer still, which means they must be very valuable. Even the infographics accompanying the article (one of which stars Taylor’s ex-boyfriend Harry Styles!) don’t fully elucidate them. Taylor writes only that her ideas might “happen or not happen.” Which sounds a lot like a line from a song by Taylor’s friend Ellie Goulding, who, coincidentally, was one “dozens of special guest performers” Swift brought out on tour “to sing their hits” with her to keep her fans happy.
Image via Pacific Coast News