Following the NFL Super Bowl on Sunday night, the 77-year-old posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, taking credit for the pop star’s enormous success over the years.

In his post, Trump refers to the Music Modernisation Act that was passed under his watch as US president, legislation that helped artists earn royalties and licensing fees easier on music streaming services.

“I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists,” Trump wrote.

“Joe Biden didn’t do anything for Taylor, and never will.”

Swift hasn’t officially endorsed a presidential candidate yet for this year’s election, however she did publicly announce her support for President Joe Biden in 2020.

“There’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money,” Trump continued in his post.

“Besides that, I like her boyfriend, Travis, even though he may be a Liberal, and probably can’t stand me!”

Previously, Swift was known for keeping her politics to herself and very rarely demonstrated any political leaning in her art and in her presence in the public eye.

However, in the 2018 midterm election, Swift endorsed Democrat Senator Phil Bredesen and urged her fans to vote the same.

Her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana includes footage of moments before she made the endorsement in a post on Instagram. While Swift’s father was concerned about security risks and potentially damaging headlines outing her opposition to Trump, she said it was something she felt she needed to do, regretting not speaking out sooner.

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A post shared by Loni Love (@comiclonilove)

Swift was particularly opposed to Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn – who ran against Democrat Senator Bredesen and ultimately won – based on her extreme right-wing views against women and the LGBTQIA+ community.

“She votes against fair pay for women. She votes against reauthorisation of the violence against women act, which is just basically protecting us from domestic abuse and stalking,” Swift said in the footage on Miss Americana.

“She thinks that if you’re a gay couple or even if you look like a gay couple you should be allowed to be kicked out of a restaurant.

“I can’t see another commercial [with] her disguising these policies behind the words ‘Tennessee Christian values. Those aren’t Tennessee Christian values’. I live in Tennessee. I am Christian. That’s not what we stand for.”

Conspiracy theories

Trump’s comments on Taylor Swift comes off the back of far-right pundits accusing the pop star of being a “Pentagon asset” who will “rig” the upcoming presidential election in November in favour of the Democrat party.

Some referred to Swift as an “election interference psyop” who will turn Swifities into Democrat voters. Others have accused Swift of being a puppet for the NFL and Democrats, referencing her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce, saying she will also rig the Super Bowl match.

While Swift has not addressed the accusations, President Joe Biden has not shied away from them, and instead, his social media team has taken the mickey out of it.

Just like we drew it up. pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 12, 2024

In an unanticipated move, Biden also created a TikTok account on Sunday night – presumably to appeal to younger voters – that already has nearly 100,000 followers.

The post Donald Trump believes he is the man who made Taylor Swift ‘so much money’ appeared first on Women's Agenda.

I wrote last week about Taylor Swift winning her historic fourth Album of the Year Grammy, only to have the press pull apart all the ways in which she didn’t perfectly accept the award — Slate wrote she was too ‘self-effacing’ — in that it was a strategy to endear her to the public rather than an authentic response, or she was too ‘strategic’ in the way she spoke as though it was too calculated and not spontaneous enough. That she didn’t give enough deference to Celine Dion when being presented her award and that she was crass because she used the occasion to announce her eleventh album was on its way.

Not everyone thought all these things, but far out, man. Imagine being — objectively, according to the Grammy’s — the most highly decorated (because Album of the Year is considered the greatest accolade) singer-songwriter-artist of the last few generations, only to be picked apart on precisely every possible tiny misstep she made in the space of 75 seconds (the amount of time she had to accept the award)? 75 seconds.

This is after months of relentless commentary about whether she was using her attendance at her boyfriend’s football game as a PR scheme, whether she attended them too much, whether she was being shown too much by the broadcasters when she did attend, not to mention the daft conspiracy theories about whether her relationship is actually some government psychological operation to influence the election.

Which itself was off the back of years of relentless criticism by the press for being stupid, for dating too many men, that she couldn’t hold on to a man, that she was petty for turning her real life events into song lyrics, and so many more she turned it into a song Shake it off.

And lastly, she was effectively shunned after the accusation by Kanye West that she had lied about approving his song lyrics “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, why? I made that bitch famous” by providing recorded ‘proof’ of her consent after asking her if “it was cool?”.

Later on, that was revealed to be based on doctored recording. Her song Look What You Made Me Do on the album Reputation, references this false consent:

The vanishing woman

In response to the backlash, Swift disappeared from sight, renting a house in Europe where no one could find her for two years. She thought the world hated her and was sick of her. This is something Margot Robbie is doing right now, pre-emptively. She recently admitted she was taking time away from film making for a while out of fear that, after the enormous success of Barbie, ”everybody are probably sick of me”.

The relentless standards of perfection that successful or powerful women are held to, to be considered deserving is something to behold. But women must also be on constant surveillance of the limits of society’s tolerance for them, and then strategically never meet that limit to avoid ‘cancellation’. It seems we just can’t quite let some women deserve or enjoy their success or power, unless they are absolutely, 100 percent, unimpeachably, perfect, yet also, aware and humble enough to stay out of view and know her place, when she is.

While it would be easy to write this off as ‘champagne problems’, as the Barbie movie highlighted, this is a systemic issue for all women. If Taylor Swift or Margot Robbie as white women of immense privilege are vulnerable to it, imagine the challenges for other groups of women.

Double standards

These are standards that men simply are not held to.

I don’t recall Harry Styles being criticised in any way for any missteps he made when accepting the Album of the Year award last year at the Grammys. I don’t see any famous male spectator who regularly attend sports games ever criticised for attending too many games, or accused of it being a play for PR or being shown too much by the broadcast.

In fact, Ryan Reynolds literally bought a sports team then made a documentary about buying a sportsts team and he doesn’t get criticised for doing it for PR. I don’t see other male actor, say George Clooney or Brad Pitt, ever saying they need to step out of the public eye lest the public turn on them for saturating the cultural consciousness.

The former President of the United States was elected to be the President of the United States – the highest office in public service and one of the most powerful positions in the world – despite numerous allegations of wrongdoing, including an infamous recording of his admission on how he assaults women.

Closer to home, this past week we saw our video footage of former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, still a member of parliament, sprawled on a street, drunk, yelling expletives into his phone. There was criticism of his actions but there was also substantial grace afforded to him and concern aired that he needed medical treatment. You may recall, however when the Finish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, a woman, had a small house party where she had a couple drinks and danced and it was posted to social media. She was forced to apologise publicly to the world.

The silent woman

Nor can we give successful women permission for the voice or feelings they express publicly. Taylor Swift wrote in Dear John (yes, the song she wrote about John Mayer):

Mayer later said publicly how he was humiliated by the song “Because I didn’t deserve it. I’m pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do.” Despite Mayer (and every other songwriter in the history of the world) using his own life as fodder for his songs (and rumoured to have written his song Paper Doll about Swift), he has never been criticised for it.

Swift has subsequently said in an interview when talking about Folklore several years later:

“The most rage provoking element of being a female is the gaslighting that happens when, for centuries, we’ve been just expected to absorb male behaviour silently. Right? Silent absorption of whatever any guy decides to do. And often times when we, in our enlightened state, in our emboldened state now, respond to bad male behaviour or somebody just doing something that was absolutely out of line and we respond, that response is treated like the offence itself.

There’s been situations recently, somebody who’s very guilty of this in my life, it’s a person who makes me feel- or tries to make me feel- like I’m the offender by having any kind of defence to his offences. It’s like, oh, I have absolutely no right to respond or I’m crazy. I have no right to respond or I’m angry. I have no right to respond or I’m out of line.”

Society struggles to show a woman they are “impressed when she aces their tests”, so we react by picking apart any slight imperfection. Moreover, a woman better not have a reaction to male behaviour, or a public or private expression of her own feelings, or she will be treated as the offender — she will be accused of going about it the wrong way, being humiliating, being petty or spiteful, having a victim mentality, having an illegitimate motive, or just plain wrong.

Double standards for women in every industry

In the corporate realm, if a woman is not perfect or has opinions or feelings then she is accused of being ‘unprofessional’ or hurting the interests of the men around her. It will be coded as what’s in the best interests “of the company” but it will actually be about men’s feelings and reputations.

When Christine Holgate, the former CEO of Australia Post, was put on blast by the press, the Prime Minister and many others for gifting her staff some watches as a bonus for their good performance, it eventually resulted in her stepping down. However, she was an extremely effective CEO, and had turned around the performance of Australia Post.

Compared to those which she succeeded and those that succeeded her, Holgate outperformed and was paid less. Her base salary of $1.375 million was much lower than her predecessor, Ahmed Fahour, who pocketed $5.6 million in a year. Fahour left with a $10 million golden handshake. Nevertheless, when she and her Board made a calculated decision to reward the staff for some landmark agreements they executed, she and the Board chose not to give her staff $150,000 bonuses they were authorised to do and gifted them a $5000 watch instead. The Prime Minister at the time, used it as a political point scoring exercise, demanding in parliament that she step aside for awarding her staff such an egregious gift.

Eventually she would be forced to step aside for the “good of Australia Post”. Her successor went on to actually award eight senior executives collectively $4.45m in bonuses with another $24m in incentives paid to 362 non-executive staff, who already earned more than $235,000. And there was no controversy whatsoever. The moral of the story is, despite her success in her role, despite history subsequently showing her not to have made a mistake afterall, she was held to higher standards and the perception that was not utterly perfect, was her downfall.

Grace Tame, as Australian of the Year, was a force to be reckoned with in highlighting the plight of victims of child sexual abuse. She categorically refused to be silent about her opinions and feelings, or to play nice simply to placate the people around her, and for that she was relentlessly criticised.

Despite being an extremely effective Australian Of The Year, promoting awareness and legislative change for the victims of child sexual abuse, she was accused of being a ‘brat’, ‘disrespectful’ and unprofessional for refusing to smile in photos, for example. She was accused of not having sufficient deference for those who bestowed the award on her , or undermining the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison as though she was using her position to make a political statement….sounding familiar? (But also, so what if she was?). Grace Tame received far more criticism for simply not smiling than Scott Morrison ever did for secretly assuming 8 portfolios.

Over the years, when I’ve dared to have opinions, express my feelings or not tolerate poor male behaviour in the workplace, I’ve been called stupid, or crazy (the classic insults if you want to undermine a woman) or psychologically damaged, and made out to be the offender as a result. All these accusations, comments and feedback, were always from men.

This is not about not taking on board constructive feedback which we should all do. It’s also not saying women can’t be called out when they behave badly themselves. This is about how intolerant we are of women refusing to absorb male behaviour that they believe is out of line, or to stand up for themselves and how we try to coerce women to silence by making them out to be the offenders when they do. It’s also about how when women are successful, or they gain any power, we will still reserve the right punish them or dismiss them for the slightest missteps that simply don’t apply to men.

Are we really saying for women to enjoy their power or success or to not be relentlessly criticised, they should be perfect, and if not perfect, then neither seen, nor heard?

I’ll leave you with a lyric from The Man, a song from Swifts album Lover which I think is apt for this article:

The post The relentless pressure on women to be perfect and silent to ‘deserve’ their success appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Women also took home awards across key categories including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best New Artist and Song of the Year, while some legends of the music industry were recognised by the awards show.

Here’s our favourite moments for women.

Taylor Swift wins best Pop Vocal Album and announces new album

Taylor Swift used her acceptance speech for best Pop Vocal Album to unexpectedly announce a new album, The Tortured Poets Department, out April 19.

“I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I have been keeping from you for the last two years,” Swift said, before going backstage and posting the details of the album to her socials.

Taylor Swift takes home the big award, Album of the Year

Taylor Swift took out the final award of the show, becoming the first person to win Album of the Year four times at the Grammys, for her album Midnights. She has previously won the award for her albums Fearless, 1989 and Folklore. She overtakes the record previously held by Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Frank Sinatra.

She thanked her producer Jack Antonoff, who she described as a “once in a generation producer” and co-writer Lana Del Rey, who she said was a “legacy artist who’s in her prime”.

“The award is the work, and all I want to do is to keep being able to do this,” she said. “Mind. Blown.”

Seven of the 8 nominees for the album of the year were women artists, including Swift, Lana Del Rey, Olivia Rodrigo, Miley Cyrus, boygenuis, Janelle Mo and SZA.

Joni Mitchell makes her Grammys live debut

Music legend Joni Mitchell has made her live performance debut at the Grammys. The 80-year-old performed Both Sides Now alongside Brandi Carlile. Her performance was met with a standing ovation. Mitchell also took home the award for Best Folk Album. 

Billie Eilish wins Song of the Year

Billie Eilish and Finneas won Song of the Year for their song What Was I Made For? It was a song that featured on the Barbie soundtrack. “Damn, that’s stupid, guys!” Eilish exclaims onstage. “I’m shocked out of my balls.”

Tribute to Sinead O’Connor

Annie Lenox sung the iconic song Nothing Compares 2 U in tribute to Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor at the awards show.

O’Connor, who rose to fame in the 1990s, died last year at age 56. The singer is remembered for her outspoken social commentary and activism, particularly her criticism of the Catholic Church and views on feminism, sex and religion.

The post The Grammys was all about women this year appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Since the 34-year old singer began her high-profile relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce in September last year, conspiracy theories spouted by prominent MAGA figures have circulated online. They started off rather innocently — the misinformation accused the pair of entering a ‘fake’ relationship to boost their public profile (like Taylor needs that?).

Earlier this week, the accusations turned insidious and political, with a handful of influential right-wing personalities calling Swift an “election interference psyop” set on manipulating November’s presidential election. 

Swift has attended over 13-games to cheer on her boyfriend’s team and each time, a parade of cameras and commentaries descend on her every reaction. As their relationship played out publicly, some conspiracy theorists couldn’t help but slump into misogynistic trappings. 

On Monday, Jack Posobiec, a Trump supported who has been found to have “collaborated with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites for years”, accused Swift of being “used”, though he failed to clarify whom she was being used by. 

“I think – and I’ve said this, I’ve taken a lot of crap for this online – I think they’re using Taylor Swift right now,” he said in a video posted on Truth Social. 

“They’re gearing up for an operation to use Taylor Swift in the election against everything: against Trump, for Biden, they’re gonna get her and all you know they call them the Swifties they’re going to turn those into voters, you watch.”

Former actor-turned controversial rightwing figure Roseanne Barr appeared alongside Posobiec in the video, saying, “I think that’s what they’re doing too, she’s definitely somebody who’s consented to speak the way the establishment wants to be spoken of.” 

“She has a lot of young girls…I think that’s gonna be the way they’re going to try to get on top of the next election.” 

The 71-year old former Nanny star and 2012 presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party is a Trump supporter, appearing at a rally in Florida in November, calling the Former President the “Magador-in-Chief.”

Former Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy responded to Posobiec’s post, writing on X: “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

Ramaswamy has spread harmful misinformation about a number of issues in the past, including his claim that the January 6 insurrection was “an inside job” and that the 2020 election was stolen by “big tech.” 

Self-described Islamophobe and conservative Laura Loomer said “The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open.”

“It’s not a coincidence that current and former Biden admin officials are propping up Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. They are going to use Taylor Swift as the poster child for their pro-abortion GOTV Campaign.”

Meanwhile, comedians have come out to ridicule these rightwing theories. On Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel opened his show with a monologue calling the theorists “a couple of nuts.”

Reading out a number of tweets, including one from Ramaswamy, Kimmel quibbed: 

“So let me get this straight: The same people who think Joe Biden has dementia and has Kamala Harris feed him butterscotch tapioca every night, also believe that he has somehow planned and executed a diabolically brilliant scheme to fix the NFL playoffs so the biggest pop star in the world can pop up on the jumbotron during the Super Bowl in between a Kia and a Tostitos commercial to hypnotize her 11-year-old fans into voting for Joe Biden?” he said on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

“I mean, it makes sense… These people think football is fake and wrestling is real.”

Swift has not yet issued an endorsement in the upcoming presidential race, though she is reported to be on Joe Biden aides’ “wish lists of potential surrogates”. 

The post Right-wing personalities claim Taylor Swift is rigging 2024 presidential election appeared first on Women's Agenda.

X Corp. (formerly known as Twitter) responded to the incident on Sunday night by removing the images and the account that first published the deepfakes, as well as temporarily blocking users’ ability to search “Taylor Swift” on the platform.

“This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritise safety on this issue,” said Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X.

The pop star’s name is still blocked on X, resulting in an error when trying to search her name.

According to a report from The New York Times, one of the several images that were in circulation was viewed 47 million times before the deepfake, along with the account that published it, was removed from X.

In a news briefing on Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on Congress to take legislative action against the abuse and misuse of AI technologies online, but also urged social media platforms to take greater measures to regulate content.

“This is very alarming. And so, we’re going to do what we can to deal with this issue,” Jean-Pierre said.

“We know that lax enforcement disproportionately impacts women and they also impact girls, sadly, who are the overwhelming targets.

“We believe they (the platforms) have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation and non-consensual, intimate imagery of real people.”

The creation and distribution of deepfake AI images has been widely regarded as a form of gender-based violence, as it disproportionately targets women and girls online.

In 2019, a study by Deeptrace, a cyber security company, found 96 per cent of deepfake videos online were of an intimate or sexual nature. The people depicted in the AI-generated content were primarily women actors, musicians and media professionals.

‘Extremely harmful content’

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant spoke to Women’s Agenda, explaining how easy it is to create deepfakes and how devastating it can be for people.

“Deepfakes, especially deepfake pornography, can be devastating to the person whose image is hijacked and altered without their knowledge or consent, no matter who they are,” Commissioner Inman Grant said.

“Image-based abuse, including deepfake porn, is persistent online harm which also represents one of the most egregious invasions of privacy.”

Generative AI is user-friendly and widely accessible to people. Inman Grant said something that would previously have taken large software and computing power to generate now can be generated with a click of a button.

“As a result, it’s becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake. And it’s much easier to inflict great harm,” Inman Grant said.

Australia’s online safety regulatory body, eSafety, lists the use of AI to create sexually explicit deepfake images as “image-based abuse”. Online users can report image-based abuse on eSafety’s website.

While eSafety has a 90 per cent success rate in getting deepfakes and other abusive material down from online sites, including social media platform X, Commissioner Inman Grant called on the “purveyors and profiteers of AI” to do more.

“We’re not going to regulate or litigate our way out of this – the primary digital safeguards must be embedded at the design phase and throughout the model development and deployment process,” she said.

“And platforms need to be doing much to detect, remove and prevent the spread of this extremely harmful content.”

Earlier this month, the eSafety Commission released a transparency report, revealing massive staff cuts at X Corp around the world.

According to the report, the global Trust and Safety staff was reduced by 30 per cent, while the Trust and Safety staff in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, had a 45 per cent reduction.

Between November 2022 and May 2023, there were 6,103 previously banned accounts on Twitter that were reinstated on X.

At the time of the report’s release, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said Elon Musk’s staff cuts at X Corp. had created a “perfect storm” for the platform.

eSafety urges those concerned about the non-consensual sharing of images to report to eSafety at www.esafety.gov.au/Report.

The post ‘Egregious invasion of privacy’: Taylor Swift’s name blocked on X after sexually explicit deepfakes go viral appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Here are our top-rated moments from her interview:

She’s currently in her happy place

“It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33. And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that.”

“This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.” 

“I’ve been raised up and down the flagpole of public opinion so many times in the last 20 years.”

“I’ve been given a tiara, then had it taken away.”

“Over the years, I’ve learned I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get pressed about things that don’t matter. Yes, if I go out to dinner, there’s going to be a whole chaotic situation outside the restaurant. But I still want to go to dinner with my friends.”

“Life is short. Have adventures. Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back. I’m more trusting now than I was six years ago.” 

Gruelling workouts in preparation for her Eras Tour

“Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud. Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.” 

“I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones. I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.” 

Swift hired choreographer Mandy Moore (not the pop star actor) who Emma Stone worked with during La-La Land. 

“Learning choreography is not my strong suit,” Swift said. 

She also stopped drinking, because “Doing that show with a hangover — I don’t want to know that world.”

During a hiatus from consecutive shows, she rests for a full day: “I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there. It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels.” 

“I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed.” 

“That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.”

On performing her songs on Eras Tour

“Every part of you that you’ve ever been, every phase you’ve ever gone through, was you working it out in that moment with the information you had available to you at the time.”

“There’s a lot that I look back at like, ‘Wow, a couple years ago I might have cringed at this.’ You should celebrate who you are now, where you’re going, and where you’ve been.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

On the challenges working in the music industry

Swift’s life changed dramatically after Kanye West’s infamous VMAs disruption in 2009 when Swift was onstage accepting the award for Best Video by a Female Artist. 

“I realised every record label was actively working to try to replace me. I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.”

“By the time an artist is mature enough to psychologically deal with the job, they throw you out at 29, typically.”

“In the ’90s and ’00s, it seems like the music industry just said: ‘OK, let’s take a bunch of teenagers, throw them into a fire, and watch what happens. By the time they’ve accumulated enough wisdom to do their job effectively, we’ll find new teenagers.’” 

On the two major career events: 

“It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me.”

“The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity. The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.”

Kim Kardashian feud 

In 2016, Kanye West released a song, “Famous” where he sings: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that bitch famous.”

West later said that Swift had consented to the lyrics. Swift denied this. A few months later, West’s then-wife Kim Kardashian claimed in a GQ interview: “[Taylor] totally approved that. She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn’t. I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved.” 

She also called Swift a snake on Instagram. The following month, Kardashian released Snapchat receipts of Swift appearing to give Kanye permission to release “Famous.”

Swift immediately released a Notes app statement: 

“Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me ‘that bitch’ in his song? It doesn’t exist because it never happened. You don’t get to control someone’s emotional response to being called ‘that bitch’ in front of the entire world.”

“Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination. I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of, since 2009.”

After the scandal, Swift told TIME this week she felt like she was in “a career death.”

“Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me. I had all the hyenas climb on and take their shots.” 

“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar.”

“That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”

“I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life.”

“The Scooter Thing”

In June 2019, Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group, which included Swift’s entire catalog at that point, which was valued at US$140 million. 

The sale meant that Braun owned the rights to Swift’s first six albums, and any time someone requested license to a song, he would pocket the money. 

“With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion,” Swift told TIME. 

“I was so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold.”

“I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’”

“I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it.’” 

“My dad kept saying it to me too. I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away.” 

Swift rerecorded her all her songs, and released them as “Taylor’s Version”. 

“It’s all in how you deal with loss. I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

“If you look at what I’ve put out since then, it’s more albums in the last few years than I did in the first 15 years of my career.” 

“Nothing is permanent. So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.”

“But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

On Feminism

“If we have to speak stereotypically about the feminine and the masculine. Women have been fed the message that what we naturally gravitate toward—”

“Girlhood, feelings, love, breakups, analysing those feelings, talking about them nonstop, glitter, sequins! We’ve been taught that those things are more frivolous than the things that stereotypically gendered men gravitate toward, right?” 

“And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening.”

You can read the full interview with TIME here.

The post ‘It’s harder to hit a moving target’: The remarkable evolution of Taylor Swift laid bare in Time’s Person of the Year Interview appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Multi-genre artist SZA (Solána Imani Rowe) picked up the most nominations, contesting in nine categories including Record of the year, Album of the year, Song of the year and Best R&B performance. 

For Record of the year, the 34-year old will be competing against other extraordinary female artists, including Billie Eilish, boygenius, Miley Cyrus, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and Victoria Monét.

SZA won Best Pop Duo/Performance alongside Doja Cat for “Kiss Me More” last year, and already has 14 previous nominations under her belt. 

Phoebe Bridgers, Olivia Rodrigo, Victoria Monét and Taylor Swift have also picked up several nominations in the now gender-less categories. 

Victoria Monét, Phoebe Bridgers received seven nominations each, while Taylor Swift has six nominations.

If Swift wins Album of the year, the 33-year old will be the first artist in Grammys history to win the category four times. 

Tying her with six nominations is Olivia Rodrigo, who has previously won three Grammy awards. Rodrigo’s sophomore album, “GUTS” has been nominated for Album of the year and her song “Vampire” has been nominated for Record of the year, Song of the Year and Best pop solo performance.

Artists whose songs featured in The Barbie soundtrack picked up 12 nominations, including Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Dua Lipa for their songs “What Was I Made For?”,  “Dance The Night” and “Barbie World”. 

Meryl Streep, Michelle Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders are competing for Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording, while Kylie Minogue has been nominated for Best Pop Dance Recording for “Padam Padam.” 

Next year’s awards will happen on 4 February at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. 

Check out the entire list of nominations. 

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With three recent wins in Perth under the belt, including Wednesday night’s 3-0 win over Chinese Taipei, they are now due to face Uzbekistan twice in February – once at home in Australia, and once away. 

This week, Matildas defender Steph Cately said that she’d like to see the Matildas play their home game in February at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which has a capacity of 100,000 people. It would be the biggest Matildas crowd ever, and the biggest crowd for a women’s sporting event, ever.

Recently, a women’s volleyball match in Nebraska broke a world record for the largest crowd at a women’s sporting event in history, with 92,003 people.

The exact date of the game is not yet confirmed, but the Matildas could run into a problem if it’s scheduled on February 16, 17, or 18. 

Why? Taylor Swift is already booked into the MCG with three nights of sell out shows. 

Football Australia CEO James Johnson told Nine’s Today show that the sporting body will be looking for the “biggest” venues possible for the Matildas.

“Once we know where we land we’ll get the dates of the next match. That will be in February but it will be one of two match days,” Johnson said. 

“As soon as we have confirmation of what that match day is we’ll be looking for the biggest stadiums available for the Matildas to play in.”

Johnson said the prospect of the Matildas selling out the MCG was definitely a possibility.

It would be “exciting, wouldn’t it? And we fancy our chances of selling it out,” he said.

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And why shouldn’t they? Every city she has performed in since March has seen an extraordinary spike in revenue. 

According to a Bloomberg News analysis, her total net worth has just reached $US1.1 billion — and The Eras Tour is projected to generate close to $US5 billion in consumer spending in the US alone.

Bloomberg estimates that the shows performed so far have racked up more than $US700 million in ticket sales —  the average ticket cost at $US254. (Here in Australia, ticket prices ranged from $80 to $500 — many paid $700+ on the resale market.)

Boosting the economy

The extraordinary success of the Eras tour has seen Swift add $US4.3 billion to the US gross domestic product thus far. 

The estimated figures were analysed by the folks from Bloomberg Economics, which calculated the value of her music catalog, five homes, and earnings from streaming deals, music sales, concert tickets and merchandise.

With such a reliable scheme of revenue, it’s not surprising that world leaders and public officials are calling for the 33-year old to bring her tour to their cities. 

Chilean President Gabriel Boric, the mayor of Budapest Gergely Karácsony and even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have made public statements inviting Swift to make an appearance in their cities.

In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s monthly Beige Book summarised the city’s economic activity, mentioning Swift’s three-shows in May for spurring growth in the city’s economy.

“Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city,” the document read.

In Chicago the following month, three Eras concerts led to an all time hotel revenue record. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker credited Swift with reviving the state’s tourism industry. 

In Seattle, Downtown hotel revenues reached a high of $US7.4 million on a single night of the Eras tour alone, while in Houston, city-wide revenue for the weekend when Swift performed reached a total of $US34 million — a 136 per cent spike from the same period in 2019.

Music journalist Nora Princiotti believes the Eras Tour success can be attribuited to the depth and popularity of Swift’s music catalog. 

“I don’t know that anybody envisioned a tour of this scale ever happening. She can go three and a half hours and just hit after hit after hit,” she told Time.

“For as big as she has been for so long, even if this is a new peak, I think a lot of fans feel like they’ve spent their entire lives defending their love of her.”

Princiotti, who writes for pop culture site The Ringer and co-hosts the podcast Every Single Album: Taylor Swift, added there is “…something very strange in seeing the US government, or all of these various municipalities, just desperate to get a little sliver of the clout that comes from just being somewhat associated with Taylor Swift.”

Carolyn Sloane, a labor economist at the University of Chicago, described Swift as “a great economist.” 

“In addition to being a generational talent, Taylor Swift is a great economist,” Sloane said. “Taylor has great ideas, is able to scale her ideas and seems to be pretty risk-seeking.”

Other sources of revenue 

Not only is the Eras tour generating as much money as the economies of small countries, Swift is setting records with other sources of revenue. 

The filmed version of her Eras performance “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” has already made $US123.5 million globally, and generated a record high $US92.8 million at the box office on its opening weekend. 

On Saturday, Spotify announced that Swift had broken two records with the release of her newest album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) — the singer-songwriter’s fourth rerelease of her earlier albums. 

“She’s done it again,” Spotify wrote on Twitter. “On October 27th, Taylor Swift became the most-streamed artist in a single day in Spotify history, and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2023 so far.”

And how can we forget Swift’s romance with NFL star Travis Kelce — which has sent NFL viewership ratings flying and increased sales of his jersey by 400 per cent?

Alice Enders, head of research at Enders Analysis believes that part of Swift’s success has been the constant release of merchandise for fans. 

“There’s this whole ecosystem she has, and it’s very lucrative for her,” Enders said. 

“There’s a cost of living crisis and people are still forking out thousands of dollars to see Taylor Swift.” 

“We are in an experience economy where people crave going out and participating in social events. It’s no surprise that people are flocking to this Eras Tour experience in what is increasingly an otherwise digital environment we live in.”

The Eras tour is set to resume with a nine-show South American leg next month. With 89 shows to go and the rest of her international tour next year, the Swifties Effect has a lot more power in it yet.

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An undeniable hit with her devoted fans, the Swift’s film made between US$95m and $97m in its North America debut, according to the film’s distributors AMC Theatres. Even before hitting theatres, the Eras Tour movie’s advance ticket sales made it one of the highest-grossing concert films of all time, surpassing the $73m that Justin Bieber’s concert movie Never Say Never made in 2011. 

As of Friday, it’s showing in 90 countries around the world, and considering she only announced the concert-film 6 weeks ago on social media, the success is even more unprecedented. It was deemed a “mini Barbie” before hitting screens with the amount of excitement it generated.

Although Swift’s live show comes in at a whopping 3-hours and 15-minutes, the film has broken things down into 2 hours and 45-minutes for theatre-goers. The footage is compiled from Swift’s summer shows at southern California’s SoFi Stadium, with videography that gives close-ups of intimate stage details– Swift’s backup dancers, dazzling costumes and sequins galore. 

“It’s for the whimsical fairies, mindless dreamers, hopeless romantics and those who have been around to celebrate the last 17 years of music,” Swift writes about the film on Instagram. 

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The hype in theatres seems to be on par with that of the stadium tours, with many fans bringing friendship bracelets to share and dancing and singing along to the film– an experience that’s seeing people come back for multiple viewings. 

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Swift self-produced the film and stands to earn 57 per cent of ticket sales, according to Variety. 

At the film’s premiere last week, she was joined by fellow musical queen Beyonce, whose influence Swift said has been a “guiding light” throughout her career. 

“The fact that she showed up tonight was like an actual fairytale,” Swift wrote on Instagram.

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While Aussies will be able to see the Eras Tour live in February, more than three million people have already gone to Swift’s first US leg of the tour. Tickets sold-out for her Sydney and Melbourne shows within hours, so her film offers a second chance to witness the magic. 

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More than three million people have already gone to the first US leg of the 2023 Eras Tour, consisting of 10 of Swift’s studio albums across her so-called ‘Eras’ in one concert. 

The Australian leg of the tour is happening in February, and with the seven Sydney and Melbourne shows selling out within hours, news of Swift’s film gives fans another chance to see it.

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“The Eras Tour has been the most meaningful, electric experience of my life so far and I’m overjoyed to tell you that it’ll be coming to the big screen soon,” she shared on Instagram.

“Starting Oct 13th you’ll be able to experience the concert film in theatres in North America! Tickets are on sale now. Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing encouraged. 1,2,3 LGB!!!! (iykyk).”

The ‘123LGB’ phrase is in reference to fans yelling “One, two, three… let’s go b*tch,” at the start of the song ‘Delicate’ from her Reputation album. Fans have also been making ‘friendship bracelets’ based on one lyric in her Midnights song ‘You’re On Your Own Kid’. 

It’s been reported that her fans, or ‘Swifties’, have been experiencing post-concert ‘amnesia’ as well from attending the excitement filled show as there is so much to process within three hours.

For this reason, even the fans who’ve attended Swift’s tour are likely to be thankful for the ability to rewatch the film, which is coming to theatres worldwide. 

“We’re about to go on a little adventure together and that adventure is going to span 17 years of music,” Swift tells fans in the film’s trailer. 

Tickets are already on sale ahead of the film’s debut on October 13.

While the writer’s strike in Hollywood was occurring at the time of filming, Swift reportedly met all of SAG-AFTRA’s demands as it’s the union representing film writers.

Swift purposely worked around the major producers that are represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTMP), instead funding the whole project herself. 

According to Puck News, Swift spent between $10 million and $20 million to produce the film through her own company, Taylor Swift Productions. 

She also met SAG-AFTRA’s demands by offering proper salaries for crew members and generous residuals (the money people make off the back of streaming). 

 “She came to us and said she wanted to do this, but only if she could do it the right way under a union contract,” SAG-AFTRA’s executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said at the Toronto Independent Film Festival.

The post Taylor Swift announces concert film of her 2023 Eras Tour appeared first on Women's Agenda.

The 33-year old won every televised category which she was nominated in — all nine: Video of the Year, Artist of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop, Best Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Show of the Summer, and Album of the Year.

Nominated for a record number of 11 awards, Swift took out Artist of the Year — a category that was all female, for the first time in history. Swift beat out Beyoncé, Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj, Karol G and Shakira to win the award. 

By winning the award for Video of the Year for ‘Anti-Hero’, Swift has become the first artist in history to win the award four times. 

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“OK. This is unbelievable,” Swift said, accepting the Video of the Year Award at the Prudential Center in New Jersey on Tuesday night. 

“This is… I just want to say that the fact that this is a fan-voted award means so much to me based on the memories that we’ve made recently.”

‘Anti-Hero’ also took home Best Pop Song, Best Direction and Song of the Year. Swift used her acceptance speech to praise her longtime friend and collaborator, Jack Antonoff, 39. (Antonoff recently tied the knot with Andie MacDowell’s daughter, Margaret Qualley).

“I want to say I’m really, really lucky I get to write songs with one of my best friends in the world,” she said. “[Jack] is so talented, it is incomprehensible, and I’m so lucky I’ve been making music with him since we made an album called 1989.”

“I started writing songs when I was 12, and it always starts with a very isolated emotion, like a very specific type of insecurity or self-loathing that I feel like I’m the only one who is feeling in that moment, but then when I go out on tour, I’ve got a stadium singing the words back to me.”

“It brings me to this very relaxing feeling of maybe we all have the same issues so thank you so much to the fans. I love you so much. This means the world to me.”

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Winning her third award, for best direction, Swift acknowledged her collaborators Chancler Haynes and Rina Yang, using her speech to talk about her experience of directing.

“If there is one thing that I’ve learned about direction that it is absolutely a team sport so I brought my team with me tonight,” she said. “I’m so lucky to work with these brilliant, brilliant collaborators. [We] worked together so many times, and every time it is so much fun. And I’m just so lucky because I also want thank the actors who played my nightmare horrendous future children [in “Anti-Hero”].”

“I’m so, so lucky to get to direct and write my music videos. I love it so much. So thank you so much to the VMAs and the fans for honouring me. Thank you.

Swift entered the evening with 14 VMA awards already. After Tuesday night, she now tallies a total of 23 awards – putting her second place behind Beyonce, who has a grand total of 26 wins.  

Swift has recently wrapped up the first leg of her Eras Tour – which she described on Tuesday night as “the most joyful and exhilarating experience.”

“And we’re not even halfway done with it. It’s really felt like the adventure of a lifetime this past year.”

She continues her tour in November with shows in Argentina and Brazil, before her monumental tours in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the U.K next year.

Next month, she’ll release her Eras Tour concert film, and her latest re-record, “1989 (Taylor’s Version)”. 

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