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How Taylor Swift's Music Has Helped People Through Hard Times

A psychiatrist wrote in The New York Times that her (mostly young, female) patients saw Taylor Swift as a big sister who helped them through the tough parts of life. Listeners call in to talk about whether the star's music has ever helped them (or someone they know) through hard times.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For the end of the show and the end of this week, something very different from public banking. We're coming with one more round of open phones for Taylor Swift fans, Part 2 of 2. Why Taylor Swift again? Well, yesterday, if you were listening around this time, we discussed her impact on the music industry. Today we'll ask, what impact does her music have on you in your emotional or psychological life? Text or call us now at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Mostly we're asking how her songs have helped you through tough times. Text or call 212-433-WNYC. Here's the inspiration. Maybe some of you saw the op-ed in The New York Times. Psychiatrist Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell wrote that so many of the young women and adolescent girls in her practice were bringing in specific Taylor Swift references that she joked that half her practice was now Taylor Swift based. A key paragraph in that article went like this.

"When I was growing up," she wrote, "I had the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, and Ani DiFranco, singers for whom the troubled inside matched the raw edgy outside, but there was nobody who held forth on righteous anger from the inside of a sparkly bodysuit who suffered as I did, but who's confident prowl could make me walk a bit taller." She continues, "My singers would sit outside the party and complain with you, but when you got your courage up, they weren't going to go inside ready for it. Ms. Swift doesn't force you to choose because she is both the lucky one you want to be and every bit the antihero that you are inside."

That from that article in The Times. Apparently, whatever you're upset about, the poet laureate of this generation has got a song somewhere in her mega irv describing that precise feeling. She's not going to solve whatever problem you're having maybe, but she's going to sit with you in it until the passage of time does its work, or maybe help you solve it.

Listeners, there's the question. What has Taylor Swift's music helped you through? Has it helped you through a rough patch in your life? Cite a lyric if you want. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or other psychologists or other therapists. I guess she's a psychiatrist, so any other kind of therapist as well can call in. Maybe like Dr. Garfinkle-Crowell, you are finding that Taylor Swift comes up in your practice from adolescent girls or young adult women, as the doctor characterized them in the piece. Are you finding that half of your practice is now Taylor Swift based? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

If you're familiar with Taylor Swift's work, you might know that on every album track number five-- I'm sorry. On every album, track number five has a very special significance. The fifth track of her albums tend to be deeply emotional. This is All Too Well from Taylor Swift. Let's take a little bit of a listen.

[MUSIC - Taylor Swift: All Too Well]

Brian Lehrer: Do you use Taylor Swift lyrics to help you cope with anxiety or any other intense feelings? 212-433-WNYC. What's your favorite track five from any Taylor Swift album? 212-433-9692. Call in as a psychologist or other therapist working in your practice, or just any person who finds Taylor Swift's lyrics relevant to your life. That's our final caller question for this week, and boy, do people have stories. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Alex in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alex. Thanks so much for calling in.

Alex: Hi. It's so nice to be on with you. Yes. I've been a part of this resurgence of Taylor Swift, and I was just speaking earlier. I was reminding me of being in middle school when her music was still very popular and cool. Just being like a young girl and trying to be liked by the boys or feel the need to be-- I don't know. Just like to fit in. I did fall into the pretend hating on her but in secret, I've always been a huge Swifty.

Brian Lehrer: Uh-huh. She helped you through something in particular?

Alex: Just basically-- I mean, nothing in particular. I think truly just allowing yourself to like what you like and not feel the need to conform to expectations of what you should be liking and listening to.

Brian Lehrer: That's a big thing.

Alex: Love Taylor.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. She talks so much about that these days, right? It's in that documentary from 2020, Miss Americana, where she talks about having crafted herself into the image that everybody wanted her to project that they thought would be the most successful commercially, and then she finally started letting herself be herself. Elizabeth in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Hi. It's so wonderful to be on. I'm a huge fan. Her pandemic albums, the two albums that she released in 2020, just encapsulated all that desire that I was feeling in that time and all that longing. It made me feel so much less alone because I was more or less isolated in my apartment during that time alone. Alone with you, though, so that was great. [chuckles] She's gotten me through every heartbreak scenario I can possibly think of.

in 2014, I got devastated by a very short-lived relationship, and-- or 2015. I remember I didn't even consider myself a hardcore Swift fan at the time. I put red on and I wandered around Bushwick just listening to that album.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Elizabeth: She's just always been there, whether I liked it or not, when I was not an avid Swift fan [laughs] articulating against poor me.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. How about that? Thank you very much. I'm glad I was able to be there with Taylor Swift to be your virtual companion during the pandemic. [laughs] Elizabeth, thank you.

Elizabeth: It was wonderful. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Victoria in Old Bridge is up next. You're on WNYC. Hi, Victoria.

Victoria: Hi, Brian. I just wanted to say that Taylor really helped me work through the death of my stepfather about a decade ago when I was in high school. He actually gifted me my first Taylor Swift album on CD.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Victoria: She just gave me a space to feel the feelings I was feeling in a safe place. It wasn't necessarily any particular thing she was singing about, but just her raw openness about feeling all of these strong emotions just gave me the space to feel them as well. It was immensely helpful in a time when I didn't even know what I was feeling and couldn't articulate what was going on inside me. Yes, and she was there for me at the time.

Brian Lehrer: There are a lot of singer-songwriters who do some of the things that you were just describing. How they express their feelings, and that's why they write songs and sing them. Was there something about Taylor Swift that you found unique at that time around those kinds of things? I hear that it was special to you that your late stepdad gifted you a Taylor Swift album. There are so many singer-songwriters who are trying to do a similar thing and relate to people's problems and all of that. Why is she unique in that role for you?

Victoria: At the time I was a 15-year-old girl and Taylor was big with 15-year-old girls, and my friends listened and so I listened. That's just how I got introduced. I always loved that she was a fantastic storyteller. I would find escapism through books and different stories, and there was a bit of that in her songwriting as well.

Brian Lehrer: Victoria, thanks so much. Please call us again. Kevin in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kevin.

Kevin: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking the call and really talking to all of us about our feelings about Taylor. For me, track five, Dear John. Dear John is considered one of the greatest things she's done, a lot of things she's written. That's about realizing afterward what your relationship did and didn't mean to you with an older man and how you retreated. I know exactly what that feels like.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I think that's why they believe it to be about John Mayer who she dated when she was just a teenager still, and he was in his early '30s.

Kevin: Yes. I knew a relationship like that that meant a lot to me at the time, and still does. That I lived in a similar situation with that age dynamic. Also, you're asking what is it Taylor does that makes it special, and I think it specifically speaks to queer people, as a gay man myself, was that even in the art? she's Also being creative and taking back her agency when she feels like she's been wronged.

Dear John is structured like a John Mayer song. She's showing that she's a great songwriter and a producer and innovator, while also airing her feelings, which I think, for those of us who grew up with social media, already we feel a lot of that. I think that's what takes it the extra step for me.

Brian: Do you find that as a guy you're kind of in a small minority? I'm just guessing, I guess, or assuming from your name and your voice that you're a guy. I know at the Taylor Swift concerts the concertgoers tend to be female. Do you find that you're in a small group or do you have other guy friends who are also Swifties?

Kevin: I do have other guy friends. Let's be honest, we're all disproportionately LGBTQ-identifying queer men and gay men in particular. I think that's a huge part of her cultural cachet that's supported from a commercial perspective. That's what any artist wants, but I think it's also that sense of sharing your feelings and feeling isolated. Despite all the progress we've made, there's a lot of gay men who grew up in communities where they don't feel welcomed or accepted or don't know that much about how to articulate their feelings, and Taylor has been there for them, like I know she's been there for me.

I think I've come to appreciate that role as well, given some of the LGBTQ advocacy she's taken on in the last few years.

Brian: Kevin, thank you so much for your call. I really appreciate it. Cecilia Rose, am I getting your name right? Cecilia Rose in North Arlington?

Cecilia Rose: Yes, you are.

Brian: Hi there.

Cecilia Rose: Hi.

Brian: Got a story for us?

Cecilia Rose: Yes. I just wanted to come and talk about how Taylor Swift has-- She has such amazing songs that could really target hearts. Especially with her albums, like Folklore, and Evermore, which tell stories which very are much close to my heart because I love the art of storytelling. The way that she just captures the listeners' imaginations through her songs and her writings is amazing, in my opinion.

Brian: Any song you want to cite in particular and the art of the storytelling as contained therein?

Cecilia Rose: One that I really enjoy is definitely Champagne Problems or Cardigan, which talk about a lot of pain after the ending of a relationship with someone that you were very close with.

Brian: Thank you, Cecilia Rose, for calling in. We really appreciate it. Here's one that came in via text from a parent that says, "I was parenting twin and teen girls just as Taylor Swift was exploding in popularity. My girls adored her music, and still do at 27 and nearly 30. Taylor's music gave me a bridge to talk to my girls during the emotionally turbulent ups and downs of their teen years." There we go. We're going to make that the last word.

Thanks all you Swifties for calling in. I guess the psychiatrist who wrote that article in The New York Times was basing it on something very real because obviously a lot of people were calling in today to talk about how Taylor Swift's lyrics and even just her attitude, as we heard from some of you, have helped you through tough times in your life. Thanks very much for calling in.

That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today. For this week, The Brain Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our Daily Politics podcast. Sign up for that national politics podcast if you want. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. Our interns are Brandon St. Luce and Katarina Engst this summer. Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz today at the audio controls. Have a great weekend everyone. Stay tuned for Allison.

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