Totally Taylor Swift

Screaming, crying, perfect storms

I can make all the tables turn

Rose garden filled with thorns

Keep you second guessing like

“Oh my God, who is she?”

— Blank Space, Taylor Swift

Say the words “Taylor Swift” to a 5-year-old girl and, if she’s anything like my daughter, she will know exactly who she is. Maya’s voice screeches impossibly high when I tell her of the assignment: “You’re writing an article about Taylor Swift?”

“Yes, what do you think about her?”

(More high-pitched sounds from the back seat.)

Yes, Swift’s very reputation is legendary, even to a kindergartner more attuned to Disney Junior than, say, Bad Blood.

But thanks to the singer/songwriter’s persistently buoyant prevalence, her voice soaring from our radios, her red lips on the cover of magazines, her now-infamous “Squad” of models and actresses kicking butt on red carpets and ripe for parody on Saturday Night Live, we all have an idea of who Taylor Swift is.

The funny thing is, no matter our music preferences or pop culture-acolyte leanings, most people generally like her. They really, really like her.

*****

When all you wanted

Was to be wanted

Wish you could go back

And tell yourself what you know now

— Fifteen, Taylor Swift

But why? How could this impossibly long-legged 25-year-old blonde resonate with so many people?

I think it’s something as simple as what I propose we call her “Tayllure” — an unimpeachable mix of talent (75 percent), nonthreatening good looks (15 percent) and an unsinkable, impossible-to-refute joie de vivre (10 percent).

Beatific and oozing confidence, her general appreciation for life is so readily apparent whether performing or just being Taylor, that it would be easy to mock (and more than a few people have) — witness her notorious seat-dancing during any live music awards show — but how can you?

Rather, how dare you? Taylor is having the time of her life. Everyone knows it.

*****

When I think about the singer’s appeal, I think back to when I first became aware of the curly-haired ingenue, straight outta Nashville and proud of it. As she sang those first country-skewing songs, starting around 2007, legions of fans and mere by-standers were taken by her twang and her cute, can I say slightly beady?, eyes that rendered her so very accessible.

The catchy songs she was singing — even if they hadn’t yet begun playing nonstop on the radio — were a respite from the boy bands and other stuff that was dragging everyone’s drive time down and clogging collective arteries as though we’d each successively eaten six In-N-Out Double Doubles. Or something.

Despite having a good 13-year-plus head start on the girl, I found myself relating to the catchy and earworm-forming hooks, the poignant lyrics of wanting to be accepted and of first love — can’t we all?—of Fifteen, Love Story and, a personal favorite, You Belong With Me.

She wears high heels,

I wear sneakers.

She’s cheer captain,

And I’m on the bleachers.

Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find

That what you’re looking for has been here the whole time.

— You Belong With Me

*****

You get the feeling, like, maybe Taylor was a late-bloomer (like me!), that people thought she was a little different (raises hand), perhaps a little more weird than quirky-weird (Hello!).

But, like a lot of us, she has matured, grown even more into her own, and so has her songwriting and, apparently, her love life. On her latest release, Wildest Dreams, she croons Lana del Rey-like about a “handsome as hell” guy while sighing sexed up noises on the chorus, “ahhhh haaahahhhhaaaa.”

She’s not having any problems convincing anyone to hang out with her now, even if it’s just on a platonic, I-just-really-dig-your-music kind of way.

On her current tour, supporting her album 1989, a bevy of celebrities seem to fall over themselves to get on stage with her every single night. There she was rapping Hot in Herre with Nelly in St. Louis. Here she is chilling with Mick Jagger onstage in Nashville.

*****

But, a hiccup: Last spring, after years of accumulated Tayllure and soaring Q ratings, something happened when her Bad Blood remix with rapper Kendrick Lamar was released in May.

Just when another wave of Taylor fans was washing right up on the shore, the critics weren’t having any of it. Many of them saw right past the swing-for-the-fences attempt at street cred and said the song was jarring and uncharacteristic.

A critic for the New York Daily News said its “Now we got bad blood” chant was “anger-mongering,” while a Billboard critic offered that the song was Gwen Stefani Hollaback Girl-esque, not to mention it wasn’t produced well, etc. etc.

It was some of the most marked, not to mention, flinty, criticism to hit the singer, since, well, that time she wore hot pants and crop tops for seven consecutive weeks, it seemed, and gossip columns started calling her out. Or at least since the time a few months ago when she wore a leather harness to lunch in L.A., and Us Weekly had a problem with it.

But who among us has never had a bad-outfit day? As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another example of Tayllure. Guess what? Taylor Swift is human, imperfect, silly, occasionally inappropriate and she wrote a lemon of a song. Hey, she’s just like us!—only with better hair and a cuter boyfriend.

And, really, who is immune to the haters? Which brings us to, of course:

And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate

Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake

I shake it off, I shake it off

Heart-breakers gonna break, break, break, break, break

And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake

Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake

I shake it off, I shake it off

— Shake it Off, Taylor Swift

Yeah, you don’t have to worry about Taylor Swift one bit. She’s gonna be all right.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 7:11 AM with the headline "Totally Taylor Swift."