The Songs of Taylor Swift: A Christian Cultural Appraisal

In September 2024, at Keith Getty’s request, I delivered a workshop talk on Taylor Swift for the Sing! Conference. I was reluctant to speak on this topic because, aside from familiarity with a few of her most popular songs, I haven’t deeply engaged with her music. I’m a Beatles fan, about the farthest thing from a “Swiftie” you can find, so I felt like an odd choice for the workshop. My kids aren’t into Taylor Swift either. My oldest son and I share an affinity for Ed Sheeran. My daughter is more into K-pop. I would’ve preferred to do a workshop on “The Songs of Ed Sheeran” or “The Beatles and the Bible.”

That said, it made sense for there to be a workshop on this topic, and so I accepted the challenge when I heard from Christian parents looking for guidance as they seek to raise girls in this era of Taylor Swift fandom or, in some cases, obsession. Some Christians have grown up with Swift’s music and now wonder how they should think about her latest material. Others want to know how to shepherd their teenagers well. Should all Swift’s music be off-limits? Or should we just overlook the areas where her music presents ideas or messages opposed to Christianity?

My goal in this column isn’t to answer every question about Taylor Swift’s music but to do a L’Abri style of cultural analysis that tries to understand the music from within its own frame, put the songs into perspective, bring a Christian viewpoint to bear on the art, and then provide practical suggestions as to the best approach to engaging this music in your family.

Phenomenon of Taylor Swift

If you start talking about Taylor Swift’s musical career, you quickly realize “career” isn’t big enough to describe her influence. She’s a phenomenon. Her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, is her 14th number one on Billboard, an achievement surpassed only by the Beatles. It’s the seventh of her albums to sell more than a million copies in a single week. She leads all female artists for the most top 5, top 10, top 20, and top 40 hits, as well as for overall chart appearances. Plus, she’s the only artist in history to claim all the Billboard top 10 spots at the same time.

Taylor Swift’s economic influence is so massive it birthed a new term: “Swiftonomics.” Her Eras tour contributed more than $5 billion to the U.S. economy—that’s more revenue than the gross domestic product of 35 smaller countries combined. There’s no question Taylor Swift is a savvy businesswoman. She knows how to keep her fans engaged and coming back for more (releasing extended editions of albums, four different vinyl pressings in different colors, and so on).

Why Is Taylor Swift So Popular?

One of the best questions we can ask when something is popular in society, or when a song or a musician’s influence spreads throughout the culture, is why. Before we react, before we jump to affirm or deny, to support or oppose her, we ought to ask the deeper questions: Why is Taylor Swift so popular? Why do people think her music is true and good and beautiful? Why do people want her outlook on life to be true?

Since I haven’t closely followed Swift’s music over the years, I asked some friends to give me the lay of the land, to point me in the direction of certain albums and songs, so I can better understand her artistry. After doing a deep dive into her music, I see some reasons for her popularity.

1. Songwriting Talent

First: sheer talent in songwriting. I have to admit, I was wowed. Taylor’s skill in writing, singing, and then performing—really selling her songs as an authentic expression of herself in a particular moment in time—is stunning. She not only can craft a memorable lyric but also has a good ear for a catchy melody. She’s one of the greats. When she was just 20, she released the entire Speak Now album as a solo songwriter, a way of proving to the world (and to herself) that on her own she could create a hit album.

The magic is in her storytelling. Her songs are personal and descriptive (often very detailed) and yet they still feel relatable. As she recounts her experiences, she throws in details that invite intrigue, facts that would seem to make the words only applicable to her, but because her bond with the listener is so strong, you see yourself in the lyrics. You imagine yourself into her world; you feel her emotions; you echo her pain.

In preaching class, professors tell you the best sermon application points should be specific and concrete. You might think the best way to relate to the whole congregation is to stay general, to say something like “The apostle Paul tells us to encourage one another” and let the hearers figure out how best to apply it. The reverse is true. The more specific and concrete you are with examples of encouragement, the better you’ll spark the congregation’s imagination. They’ll start thinking of creative ways of their own to apply what the Bible is saying.

Taylor’s music, with all its specificity, aligns with that principle. Her lyrics draw you in with a personalized yet relatable way of singing about life and love and pain. Think of tearjerkers like “Ronan,” about a kid who died of cancer. Or “Bigger Than the Whole Sky,” which might be about her experiencing a miscarriage, but no one is sure, and the mystery is part of the appeal. Or “All Too Well,” a song rereleased as a 10-minute version (!), with the line about how she “left her scarf there at [his] sister’s house,” or the way the song adapts and changes the meaning of “all too well” as it progresses, giving us other memorable lines like these:

Another note on songwriting: a test of a good song is how many ways it can be interpreted. Same song, radically different treatment, and it works. A mark of a good song is how it can be reimagined and reworked. Swift’s album 1989, named for the year she was born, is considered by many critics as one of the greatest pop albums of all time. Another artist, Ryan Adams, reinterpreted every song on that album and did his own indie-rock version of 1989. It’s an impressive achievement—a testament not only to Adams’s talent but also to Swift’s songwriting ability, that her music could be reimagined and still hold up.

2. Expression of Universal Emotions

Another reason for Taylor Swift’s popularity is the fact her music connects with near-universal emotions. Here are several.

Coming of Age

In nearly every album, you find “coming of age” themes. These are most prominent in her self-titled debut, but the albums Fearless and Speak Now also connect with how teenage girls feel and the situations they encounter. Everyone can relate to one of the eras. And now, because Swift has been in the music business so long, young moms introduce their daughters to her music.

Many women feel like she’s telling their life stories, not just her own, as if she has the magical ability to narrate their lives. The music itself embodies a rite of passage, the development from youth and innocence into relational complexity and uncertainty. The song “22,” which came out in 2012, captures something of the young adult struggling to find happiness and independence in this chaotic, isolated world:

That line reminded me of Robert Bellah’s observation in the late 1990s that “American cultural traditions define personality, achievement, and the purpose of human life in ways that leave the individual suspended in glorious, but terrifying, isolation.” It’s a way of life both exhilarating and exhausting. Or as Taylor says, “miserable and magical.” Happy and free? Yes. Confused and lonely? Yes. What an accurate depiction of twentysomethings today.

At the opening of her Eras tour, Taylor says,

That’s a brilliant way of recasting her milestones in music as more than just a discography but as a soundtrack for her fans’ lives—capped, of course, by their presence at her tour. Don’t miss the pilgrimage aspect of these events, where it appears that worship is taking place. Or at least some kind of adoration. And this devotion takes form with songs so meaningful to people that they memorize every line. Consider the videos of people singing along to every word. Sometimes you can’t hear Taylor because of how loud the crowd is! People even gather outside the stadiums just to participate in the experience and sing along.

Yearning for Lasting Love, Marriage, and Babies

Another common theme is a yearning for permanence, the desire for a love that lasts, for a man to commit to her for all her life so they can enjoy the children that come from that union. It may seem strange to see Swift (no friend to Christianity’s sexual ethic, as we’ll see shortly) yearning so openly for marriage and family, but this theme is present throughout her work. One of her first songs, “Mary’s Song” from 2006, is a love story, where two kids meet, grow up, then marry and return to the same place they started their relationship.

Then there’s “Love Story,” two years later. You can’t get more on the nose than a song that says, “You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess,” with references to Romeo and Juliet, and her crying out, “Romeo, save me, I’ve been feeling so alone.” The song (and video) ends with a ring and marriage and Taylor in the white dress.

Another song from 2008, “You Belong with Me,” is similar, a fairy-tale love song where she’s waiting for the prince to wake up and realize she’s right in front of him and has been all along. The end is heartwarming, because in the music video, the guy chooses the right girl (a good Taylor) over the wrong girl (a bad Taylor). Interestingly, it’s a double of Taylor, which foreshadows the other sides of her we see in her later music.

In The Tortured Poets Department, an album marked by lyrics highly sexualized with lots of expletives (we’ll get to those problems soon), the theme of marriage and having babies remains, yet it’s now tinged with regret, overshadowed by the passing years without the right person. In “So Long, London,” she sings,

You know the line kids use: “So-and-so and So-and-so, Sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.” Taylor gives that rhyme a twist in “How Did It End?,” only she spells out a different word:

And how can you miss the heartache in “Midnight Rain,” about her checking in on a former boyfriend now happily in love, with the family she’s always dreamed of, and her raw admission that perhaps she made individual choices that will forever keep her from such a life?

Longing for Acceptance and Approval

Another universal theme is Taylor’s desire for acceptance and approval. It’s the restlessness of the human heart, looking for that rest not in God but in all the wrong places. It’s the desire to be good enough, or to be seen as good enough. Taylor is open about how this drives her music and her decisions:

This desire for acceptance has led to struggles in the past with an eating disorder and to her recognition that “there’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting.” She feels insecure, even with all her success. In 2018, when she wasn’t nominated for a Grammy, her first response to the snub was that she’d just go make a better record. In talking about her song “Mirrorball,” she says,

Who can’t relate to that? And even though Taylor Swift’s life looks vastly different than the lives of her fans, even though she faces career pressures that make her think she is, in her words, “constantly having to reinvent, constantly having to find new facets of [herself] that people find to be shiny,” many listeners can still relate. Because in an era of expressive individualism where we’re responsible for finding and expressing ourselves, this pressure she feels on a large scale, millennials and Gen Zers feel on a smaller scale.

The need to constantly reinvent yourself, to figure out who you are and express it to the world, to discover new things about your identity and then put them on display, or to try on different identities until you figure out who you are—these themes in Swift’s songs represent the cry of a generation trying to find and be true to themselves while also pleading for the approval and affirmation of others. Without God, all you have is yourself or others.

Swift’s music resonates because she knows the self she wants to express is flawed. Watch the progression, for example, from a celebratory song like “Me!” from 2019, with its anthem-like assertion “I promise that you’ll never find another like me” to “Anti-Hero” in 2022.

“I’m a monster on the hill,” she sings. In “The Archer,” she says, “I cut off my nose just to spite my face, then I hate my reflection for years and years.” To be clear, in neither of these recent songs do we find her feeling sorry about her character flaws or the nature of being the monster on the hill. No, once her self-esteem crashes and she realizes she’s the problem, she doubles down on this flawed persona—and this leads to another theme.

Heartbreak and Anger at Being Mistreated

Swift’s music often expresses heartbreak and then anger at being mistreated, and a desire for vindication. Sometimes it’s her response to critics, for example in 2010’s “Mean,” when the haters came after her for all her failed relationships. She was being criticized for dating and breaking up with guys just to write songs about them. Her response is defiance:

That’s the primary motivation behind the one song I’m sure everyone reading this has heard before: “Shake It Off.”

Still, it’s not just defiance of one’s critics. Her songs expose a tenderness that acknowledges real pain underneath the facade. The song “Hoax” has a memorable line: “You know it still hurts underneath my scars, from when they pulled me apart.” About this, she says,

Part of that heartbreak stems from her inability to find fulfillment and happiness in relationships she thought would deliver. In ‘Tolerate It,” she sings,

No man is supposed to be a woman’s temple, mural, and sky. She’s heartbroken when she gets cut out from the story of her lover’s life. 

What Cautions and Concerns Should Christians Have About Taylor Swift’s Music?

We’ve looked at the reasons her music resonates with so many people today. Let’s look now from a Christian perspective and evaluate some of the aspects of her music that lead to caution and concern.

1. Language

Let’s start with the obvious: swearing, cussing, unwholesome talk. The first four albums were fairly innocent when it comes to the language. This changed with the release of the Taylor’s Versions of Speak Now and Red. Here’s a graph that shows a stunning rise in swear words and bad language in Taylor Swift’s albums (and this doesn’t even include examples of taking God’s name in vain).

We start here because this is the easiest place to acknowledge a simple truth for believers—you don’t want unwholesome talk seared into your brain. I know some will say that Christians are inconsistent here, because, after all, nearly every movie or television show these days has bad language in it. That’s true, but I do think there’s a difference in hearing bad language in song. Music is way more intimate; the path is shorter from head to heart and from heart to mouth. To be clear, I’m not defending TV shows and movies with explicit language. I’m simply saying we should be even more careful with what we sing. We’ll come back to this later . . .

2. Unbiblical Themes

It’s no surprise that, like most other music artists today, Taylor Swift has an outlook on the world that doesn’t line up with Scripture. Let me point out a few prominent themes that diverge from what Christianity teaches.

Rebellious Independence

In some songs, as we’ve seen, Taylor is heartbroken because she’s not found happiness in romantic relationships. In other songs, especially on the 2017 Reputation album, she puts forth a persona of fierce independence. I am all I need. Her music in that era represents a purge of nearly all her relationships. She’s fighting back after having been bruised and burned. She sings, “Gone was any trace of you. I think I am finally clean.” This is the lie that salvation is found inside. She doesn’t need anyone else.

In the Eras tour, when the Reputation era begins, all the imagery turns serpentine, and even her costume is covered in snakes. She took the Kanye West debacle that led to his fans calling her snake and repurposed it as a symbol of “the new Taylor.” In the end, this is the rebellious independence we see in the garden, when the serpent is telling Eve, You don’t need God. You don’t need Adam. You have everything you need right here.

Vengeance over Forgiveness

Another theme is vengeance over forgiveness, especially in songs like “Bad Blood” or “Look What You Made Me Do.” I love this line from “End Game”: “I bury hatchets but I keep maps of where I put ’em.” That’s a line that deserves a place in a sermon on forgiveness, because don’t we all struggle with that? Taylor may move on from relationships, or from broken friendships, or from the fallout when people in the music industry have wronged her, but she doesn’t sing about restoration or reconciliation.

Swift falls into a trap common in our day where relationships are instrumentalized. We judge the nature of a relationship based on how well we think it’s helping us to self-actualize, to find and discover and be true to ourselves. Once the relationship starts getting in the way of our self-expression or monkeys with our sense of identity, or if it impinges on our freedom, we assume it must be bad. In this environment, relationships can’t help but go haywire because they lack the self-sacrifice necessary for true companionship and friendship, where the relationship is not only about us but about both of us together, growing toward God. When things turn sour, there’s only moving on, not moving up.

Wiccan Spirituality

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the elements of Wiccan spirituality that show up in some of Swift’s music, especially the song “Willow”—the music video shows her in a forest, hooded, with a coven of witches. This spirituality isn’t dominant in most of Swift’s music, and it may be more of an aesthetic choice here than a sign of true devotion. But it’s clear that when she does lean into spirituality, it’s usually the pseudo-spiritualities and pseudo-religions we’re seeing grow in popularity today. She also sings about “karma” in this way, claiming it’s her boyfriend, even a god.

Anti-Church Mentality

Some of Taylor’s songs paint the church as full of hypocritical jerks. In “But Daddy I Love Him,” she calls people “judgmental creeps” who show concern about “what’s best for [her],” and she rejects their prayers and goes off with the “wild boy and all of this wild joy.”

Another song, “Guilty as Sin,” not only criticizes the church but also uses Christian iconography in ways that make the criticism even more pointed. Of course, this kind of slap toward the church isn’t new. You can trace it back to Madonna and others. But that leads me to one other overarching concern.

3. Sexual Revolution Ideology

Taylor Swift shares the common assumptions of the sexual revolution. Although it’s clear she yearns for fidelity, marriage, and children, she celebrates all kinds of sexual practices and behaviors. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Since the 1960s, almost all pop and rock music, including country, deviates from a Christian understanding of sex.

Swift’s early music isn’t as marked by this ideology. But when you get to 1989, you start to get references to LGBT+ issues (“Welcome to New York”) and much more sexualization (“Wildest Dreams” and “Blank Space”). By the time you get to Reputation and Lover, there’s more overt sexuality. And take note: the sexual suggestiveness isn’t always in the lyrics; sometimes, it’s more about the music video or the live performance. One of her recent songs becomes basically a burlesque show for the Eras tour.

The best example of Swift using her music to push the sexual revolution’s ideology is, of course, the 2019 song “You Need to Calm Down,” with its LGBT+ advocacy and a music video that contrasts a colorful world of rainbows to a mob of backwoods, country-looking people holding signs that can’t even spell homosexuality correctly. The play on words here with GLAAD refers to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation:

That line about being “in the dark ages” represents a major tenet of sexual revolution ideology: we progress morally as we adopt and embrace more and more sexual freedom and variety. In a documentary, she says clearly, “I need to be on the right side of history,” and she registers her disgust at people who would take us back to “a horrendous 1950s world.” If you believe sex is reserved for marriage between a man and a woman, Taylor puts you in the category of the bigoted, backwoods haters on the wrong side of history. No matter how philosophically or sociologically or biblically rooted your view is, based on her statements, she has no respect for you or your views.

Similarly, some of Swift’s heroes are examples of late-modern decadence and the empty promises of the sexual revolution. “The Last Great American Dynasty” is about Rebekah Harkness, a wealthy socialite in the latter part of the last century whose life was a mess. She gained notoriety through her shamelessness—a life of decadence, with relationship after relationship destroyed, to the point she barely made it back to speaking terms with her kids before she died. Taylor admires Harkness because of her boldness, her willingness to endure the gossip of others.

Before we move on from this topic, it’d be unfair if I didn’t note that even when celebrating perversity and decadence, Taylor knows that happiness isn’t guaranteed. “All of my heroes die all alone,” she sings in “The Archer.” And in “Illicit Affairs,” she acknowledges how the idol of sexual satisfaction is one that inevitably lets you down.

Some of these songs about sexual promiscuity have a dark side—a reference to isolation, or degradation, or the lies and empty promises. So, ironically, even though I condemn her sexual ethic, I commend her honesty in portraying the disillusionment left in the wake of her choices. 

Should We Listen to Taylor Swift?

Now, you’re probably wondering, Tell me, Trevin, if I should delete all of Taylor Swift’s albums from my phone. Or if I should ban her music from my teenager, or if we should only allow the “clean” versions that take out the expletives, and so on.

You’re going to be disappointed if you expect me to offer a one-size-fits-all rule. I’m not the Holy Spirit. I’m not your conscience. What I will tell you is, after having sampled a lot of this music, what I’d do if my daughter were into Taylor Swift. I’ll tell you how I’d handle it, based on similar conversations I’ve had with my kids about other artists they’ve been into. Here we go.

First, don’t overlook the impressionability of young minds. If I were to start playing the biggest hits of the year you graduated high school, I bet you’d know every word. You remember the songs you grow up with. Whatever your kids are listening to in the years from 5 to about 20 are going to stick with them the rest of their lives. So you should ask, What songs am I good with being the soundtrack of my kids’ lives? There’s a well-traveled path between the head and the heart.

Second, get into whatever music your kids like. If they invite you into their world of music, never turn down that chance. A few years ago, my son was into NF. Guess what? I listened to more Christian rap than ever before in my life. In the past couple years, I’ve listened to more K-pop than I ever expected to, not because I’m a fan of K-pop but because I’m a fan of my daughter, and I want to enjoy what she likes. If your daughter is into Taylor Swift already, or wants to be, then I suggest you get really familiar with her music, not because you care so much about Taylor but because you care about your daughter.

Third, talk about music regularly. Once you start listening to music together, when a song comes up on the playlist, or when you’re in the car together, or when she wants to show you a music video, talk about it. Give your honest impressions. Don’t hold back. Talk about what you like, what you don’t like, what parts you think are good or what parts are bad. Talk about what’s being said, the message being communicated, the view of life on display, or the view of romance or relationships. Let music prompt some good conversations about artistry, the Bible, where society lines up with and departs from Christianity, and so on.

(Listen, discernment is required for Christian music too! Don’t assume that “safe for the whole family” Christian radio means biblical, God-honoring lyrics. Part of the way this works in practice isn’t just by learning how to recognize what’s true or false, beautiful or profane in secular art but by exposing yourself to good, beautiful, and true art. There are deeply gifted songwriters making great music that seeks to glorify God, and it’s important to feed on that as well.)

Music can be a powerful point of connection. It’s like a different language. Become fluent, or at least conversational, in your kids’ musical tastes.

Fourth, set some guidelines. For my kids, explicit lyrics are off-limits. We aren’t putting curse words into our minds, because we don’t want those words coming out of our mouths. The simplest way to avoid explicit lyrics is to use the built-in controls for your phone or your music subscription to make explicit language stuff unavailable. That said, kids can listen to music in all sorts of ways, so if they’re listening via YouTube or Spotify, or other streaming services, it may be harder to implement this strategy. You’ll have to get their buy-in. In our family, we’ve agreed, “We aren’t OK with explicit lyrics in our songs because our minds are impressionable, and because we want to honor Jesus with our lips. Listening to music with swearing would make that goal harder, not easier.”

Of course, certain songs that are overtly sexual will need to be off-limits also. I’m a Beatles fan, but you’re not going to find me bopping along with my kids to “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?,” that awful song off The White Album. We’re just not going to sing that (not to mention it’s a terrible song from purely an artistic standpoint!). Just say no to the clear agenda-driven songs, like “Same Love” by Macklemore, which makes a case for gay marriage, or “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga, or “You Need to Calm Down” by Taylor Swift (heads up—that Swift song is so catchy I couldn’t help but hear it for days in my head after only listening twice).

Fifth, don’t make the fruit more forbidden than it is. You don’t want to give explicit songs or sexual songs a mystique, or push your kids into hiding so they just listen on their own. It’d be much better to explain why you’re not good with certain songs. Maybe you curate for yourself or your family a playlist with the Taylor Swift songs you think are appropriate and exclude all the ones that aren’t. You could say something like “Here are the songs I’m OK with you listening to. If there’s another one you want to hear, one that’s off-limits, we can sit down and listen to it together and discuss it. And then I’ll explain why I don’t want that song in your headspace.”

If you’ve not been terribly involved in your kids’ choices of music, you may feel like you’ve failed as a parent or that you don’t know where to start. I get it. Don’t beat yourself up. You may face some resistance, but I think deep down most kids appreciate boundaries, and they’ll relish the attention you’re giving to what they love.

Even if you’re starting this conversation at a later stage, after your daughter is a big fan, be real and honest. And remember, the goal is to reframe the discussion so you’re not talking about “banning” certain songs but expressing your desire to protect your daughter’s headspace and heart. Don’t make the off-limits songs “forbidden” in a way that increases the attraction. Better to show your kids why those songs are either not artistically or emotionally satisfying, or are way too outside the bounds of what we believe as Christians.

Last, I’d encourage you to do three things with the music of Taylor Swift. It’s the longings-lies-light construct from my book This Is Our Time. Look at the deep longings and yearnings in her songs. Those are planted by God. They’re part of the God-shaped hole, the restless search for rest that marks all humanity. Like everyone, she wants happiness. She wants goodness. She wants beauty.

Next, look at the lies she falls for in her pursuit of those longings, the lie that a man could ever fully satisfy her heart, the lie that sexual freedom is better than sexual fidelity within marriage, the lie that a biblical view of sex is repressive instead of life-giving, the lie that vengeance is going to satisfy her more than forgiveness, the lie that she could ever find approval and acceptance in her fame and fortune. Look at those longings, and then look at those lies.

Then bring the light of the gospel to bear on Taylor Swift’s words. Bring her words into contact with the Living Word. The gospel fulfills the deepest longings and exposes the deepest lies. Show how the gospel stands over and against Taylor Swift in some areas, but then show how the gospel also fulfills her deep longings, how the gospel offers Living Water instead of the polluted wells where she’s trying to quench her thirst. All her desire for lasting love, all her yearning for approval and acceptance, all her longing for happiness and fulfillment, all her hopes that one day her scars will heal and her pain subside—it’s all there in Jesus’s cross and resurrection, in the forgiveness that comes through his blood, and in the acceptance that comes from belonging to God’s family by grace through faith.

‘Oh God, What Now?’

In her most recent album, Taylor sings about performing on stage: “You know you’re good when you can even do it with a broken heart.” The phenomenon of Taylor Swift won’t make sense unless you can see beyond the music to the heartbreak of a younger generation that she so successfully captures and expresses.

There’s a moment in one of the documentaries when Taylor, after winning a second Grammy, says to herself, “Oh my God, that was all you wanted. You get to the mountaintop, and you look around and you think, Oh God, what now?” From an earthly standpoint, there’s no question Swift has reached the mountaintop. And at that summit, she has an unintended prayer on her lips: “Oh God, what now?”

Can we not pray for a new era for Taylor Swift? Remember, the Lord’s arm isn’t too small to save. So let’s ask God to move in the life of Taylor Swift, and let’s pray for guidance, wisdom, and discernment as we seek to raise kids who can shine like stars (we might say “bejeweled!”), who shimmer in a world of sin.

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