Taylor Swift’s new album is polarizing its listeners — and even some of Swift’s die-hard fans. Its lyrics aren’t resonating like they used to, and with selections such as “Did you girl-boss too close to the sun?” and “But I’m not a bad b**** and this isn’t savage,” it’s not hard to see why.
But the most controversial song on the pop star’s album is not “Wood,” the one where she sings about, um, her football-playing fiancé’s skills (and not with carpentry). The songs that have been drawing the most ire from fans are “CANCELLED!” and “Wi$h Li$t,” two fairly benign tracks that have got some corners of the internet screaming “MAGA.”
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“Beware the wrath of masked crusaders,” she sings in the former track, signaling her support for people who have been “canceled” by internet interlopers: “Good thing I like my friends cancelled.” Some listeners have interpreted the song to be about Brittany Mahomes, the Trump-supporting wife of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. “Taylor Swift is just coming out as MAGA with this new album,” said one TikToker. “Why else would she have a song saying that she likes her friends being canceled and soaked in a scandal?”
Perhaps because cancellation can come for anyone, not just conservatives. But with a net worth of $2 billion, Swift herself is certainly too big to cancel. And as much as keyboard warriors may hope otherwise, apparently, her friends of all political stripes are, too.
The song that generated the greatest controversy, however, is the most innocuous track on the album. In “Wi$h Li$t,” Swift sings about wanting to get married, settle down, and have children (not a particularly new “wish list” for a singer famous for her love ballads).
“I just want you, huh / Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you,” she sings. “We tell the world to leave us the f*** alone, and they do, wow / Got me dreaming ’bout a driveway with a basketball hoop / Boss up, settle down, got a wish (Wish) list (List) / I just want you.”
And no, the controversy isn’t over her unfortunate use of the phrase “boss up.” Critics are mad — yes, mad — that Swift wants her own nuclear family.
“It just feels like fascism,” one YouTuber said. “You can smell MAGA fascism in the air here.”
Others called it “trad wife propaganda” and said, “It is giving such conservative, MAGA, nasty trad wife vibes.”
Huh. Are we missing something? Didn’t Swift just say she wanted children, which would put her in the majority among young American women? Yes, and that’s precisely the problem.
The Left has a baby problem, which is to say that many people on the left think babies are a problem, whether because their parents are contributing to climate change or to patriarchy by having boys or to “trad propaganda” by doing the thing that humans have done for thousands of years.
The association of conservatism with children has grown so strong that Atlantic writer Elizabeth Bruenig felt compelled to tell the outlet’s audience earlier this year that “pronatalism is not inherently right-wing” even though “it has now acquired the reputation of an elite trend intended to advance conservative social projects.”
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The polarization of baby-making can’t be good. “This isn’t even about Taylor anymore,” one left-wing fan posted on X after the album release. “I genuinely feel like we’re f***ed if young people have been convinced that getting married and having kids is inherently conservative.”
To paraphrase Swift’s words on “Wi$h Li$t,” I hope she gets what she wants. But we have a much bigger problem than negative reactions to one pop star if a simple, unashamed desire for family life draws this much ire online. Aspiring to parenthood is neither partisan nor problematic. But at this rate, pretty soon it might get you canceled.
