Can Taylor Swift be an underdog and the biggest pop star on earth?

By SHAAD D’SOUZA

Last week, Taylor Swift did something highly unusual, in the context of the past decade of her career: She responded, however obliquely, to her critics. And it wasn’t in a song.

Asked by Apple Music radio host Zane Lowe how she felt about the reaction to her 12th original album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” Swift seemed to acknowledge that her latest work hadn’t been universally praised, or invariably defended by her loyal fans.

“I have a lot of respect for people’s subjective opinions on art. I’m not the art police,” she said, turning the focus to her listeners. “Oftentimes, an album is a really, really wild way to look at yourself, right? What you’re going through in your life is going to affect whether you relate to the music I’m putting out at any given moment.”

On record, Swift has rarely been so equivocal. On her 2010 song “Mean,” she promised a critic, “Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me,” and many of her best tracks wring grand catharsis out of us-vs.-them narratives. In the Swiftiverse, soft forms of persecution — by puritanical families, craven journalists or pop music fans — have provided endless fodder. So have real-world foes whom she has turned into nearly cartoonish enemies in her music: Kanye West, after his infamous VMAs interruption, and Kim Kardashian, for later fanning the flames of that enduring conflict; Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun, the executives who passed around her master recordings; boyfriends who have misled her, or worse.

Swift’s constant underlining of these conflicts — concrete or fantastical — has helped crystallize her image as pop’s perpetual underdog, an Everygirl striving alongside her spangly, invulnerable peers, even as she was well on the path to becoming one of the biggest stars the music world has ever seen.

Swift’s 2014 LP, “1989,” introduced a defining trope of her songwriting: rebuffing, or ironically playing into, the media’s commentary on her personal life. “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space,” two of her biggest hits, called out “haters” who viewed her as a man-eater; on the paranoid, cinematic “I Know Places,” paparazzi become “the hunters” chasing Swift and a partner; on “Wonderland,” prying eyes drive them “mad.” The songs on “1989,” in many ways, provided a clear assessment of Swift’s position in popular culture: Her foes weren’t mean individuals but systems that had long antagonized female stars of her ilk.

By “Reputation” three years later, the specter of her enemies plotting against her and an obsessive public dissecting her had become not just a common antagonist in Swift’s music, but its dark, animating force: “I loved you in spite of deep fears that the world would divide us,” she sang on “Dancing With Our Hands Tied.” Her character was so irreparably blemished by her public battles, she had to shed her old skin: The old Taylor was “dead.” On tour, she performed alongside fake giant snakes, adopting the imagery that Kardashian had used to smear her online.

But as Swift continued to foster an image of herself as perpetually on the ropes, her profile was exponentially expanding. “My reputation’s never been worse,” she sang on that album’s “Delicate”; “Reputation” was her fourth to open with the equivalent of more than 1 million in sales.

The songs (and their success) reaffirmed the idea that Swift is at her most energized, perhaps even most ingenious, when in a defensive pose. In 2019, when Borchetta, the owner of her former label, Big Machine, sold the masters of her first six albums to Braun, a talent manager and associate of West, she kicked into a new creative gear. Swift began releasing exact re-creations of the albums she didn’t own, packaged with new songs and artwork; the project gave her desire for retribution, previously just fuel for her lyrics, an ambitious formal conceit. She implicated listeners in her struggle in the process: In fan parlance, the original records became “stolen versions,” as opposed to the rerecordings, “Taylor’s Versions.”

Swift had long fought her own battles. After the sale of her masters galvanized her fans, they loudly joined the fight, attacking anyone they perceived as an enemy, from actual foes like Braun to critics who negatively reviewed her albums. (In at least one instance, a writer was doxed because her positive review was not positive enough.) The Swifties, previously anodyne compared with many other online “stan armies,” were becoming known as trigger-happy and deeply vindictive.

And their numbers were growing: The Taylor’s Version project, as well as her stripped-back pandemic albums “Folklore” and “Evermore,” introduced younger listeners to her back catalog and endeared older listeners to her image. By the release of “Midnights” in 2022, Swift had proved herself to be an unstoppable sales force and a practically invulnerable public figure. By 2024, after tickets to her Eras Tour were so in demand, they caused a Ticketmaster meltdown, Swift was unquestionably the center of pop’s solar system.

The Eras Tour ended in December 2024, after garnering nearly universal praise and grossing more money than any tour in history. In May, she bought back her masters, triumphing over Borchetta and Braun. West, her longtime nemesis now known as Ye, was no longer welcome in the rarefied spaces they had once shared. She had a boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, who, like her, was dominant and beloved in his field.

And yet “Showgirl” is one of her most bitter, combative records in a long while. Multiple songs, including “Father Figure” and “Actually Romantic,” seemingly attempt to pick feuds with industry figures. “Wish List” and “Honey,” ostensibly love songs, place her happiness with Kelce in a paradigm of conflict, outlining the privacy they’ve been denied and the terms of endearment that were once weaponized against her. “They say I’m bad news / I just say, ‘Thanks,’” she sings on “Elizabeth Taylor.” “Cancelled!” is a three-minute homage to being offed for “one single drop” of unapproved behavior.

The disconnect is sharp and didn’t escape fans and critics. Journalists, once so fearful of Swift’s fans that the magazine Paste declined to attribute a byline to its pan of “The Tortured Poets Department,” gave “Showgirl” pointed reviews. Swifties haven’t stepped up to defend her as much as they previously did. Many have pointed out that the numerous deluxe and limited-edition versions of this album — and its one-weekend-only cinematic event film — felt more like commercial than creative ventures.

Of course, “Showgirl” sold more than 4 million copies in the United States in its first week, obliterating a record previously held by Adele. By the numbers, Swift is bigger than ever. But reputationally, she might finally be the underdog she always saw herself as.