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Taylor Swift is a Coward | fantano | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Taylor Swift is a Coward
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The content criticizes Taylor Swift's silence regarding the Trump administration's use of her music in propaganda, contrasting it with other artists who have actively opposed such usage and highlighting the inconsistency with her own history of copyright protection.
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Hi everyone, Anthony Fantano here,
internet's busiest music nerd, and I've
got a bone to pick with Taylor Swift.
Something her and her fans are sure to
uh respond to reasonably with um no
hatred in their hearts whatsoever.
Because honestly uh what I am about to
say is not said with any hatred in my
heart and genuinely comes from a place
of concern for our country and honestly
her public image. I don't know if you
guys have noticed lately, but the worlds
of music and politics these days are
crossing over in ways that are kind of
tough to ignore. most recently with
multiple instances of the Trump
administration using pretty popular
songs from chart topping and legendary
artists to uh push their propaganda
through various promotional videos or
pieces of AI slop, even Tik Toks and
short form vertical type video. And
thankfully, most of these examples
recently have been met with uh very
active and aggressive responses from
these artists rejecting the use of their
hard work, their art, their copyrighted
material, and essentially hitting the
administration with lawyers, with
paperwork, with cease and desists to
basically stop the use of their work in
its tracks. And again, recent examples
include that of Olivia Rodrigo, MGMT,
Metallica as well. And they're certainly
not the only artists whose work the
Trump administration has been using to
normalize their bigotry, their hatred,
and their fascist agenda. However, there
has been a weirdly deafening silence
whenever it has come uh to the usage of
Taylor Swift's music, believe it or not.
For example, right now on the White
House Tik Tok account, there's a bunch
of text and propagandist images playing
against uh the fate of Ailia from
Taylor's latest record. And there have
been other disturbing and concerning
usages as well of the track's father
figure as well as Opelite. So, the
usages are there and the music is most
definitely being used to push a
narrative. And again, the fact that this
is happening, continuing to happen, and
basically uh just existing unabated is
just very curious and very odd given a
couple of things. One, not only the fact
that Trump has taken a very hostile
stance against Taylor Swift uh on
numerous occasions on social media. I
mean, that alone should be enough to
raise this woman's eye. I mean, she's
certainly gone after other people either
in interviews or uh in her own music for
less. But on top of that, Taylor Swift
is somebody who historically is known to
be uh uh pretty latigious when it comes
to protecting her music and her
copyright. I mean, this is a woman who
whipped the entire music industry up
into a frenzy, over her not owning her
own masters and had everyone, me
included, cheering her on as she went
through the process of re-recording all
of her older albums, only for her to end
up buying the whole catalog anyway,
which I mean, frankly, is something I'm
happy she was able to do. But again,
this is something I and many other
people supported her in because of the
sanctity of uh the creative process and
the necessity that she uh control her
music in the way that she saw fit, which
is a position and a perspective that
even her more skeptical fans supported
her in, despite the fact that Taylor's
insistence on enforcing her copyright
has been used against people as
powerless as Etsy creators, as well as
quietly behind the scenes making sure
that her and Jack Antonoff. Even Saint
Vincent got credit on Olivia Rodrigo's
song Deja Vu over I guess allegedly some
similarities that it had with Cruel
Summer. So again, Taylor is someone who
historically is very sensitive to and
aware of when she is being ripped off
and when someone else is using her music
and her ideas to their own personal
benefit. And yet, as the Trump
administration does it, she is standing
there silent, not doing anything. And
regardless of what her reasoning at this
point may be, I got to say the outcome
here is disappointing because it's
inconsistent and in terms of her public
image, it's unflattering. Now, with that
being said, I want to steal man argument
a little bit here because I know there
will be some Taylor Swift defenders in
the comments who will pretend that I'm
asking for something unreasonable here
and that Taylor, by virtue of ignoring
Donald Trump, using her music to push
his agenda, she's somehow playing 4D
chess because an engagement, a response,
a call out is is exactly what he wants.
You don't get it. Okay. First off, in
terms of what the Trump administration
wants, to operate uninterrupted and
unabated is most likely their biggest
preference here, which is exactly what
they're doing so long as Taylor Swift
says and does nothing. And number two,
what I'm asking for and expecting from
Taylor at this point, is not this giant
soapbox speech, though that would be
nice. It's not an endorsement of
everything I believe. Again, I feel like
the bare minimum of hitting this man and
the administration with as much lawyer
power as she possibly can would be more
than enough because if you've done any
analysis of how exactly we have gotten
to this point as a country over the past
10 years, one of the key channels
through which the Trump administration
has been able to normalize its hateful
and bigoted agenda against queer people,
against immigrants, against minorities
of all types and stripes, against women
too is funneling it through pop culture
and making what they do and think and
stand for seem cool by proximity of what
they're able to put it next to. Be it
memes, be it mainstream music or
whatever. And by allowing the usage of
her music in this way, Taylor is
allowing that process to continue. Even
if we're to tell ourselves the fairy
tale that Taylor's entire listening
audience is nothing but uh women who
hate Trump, when if we look at the
statistics, Taylor's fan base is mostly
white women. White women love voting for
Trump. which is exactly why the use of
her music in this way must be rejected.
Because if Taylor's response to this is
that h it's essentially not really that
big of a deal. There are going to be
people guaranteed that also see the
further empowerment of Trump as not that
big of a deal, which just to stress, it
kind of is considering that he like just
tweeted the other day in support of the
execution of his political opponents.
I'm sure you've heard phrases used very
recently in the past few years like uh
you know we're living in historical
times, we're crossing the Rubicon, we've
gone over a certain threshold, you know,
not to stale these takes out or
anything, but we really are actually
doing that. And one of the only things
we can do to prevent that continued
backsliding is openly reject and
denounce this stuff whenever it is
popping up. And again, I'm not even
looking for or expecting that from
Taylor at this point. Merely just doing
everything she possibly can to prevent
this guy from furthering his agenda
using her music would be nice. Again,
there are multiple options and
approaches Taylor could take to this
situation. Not all of them involve like
a head-to-head with Donald Trump in the
octagon. Nobody wants or is expecting
that. as entertaining as that would be
with Taylor's known experience in
Brazilian jiu-jitsu. She is a black belt
after all. But yeah, I'm going to leave
it there for now. Let me know what your
thoughts about all of this are in the
comments below. I'm sure you will. Over
here next to my head is another video
that you can check out. Hit that up or
the link to subscribe to the channel.
Anthony Fantano, Taylor Swift, Opalite forever.
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