Swifties are at war over Taylor Swift's adolescence

Taylor Swift, 34 and a half, recently sang about feeling “so high school” — which is either a romantic admission or personal irony, depending on how you look at it. THE Department of tortured poets: the anthology The track finds Swift recounting the suburban ordinariness of her relationship. (“Touch me while your boys play Grand Theft Auto” she sings, in the song Lilith Fair's best line.) But what it actually means for someone like Swift to feel “high school” has been a matter of dispute lately, as Teen Taylor suddenly becomes an object of internet ire and obsession Although her journey from artistic high school student to one of the world's biggest artists is well documented, poking holes in her own mythmaking has become a hobby. on the Internet – a nostalgia that Swift, of course, capitalizes on.

This past week alone has been full of reasons to talk about the girl Swift once was. On r/travisandtaylor, one of Swift's most prominent online communities critical of Swift, a poster resurfaced a 2006 video of the singer when he was a sophomore in high school. Its origin is unclear, but it appears to have come from a local news segment. In the clip, the 16-year-old takes a camera crew to Hendersonville High School, which she began attending when her family was uprooted to Nashville to help launch her music career.

There she is, sitting barefoot (…?) in the school hallway, writing songs and singing to herself; driving his new Hummer to school; telling his friends that it's been a while since they “drove around with the top down and harass people.” Swift's best friend, Abigail Anderson, of “Fifteen” fame, even gets her own shout-out. If she wasn't Taylor Swift, she'd look like any other rich, popular blonde who writes and performs music. (Or rather, a rich, popular blonde who writes and performs music with a clearly affected Southern accent.) But because she's Taylor Swift, Reddit made a meal out of this clip and 16-year-old Swift's version. portrayed compared to the version she sold to fans over the years.

For example, an oft-mentioned part of Swift's origin story is that she was bullied and grew up alone. In a 2008 interview, when she was 18, she told the Tampa Bay Times that “the people at our school decided [Abigail and I] were too strange to be around. So I only had one friend throughout high school. Of course, it's impossible to judge whether someone was truly lonely at any given moment, especially based on a short news clip edited for television to make everyone look good. But Swift appears to have no shortage of friends in the 2006 clip, which, as Redditors pointed out, goes against her long-standing narrative. The cameras following her highlight the wealth Swift grew up with – again, not on her! But this seems to contrast sharply with his claims that “just dance in the living room and bills at the kitchen table”, or with his listeners daring to try to last “an hour in the asylum where they grew up “. [her].” What bills, Redditors ask, could Swift and her family have allowed to pile up? Is a multi-million dollar mansion really comparable to an asylum?

That this discussion took on considerable proportions (the thread received more than 1,400 likes and nearly 500 comments) just after an article reported by Sunday time about Swift's childhood seems like a fateful moment. For this lengthy article, a reporter visited several places where the artist grew up, including the wealthy Pennsylvania suburbs where she spent the first decade of her life. Elementary school teachers sing her praises, calling her a curly-haired kid who hugged everyone and sang solos in every class play. Her family owned a summer home in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, which they later sold for several millions; their next-door neighbor remembers hosting the Swifts often, with Taylor always writing songs in the area. It's a rather endearing read with lots of colorful details about one of our most-watched celebrities, even as it highlights her family's enormous wealth and all the privilege that comes with it. (In first grade, Taylor reportedly said she wanted to be a stockbroker when she grew up, just like her father; she brought her pet pony along for show and tell.)

But there are no explosive revelations in this article, as one might hope for something so widely publicized. Swift was talented and determined; his parents had the resources to help him realize his dream. And yet, subreddits on both sides of the aisle – pro-Swift and against her – have found plenty to discuss, as they pick apart the girl she once was and put her alongside the woman she once was. she is today. Fans and critics read the article to look for signs from her childhood that might explain her incredible rise, or validate their opinion of her as rightfully untouchable or frustratingly infallible. The truth is, they're reading stale tea leaves that have been repackaged as new, and Swift obsessives are enjoying it nonetheless.

It's unfair to compare someone to who they were almost 20 years ago, or to judge them for the brassiness (or bratiness) they displayed in their youth. But Swift has built a career on intimacy, a desire to know who she is and how she feels, and making her songs resonate better. And this career began when she was just a teenager; she released her debut album in the fall of 2006, shortly after filming this high school visit, which is now in circulation. She never graduated from Hendersonville High, as she hit the road to support what had suddenly become a massive career shortly after her freshman year. It makes sense that we want to delve into the details of what she was really like during her teenage years or moments of normalcy, because that's what helped shape her into a superstar, on which opinions are very shared.

And this superstar's debut album is also directly inspired by those early years; the feature notes that she performed “Teardrops on My Guitar” in front of the ex-boyfriend the song is about during a high school talent show. She's capitalized on the drama, heartbreak, and anguish she felt when she was 17 since she was 17, and she's good at keeping even her path exciting. This is why fans are freaking out because she performed “Crazier” from the movie Hannah Montana: The Movie the soundtrack, among other things, as one of the surprise songs during a recent Eras tour show, is the height of nostalgia. Many also continue to be unhappy about this Beginning is the only album not to be consistently represented in the setlist, making even the smallest nods of acknowledgment of its youth delicious and invigorating. Spectators' LED bracelets also lit up green during the performance, it was reported. Beginning color – so maybe she's preparing to lean even more on the good old days.

This would be the perfect time for her to do so, given the boiling fervor for Teen Taylor. Certainly, we're so excited that a 34-year-old pop star is revisiting the music she wrote as a teenager, frankly, it's so classic. But after 17 years, Swift wouldn't have it any other way.