Welcome to Swift Notes: your weekly guide to the ever-expanding Taylor Swift multiverse

Crafts, capitalism, conspiracies, cultural norms, the climate crisis; football, family relations, fine dining; Argylle, AI, asbestos, academia and museums; the US election, Senate hearings, international relations and the international date line; romance, sexuality and the right way to be successful; gun crime, Grammys and grammar (yes, really): in just the first two months of 2024, the Guardian’s reporting on Taylor Swift has spilled far beyond her natural home in the music section, reflecting a reach that exceeds the pop superstar’s unstoppable ambitions. Last year, one US publication sparked controversy for hiring a dedicated Swift correspondent, but the joke is that anyone in entertainment and culture media – and the rest of it – is essentially a de facto Swift reporter now. Her influence is so vast that writing about her sometimes feels less like documenting a singular pop career than it does reporting on the affairs of a small nation. (The total revenues of just the US leg of the Eras tour have been estimated to be larger than the GDP of 35 countries.)
I can’t lie: this can feel exhausting. And even after the recent brouhaha around her victory at the Grammys and her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s victory at the Super Bowl, there’s still untold Swift activity coming down the pipe this year: a new album, The Tortured Poets Department (no apostrophe!), in April; the final two albums of her re-recording project; the Eras tour doesn’t even reach Europe until May – and those are just the plans that the workaholic pop star has divulged. Just as Swift claims to offset carbon emissions from her private jet usage, I sometimes fret that for every Swift piece we publish, we should cover something from music’s fringes. (Luckily for anyone less-than-
enchanted by her ubiquity, there are plenty of alternatives in the music pages.) But sometimes, the best approach to an absurd state of affairs is more absurdity, and so throughout 2024 – until some suitable conclusion – rather than be dragged under by this inexorable tide, the Swift Notes newsletter will ride the Swift wave in all its record-breaking, norm-shifting, joyously deranging and sometimes infuriating magnitude, examining the impact of Swift’s actions and the lens she offers on to a baffling range of contemporary issues, with seriousness/silliness as called for.