Yesterday, the internet was set briefly aflame in a little dustup between Taylor Swift and Damon Albarn that became an international dispute involving at least one head of state. Yes, a popular music spat managed to draw the attention of Gabriel Boric, the newly elected millennial leader of Chile who will be inaugurated in March. He is his nation’s youngest president in its history, a former student leader and, apparently, a huge Swiftie.
It all started when Albarn, the UK frontman of bands like Blur and Gorillaz, gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times dismissing Swift, saying she doesn’t write her own songs. Albarn was waxing on how he feels very little pop music will stand up over time because it’s not well written. Journalist Mikael Wood brought up Swift as an example of someone who writes her own music, and Albarn disagreed. “She doesn’t write her own songs,” he said.
Wood disagreed while Abarn doubled down on his take; a mistake, on his part. For one thing, if you know one thing about Swift, it’s that she does write her own music. At 19, she wrote her third album, Speak Now, entirely on her own. In fact, Swift’s ownership of her music has been the subject of an extremely public and lengthy legal dispute that has resulted in an enormously successful re-recording of her older albums. She may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s strange that a professional musician of Albarn’s caliber would be this ignorant about this era’s most successful artist.
For another thing, that is not the sort of thing Swift or her legion of fans, known as Swifties, will take lying down. Swift took to social media with her thoughts. “I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this,” she shot back. “I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really f***** up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.”
“PS I wrote this tweet all by myself in case you were wondering,” she added.
Those tweets mobilized one of the most efficient and ruthless fandoms in pop culture history, a legion that includes — yep — President-elect Boric.
Boric is hardly a fair-weather fan, as the internet quickly found out. He reportedly has a photo of her in his wallet and he even reps official folklore merch, like this cardigan, which is something of a holy grail among Swifties.
mi presidente es swiftie pic.twitter.com/JSCQqKwOlF
— bian ⊬ 🕯️VOY A VER A HARRY🕯️🧣 (@lhhabits) January 25, 2022
Albarn attempted to backpedal on social media, apologizing “unreservedly and unconditionally” and accusing the magazine of reducing his quotes to “clickbait.”
“The last thing I would want to do is discredit your songwriting,” he tweeted. “I hope you understand.”
Swift hasn’t responded to the apology publicly yet. Neither has Boric.
