Taydaughters
A Tale of Succession
This Summer, two young women, Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams, are releasing new albums. If you live in the House of Taylor Swift, this is kind of a big deal; these women have a feud that only people who are already fans of both of them care about. Maybe feud is the wrong word. Maybe it’s more like a sibling rivalry. Or an adaptation of King Lear playing out in real time with pop stars. Fittingly, these young women have come to be called Taydaughters, as in daughters of Taylor Swift.
The idea of a Taydaughter comes from attempts to build a pop girl family tree. We all know that everything is influenced by something that came before it, and we want to be able to draw a straight line through history. It’s an acceptance and perhaps celebration of what was once a criticism. “Lady Gaga is just Madonna for the younger generation” was a common quip when Ms. Germanotta hit the scene and it was supposed to be a conversation-ender. Now that’s the first thought as we try to track the lineage of artistic inspiration. Instead of a commentary on the vapidity of pop music and insisting that everything is a copy of a copy, the fun becomes in deciding who is the spiritual mother to the new person we are being presented.
When a young artist reaches a certain amount of popularity, there is a brief period where older established musicians will praise and claim them. Everyone must find their place in the food chain, and this is part of that sorting. When a singer gets famous, they discover who is a newfound peer and who is the old guard anointing the new class. For many a newly minted pop star, Taylor Swift is the only voice worth appeasing. The only mother worth seeking validation from.
To be a Taydaughter, one must be a young pop artist with a confessional style who’s song are ostensibly about her life, or at least the media narrative is that these songs are autobiographical. We see an influx of Taydaughters in our current landscape for 2 reasons. Firstly, all of these girls grew up in the shadow of Taylor Swift. She is the model of success, especially post 2020. If one is searching for longevity in their career, modeling themselves after Taylor Swift is a sure bet. The other reason is that Taylor makes it look easy. Her fundamental elements are easy to replicate by oneself. All the next “Taylor Swift” needs from a tools perspective is a guitar and a life worth writing about. We all know there’s more, but the barrier to entry for a wannabe Taylor Swift is much lower than, say, a wannabe Lady Gaga or Charli XCX. A parent is more likely to give their daughter guitar or piano lessons than let them sing in cabaret bars at 14 or teach them to use a synth.
The question of who is the next Taylor Swift looms heavily on all of our minds. The future is always around the corner, and we want to be able to call it before it even arrives. The next Taylor Swift is already here, or so we think; we just don’t know who it is yet. Of course, we said the same thing about Madonna, and look at where Lady Gaga has ended up. Perhaps mega stardom in pop music is not a model that can be copied, but an ability to meet culture and cultivate a fan base with mass appeal that is somewhat unquantifiable. A matter of “right place, right time” that can’t be called 30 years prior. But that’s no fun.
So who’s the true Taydaughter?
The Prodigal Taydaughter, Olivia Rodrigo
“Turn me into something tragic/Just for you I let it happen” - Gracie Abrams, “Let it Happen.”
