The BYU Political Affairs Society hosted an event regarding the Politics of Taylor Swift just days before her Eras Tour is set to begin.
“We're so excited for the concert and we've been putting together outfits and listening to her music and getting ready,” event attendee Hanna Moore said, “and we thought it would just be a really fun idea to come and learn about the different Taylor Swift theories, and talk about the different eras in preparation for the concert.'
This is the second time the BYU Political Affairs Society has hosted the event.
It originated from a mutual interest between Dr. Ryan Davis, the BYU Political Affairs Society and BYU Women in Politics, to talk more about Taylor Swift and the politics involved in her lyrics and career.
“The thing that's interesting about Taylor Swift is that, from the beginning, she was interested in having secrets on her albums,” BYU professor and Taylor Swift expert Dr. Ryan Davis said. “So when it used to just be like that in the early days, the capitalized letters internal to the words would spell the name of a person who matter to the sign just like things, whether it be a meaning to the song that was connected to her life that you could get, if you sort of put together the clues.
Dr. Davis discussed Swift's songs and the hidden messages in them.
“I've definitely heard a lot of theories before surrounding Taylor Swift, and some of them I buy into, some of them I don't, but it's just honestly fun to speculate,” attendee Olivi Carver said. “In the end, you can't really know someone.”
“I wonder if there's something about BYU that makes Taylor Swift and politics, a kind of thing that people are into here in a way that it might hit different than in other places,” said Dr. Davis.
More information on Dr. Davis’s work on the politics of Taylor Swift can be found at thePhiloswiftiewebsite.