Thursday 25 September 2014

Construction of a Pop Star-Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift has a noticeable star image. From the type of song she writes to the stories written about her in the tabloids. She is undoubtedly known for her illustrious songs about romance, boyfriends and heartaches. The songs she writes tend to be of the Pop genre, some up beat song and others more sorrowful.

She has this very typical image of this fun loving, innocent, sweet girl which she portrays in the way she dresses as well as the way she acts. As she is young herself and also due to the type of music she creates her  main target audience are young teenage girls.

All her songs and albums have the same themes of 'love', this creates a feeling of continuity. Her fans expect the same type of sounds from her albums, so in order to sell singes and keep her title of a 'star' locked-down she has to produce the same time of music.


She has managed to uphold the same image throughout her career, but as she gets older she can no longer be the 'cutesy' girl we all know her as. So she's had to mature in a lot of ways, from the way she dresses to the mood of her songs. Needless to say she still writes about love songs but she's moving on from her cheesy days, and into recovery anthems, that are very personal to her, this also allows her fan base to feel closer to Taylor.


As a young female with a roller-coaster of a personal life, the tabloids are quick to the know the ins and outs of her life as they unfold. Most of the time thats she's in the news its to do with new relationships or current ones ending. She's also had many interviews surrounding her fashion. With a female fan base as big as hers, she has to work incredibly hard to make sure she looks the best she can. This leads to magazines features on how to 'Dress like Taylor Swift' or 'Taylor Swift Style', which provides her with a lot of positive publicity. She's always on chat shows and doing TV appearances, promoting her new single or album, in the hopes of widening her fan base.


As well as being known for her music, she is also known for the numerous altercations she's had with fellow musicians, the latest one being a twitter war with Katy Perry. She expresses any differences she has with other artists in her music, which gets people talking about her songs, therefore greatening the publicity she receives. She is a true example of someone who uses any and all publicity to her advantage.

She uses social media to interact with her fan
base. Examples of the sort of platforms she uses are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. When doing live performances the presents the same image. She wears quite humble clothing, never provocative and dresses with class. She wants to look respectable but at the same time not too serious because she still has to remain appealing to her fan base of teenage girls. From the first time we saw her in 'Love Story' video with her corkscrew hair, to now having chopped it all of in her 'Shake It Off' video, her appearance in her music videos is slowly adapting in order to stay current.

This is the video for 'Love Story' the song that boosted her into stardom.
And this is her progression 5 years down the line. This is a perfect example of how stars adapt to stay current. The less than impressive dance moves in the video for 'Shake If Off' is her almost saying 'yeah I cant dance, so I'm going to be even worse than I actually so you keep talking about me'. She uses any negativity aimed at her, and uses it to her advantage.

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