2025 was a weird year for music. There was so much anxiety as Trump drug America into the gutter, I kept waiting for the soundtrack to kick in to amplify our revolution. Luckily we had regular gems dropped by Jesse Welles, the Arkansas bard. Watching him perform “Join ICE” on Colbert last month gave me hope that protest music still matters. I leaned heavily on the North Carolina punk band, The Muslims and their great 2021 album, Fuck These Fuckin Fascists, to get me through. That and my local jazz station, KMHD. But there were a dozen or so new releases that really brought me immense listening pleasure this year.
My 11-year-old daughter, who one year ago was a hardcore Swiftie, buzzing from seeing one of Taylor’s final Eras concerts, has moved on. “Dad, you love Taylor Swift more than I do.” I get what’s happening. She’s differentiating herself. I’ve loved the K-Pop that is now at the top of her charts, especially Stray Kids, but if I like it TOO much, I’ll ruin it for her. We did have a great moment in October listening to Swift’s new The Life of a Showgirl stream through the house (from separate rooms). Cozy was meh, and I was blown away by the song craft and the dialed back production that seemed very 70s FM to my ears. This is the Taylor Swift album I’ve been waiting for. By the fifth track, “Eldest Daughter,” I knew this album would be spinning non-stop.
It was a great year to be a Beatle fan, starting off with the best Ringo Starr solo album in ages, Look Up, where our drummer goes back to his first love of country music with great joy. The thirtieth anniversary of the Beatles Anthology series gave us Anthology 4. The collection included 13 unreleased tracks, plus the three remastered “Threatles” songs. The compilation was so lovingly assembled by Giles Martin, it felt like stepping into the studio with the boys. There is still magic to be discovered (and the Rubber Soul cuts were revelatory).
My absolute favorite discovery of 2025 is the Denver band, Dead Pioneers, fronted by Paiute spoken word artist, Gregg Deal. Their 2023 debut album and 2025’s PO$T AMERICAN slam punk rock power and indigenous indignation in a way that is both humorous and revolutionary. The PO$T AMERICAN tracks, “My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal” and “STFU” nearly blew out my speakers this year. After the first listen, I immediately ordered a Dead Pioneers t-shirt and began saying prayers that they’d come to Portland. There has been a great void in my music collection by indigenous artists. If anyone should be raging against the machine in ICE America, it’s the first people. PO$T AMERICAN is everything I loved about The Clash 45 years ago. The more I listen the more I learn and the louder the drums get.
Fifty years ago, I was 11 years old and somewhere between my Elton John phase and my Kiss phase. All the girls in my class were in their Bay City Rollers phase. Now I have an 11-year-old and she’s firmly in her K-Pop phase. Yeah, there’s a new Taylor Swift album out tomorrow but that pales in comparison to having every single incarnation of the new album by Stray Kids (available at Target). I know, because I’ve had to drive her there to get each version. “I’m spending my own money, Dad!” I laugh because I was right there, spending my chore money on Kiss posters.
Three thoughts.
Thought One: I love the evolution of music. If you would have asked me in 1975 what the pop music of 2025 might sound like, I never would have guessed the post-modern electro-clash of South Korean K-Pop groups. It’s like music from another planet. Just blast “Ceremony” by Stray Kids and tell me what you are listening to. But it’s infectious. Is it “noise” (Get out my yard, kids!) or a brilliant innovation of the pop music genre? The rock and roll ethic is youth music is supposed to set the younger generation apart from the older generation. My Dad’s parents hated Elvis and my dad hated Run DMC. I’m supposed to hate this music but I’m fascinated by it. Sorry, Cozy. I’m in.
Thought Two: I used to lecture about “teenybopper” culture in my Sociology of Youth Subculture class. About how research shows that the “culture of the bedroom” allows pre-teen girls to experiment with heterosexual norms of dating. I’m from the seventies, so their were a lot of girls buying Tiger Beat for the pin-ups of Leif Garret and Shaun Cassidy. Cozy’s Stray Kids box sets come with similar swag that ends up on her bedroom wall. Her and her friend screamed yesterday as they pulled out the pictures of the members of the boy band, including Hyunjin, who she declared was her “husband.” Classic teenybopper. How many women my age were sure they would marry Donny Osmond?
Thought Three: Music is such a great way to bond with your kid. Some families have sports, or religion, or animal husbandry. Our house has always been filled with an unhealthy obsession with music. Taking Cozy to see Taylor Swift last year was something we will both talk about for the rest of our days. Being present for her present K-Pop obsession is a great gift and she knows I appreciate it because I was in a similar spot. (There is more than one picture of me in Kiss make-up.) Andi and I took Cozy to see the film Demon Hunter at the theater and she sang every world. On the fourth of July, Cozy and her girl squad were crammed into my Subaru and they put “Gnarly” by KATSEYE on repeat and full volume and sang at the top of their lungs while they threw Snap n Pops at pedestrians. It was bliss.
Thanks to Facebook routinely reminding me, I am often lamenting over pics of Cozy the Toddler. Or Cozy the Second Grader. I posted a lot of pictures of her and that was a great part of her and my life. Cozy the Middle Schooler has all kinds of new joys to offer. Yeah, I want her to get off her phone and clean up her room (That’s another conflicting conflict to explore), but there is so much for me and this kid to learn about each other. Me at 11 was on my bike, her a 11 is on TikTok. We’re different people in different times. Me at 11 was obsessed with Watergate and my first trip to Washington, DC. Cozy is more than aware that Trump is threatening her country and her city, in particular, but she distances herself because her father is so invested in it, often asking why I spend so much time on the protest front line.
So the music connects us. The night she was born, I held her in my arms and sang, “Yellow Submarine.” I can imagine myself on my deathbed with her singing me some K-Pop tune from the 2020s. I asked her yesterday, “What do you think the music of 2075 will sound like, because you’ll be there?” She said, “Like robots.” I said, “That’s what I said 50 years ago.” We’re both right.
We love our myths. They bind our cultures together. Whether they are creation myths or heroic myths of the eternal return, they resonate with our collective senses of self, what Carl Jung called the archetypes of the collective unconsciousness. This is certainly true of the “exceptional” myths of America.
We’ve been hearing a lot about “merit” lately. Trump/Musk has tried to make the case that anybody in a job who is not a straight white man is a “DEI hire,” who got the position because of some imagined quota instead of their inherent qualifications for the job. After the DC air collision last month Trump railed on former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who is gay), saying, “We can’t have regular people doing this job. They won’t be able to do it, but we’ll restore faith in American air travel.” Then he went on about how dwarves are being hired to be air traffic controllers.
The message was clear. Only straight white able-bodied cis-gendered men are qualified for the job. Everybody else is a diversity hire. White men have “merit.”
When I explain the value of meritocracy to my sociology students I describe it basically as the combination of talent and effort. Meritocracy is the belief that anyone in America can make it up the economic ladder and what you lack in talent can be made up for with extra effort. If you want to be an NBA star or a Shark Tank entrepreneur, just put the work in and you’ll get there. And if you’ve got lots of talent AND drive, the sky is the limit. I use the example of Taylor Swift as someone who has loads of talent and an insane work ethic.
But Taylor also has had the advantage of being an attractive white woman. Just look at how Beyoncé has had to work twice is hard for fewer accolades. It might not be the best example but race is a major factor in the merit calculation and it translates to the fact that white men have a much lower bar to be seen as having merit.
Just look at the range of completely unqualified nominations that Trump has put forward, like Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and Robert Kennedy, Jr., just to name a few of many. Their complete lack of merit makes Marco Rubio look like a supreme statesman in comparison. (Maybe that was the intent.) Perhaps Pam Bondi has the resume to be the U.S. Attorney General, but we know how attractive blondes are promoted by beauty pageant CEO Trump. The Trump administration has an Affirmative Action program for bootlickers. Merit matters less than loyalty. (Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s recent comments on Ukraine demonstrate how supremely unqualified he is for this job.)
The kleptocracy of the Trump regime is an illustration of the myth of merit in America, where women, people of color, and other marginalized populations have to work twice as hard for half as much and then see their accomplishments chided as the result of of some set-aside DEI program. It’s not surprising that many white men see valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion as a threat to their path of privilege, because it is. These men have always had an advantage and they are not about to relinquish it so easily.
But as Jim Morrison sang in 1968, “They got the guns but we got the numbers.” These men are a shrinking demographic and a unified effort will pry the keys out of their creaking fingers.
To be honest, I don’t have the energy to summarize 2024. It was supposed to be the year we forever banished Donald Trump to the Old Farts’ Home for Billionaire Rapists. Mexico elected its first female president and we elected our first felon. So much for those White Guys for Harris Zoom calls and all those angry cat ladies. Instead of strengthening democracy, America decided to write the screenplay for the prequel to Idiocracy.
Writing about the hovering threat of fascism from the yam-faced con artist took up most of the space on this blog, as personal matters took a backseat to thinking a well-crafted analysis of Trump’s fragile masculinity could save the country. But I’m social scientist and political Bon Vivant, so I had to jump into the scrum and will continue to do so as long as Elon Musk allows it. The excitement of the Harris candidacy (yeah, for us 1964 babies!) and the belief that competency would triumph over buffoonery kept me moving forward. Now, it’s being a voice for the resistance.
The year started off great with Trump being ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million after a jury found him responsible for her sexual assault and ended on a sad note with the passing of my former political science professor, President Jimmy Carter. Between that was a whole bunch of shit, from Boeings losing doors midair to P. Diddy being arrested for the most heinous sexual exploitation. Oh, and a couple of Republicans tried to kill Trump. In shapes of things to come, North Carolina got obliterated by a hurricane (not a tornado), and America got all giddy because a hot guy killed a health insurance CEO.
It was another year of slow personal growth that often felt like two steps forward, and two steps backward. Andi and I are still separated and I have no idea what 2025 has in store, but I focus on building trust and supporting her journey. I tried a bit of dating but I really wanted to focus my energy on Cozy, our daughter. Cultivating our common love of all things Taylor Swift was without a doubt the absolute best part of 2024, which culminated with seeing one of the final shows on the Eras Tour in Canada earlier this month. It was a wonderful moment we will both talk about forever. Swift got plenty of space in this blog in 2024, and my piece from February, “What Taylor Swift Tells Us About the Fragility of Men: Welcome to the Backlash,” was the most read post of the year. Caring for my sick brother Ron was both moving and heartbreaking. Cozy and I told him about our trip to see Taylor on December 8 and he passed away two days later while I was in Washington DC. Cancer had the final word.
My other great joy of 2024 was seeing our federally funded violence prevention project bear fruit. Cure-PNW held trainings for non-profits, sponsored civility discussions in churches, and hosted conversations between police and activists that helped de-escalate political tensions in the Pacific Northwest. Portland didn’t erupt into mass chaos after election as predicted and that might have been affected by the spreading of credible messengers into the local community. The project also helped me de-escalate after the election as I wasn’t feeling too civil.
Yeah, 2025 is going to be a major shit show for America (and the world). Trump will take America to some very dark places. You thought the lunacy of “They’re eating cats” was bad, just wait until MAGA thugs are dragging brown people out of their homes. But I will continue to write about it for whoever will read. Maybe the opposition will get off social media and hit the streets, making the second half of the 2020s a new era of social activism and engagement. I expect an explosion of good music that won’t come from a Spotify algorithm. This is not the time to be timid. It is time to rock.
This year has definitely had a musical theme. It was the year when Cozy and I became consumed with all things Taylor Swift. I dove into her back catalog and Cozy bonded with her 5th grade Swiftie crew, and begged me to buy every Taylor magazine on the newsstand (I didn’t). There were plenty of highlights, including April 19, when Taylor’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, dropped. Cozy and I listened to the stream (Well, streams. Turns out it was a surprise double album.) And then went to the record store to get a vinyl copy, quickly reviewing it on my YouTube channel. The peak was December 6, when we got to see Taylor herself at one of her final Eras Tour concerts in Vancouver, BC. We’re both still buzzing from that one.
Other than Tay Tay, I didn’t go to many concerts in 2024 as my social life was mostly homebound. I did see lots of jazz and funk shows in great Portland bars like the Goodfoot, the Alberta Street Pub, and the Keys Lounge. Two of my favorite concerts were seeing old friend Billy Bragg and old boss Kevn Kinney, both at the Revolution Hall (and I got to perform with Kevn). I have tickets to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in May, so maybe there will be more live music in 2025, if we’re allowed out past the Trump curfews.
It was a really a year of Top 40 radio as Cozy and I kept Z100 on in the car, listening to Taylor, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan (and that damn Hozier song). My mom did the same thing when I was 10, burning the Hits of ’74 into my forever brain. But when a song came on the Cozy didn’t like, she’d change the station to KMHD, the jazz channel. Because she’s my kid.
There was so much great music to listen to in 2024, including some great old stuff. I got a lot better about posting videos on Vinyl Fetish, my YouTube channel, especially my running feature, 100 Albums that Matter. That got me diving into some old favorites for repeat listens. Working through Rolling Stones’ 500 Greatest Albums of all Time list also provided great listens to old and new favorites (and endless opportunities to explain to my students what life was like before Spotify).
There was plenty of vinyl, mostly bought in second hand shops. My favorite re-issue was the newly remixed release of John Lennon’s 1973 album Mind Games, which I’ve always thought was poorly mastered.
Deciding the ranking of my favorite albums was not easy. I played the new Ace Frehley album way too much (until he came out for Trump). The expansive Transa collection brought attention to the joy and pain of the trans community and gave us a glorious new Sade song. I could not stop playing new albums by the Cure, Father John Misty, and Nick Cave. It was a great year to be a Radiohead fan with a Thom Yorke solo album and two releases from The Smile (Wall of Eyes being the better). Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood and Jack White’s No Name shocked me, they were so good and St. Vincent released the PJ Harvey album I’ve been waiting for.
But one album grabbed me out of the gate and would not let go: Country Carter by Beyoncé. I don’t know if it’s a country album or not (but I got a kick out of white people proclaiming it most certainly wasn’t). That debate paled in comparison to draw of the music itself, touched by Willie, Dolly, Beatle magic, and the brilliant Rhiannon Giddens (who has firmly planted the BLM flag in country music). “Texas Hold ‘Em” was classic Bay but also completely new, but my favorite track was “Bodyguard,” where Mrs. Carter also lays claim to 90’s alt rock. Every time I listen to it, I discover something new. It might end up being my favorite album of 2025 as well.
So here’s my 20 favorite albums of a year that went to shit. Let’s hope 2025 produces the angriest punk rock since Thatcher and Reagan were elected.
Beyonce – Cowboy Carter
Father John Misty – Mahashmashana
Nick Cave – Wild God
Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood
Various Artists – Transa
The Cure – Songs of a Lost World
Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Society
Jack White – No Name
John Lennon – Mind Games (The Ultimate Collection)
The Smile – Wall of Eyes
Kim Deal – Nobody Loves You More
Charles Lloyd – The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
Pylon Reenactment Society – Magnet Factory
Dandy Warhols – Rockmaker
Paul Weller – 66
Rosie Tucker – Utopia Now!
St. Vincent – All Born Screaming
Ace Frehley – 10,000 Volts
Miranda Lambert – Postcards from Texas
Gary Clark, Jr. – JPEG Raw
Spotify playlist of songs from the Top 20 albums: CLICK HERE
There are a lot of responsibilities of a parent. We need to keep our kids safe and provide the skills so they’ll be successful as adults. We need to wrap them in love and make sure they have three meals a day. But sometimes, we gotta make a dream or two come true to show there is still magic in the world.
At some point in the last year, Cozy’s obsession switched from the Animal Crossing video game to Taylor Swift. It corresponded with me also becoming a fan as I started talking about her music on my YouTube channel. We got to develop this thing together. When the concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, came out October of 2023, neither of us were that interested in seeing it. Then, seeing the actual Eras Tour became the mandate. Swiftmania had come to our home.
For me, as a music fan, it was coming to appreciate the incredible talent of her songwriting and the unique production of each album. For Cozy, it’s also about her connection to her friends, the fifth grade Swiftie crew. The old teeny-bopper culture of the bedroom has gone from the days of dreams of male stars, and the dream to marry them, to a 21st century connection to a female artist who empowers girls and women with empathy and strength. No wonder fragile men hate Taylor Swift.
So the hunt for tickets was on. We had a place to stay if I could score some tickets to one of the London shows. The tickets for the Warsaw show were the cheapest. I entered every contest I could, including buying lots of raffle tickets. I’m from the days of $12.00 concert tickets so the thought of paying more than a hundred times that for a show was beyond me, but the kid wanted to go. And so did I. We renewed Cozy’s passport just in case we got tickets to one of the more affordable shows in Europe. We didn’t.
The tour, that began in Glendale, Arizona, on March 17, 2023, was set to end not too far up the road from us in Vancouver, BC. A few weeks ago, Cozy was in tears realizing her dream to see Taylor was winding down. Then she woke up one day and said, “Can we try a fundraiser?” So we recorded a video and sent it in to Kickstarter right before Thanksgiving but it never got approved to launch. So, in a last minute appeal, I asked fans of Cozy to Venmo support for this mission to get the kid to the Eras tour. We scored a couple of semi-obstructed view tickets on StubHub for the Friday show for only $999 each with a $700 service charge. (I hope the CEO of StubHub is laying low.)
With the tickets on my phone (and some sustaining donations from Cozy’s mom and some great friends), we headed north to Canada. The highway was jammed up with Swifties. At one point, north of Seattle, Cozy and a car full of girls tossed friendship bracelets to each other as we headed for the border. I’m guessing there are a ton of the famous bracelets on I-5 that didn’t make their target. The Canadian customs guy laughed when he saw our car, covered in graffiti, including writing on the driver’s side that said, “Broke Swiftie Dad” with my Venmo handle.
Once inside the BC Place Arena in Vancouver, the excitement was leaping off the walls. I was a year younger than Cozy when my parents took me to see Elvis Presley, so I wanted her to remember every second and just breathe the whole thing in. She was busy trading bracelets while I checked out all the subcultural fashion. (My favorite was a T-shirt with a picture of Jake Gyllenhaal’s face, the inspiration for the epic “All Too Well” song, with a red cross over it.). Cozy was in her “22” outfit, hoping she would be selected out of the 60,000 in attendance to receive the coveted “22 hat” from Taylor herself. But there we no mistaking that we were in the middle of a cultural phenomenon, about to be in the room with the biggest pop star on the planet.
After a pleasant set from Taylor’s buddy Gracie Abrams (daughter of JJ Abrams), the countdown clock struck zero, the lights dropped and our special concert wristbands started flashing. Happy Eras! It was wonderfully deafening. Like the Beatles times a thousand (dollars). I recorded Cozy as Taylor appeared mid-stage to launch into the Lover Era portion of the show. She screamed and didn’t stop screaming for three hours. It was blissful. Dad mission accomplished.
The show itself was incredible. I got to hear all my favorite songs, including “Cardigan” and “Midnight Rain.” Her acoustic set, different each night, included “Never Grow Up,” which always reminds me of Cozy. But the zeitgeist of the night was the first bridge to “Cruel Summer,” where we all sang at the top of lungs with the women herself. “I’m drunk in the back of the car…” They were filming the concert so if there’s an Eras Tour 2 movie coming out, you may see Cozy and I singing our hearts out.
Cozy didn’t get the 22 hat but during that song she’s convinced that Taylor waved at her up on row XX in the upper level of the arena. I’m sure she did. Every moment of the concert was brilliant, from “Miss Americana” to “Karma.” After three and half hours, I didn’t want it to end. Swift put on a brilliant show, singing a thousand songs, dancing her ass off, and making everyone of the 60,000 in attendance feel like they were sharing a personal moment with her. I’ve got a pretty good resume of concerts over the years (I was at Live Aid, for godssake), and this was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced, both musically and culturally.
We made are way back across the border after the show and got a hotel in Bellingham, Washington, and drove home yesterday in the pouring rain. We made it back to Portland in time for Cozy to get to the birthday party of her Swiftie bestie who had a house full of girls waiting to hear from a friend who had actually been to the Eras Tour. When Cozy knocked on the door, you could hear the screaming down the block. She came bearing friendship bracelets for everyone.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ends tonight in Vancouver, after 149 shows on five continents. It is the largest grossing tour of all time and has shaped culture and economies around the globe. Astronauts have reported being able to see the concerts from space and geologists have claimed the crowds have caused the earth to vibrate. All that is true but I know for one 10-year-old girl it was simply about the moment Taylor Swift waved at her that caused time itself to stop. And (with a little help from my friends) I got to be the one who made that moment happen.
Like millions of Americans, the re-election of Donald Trump came as a complete shock to me. I was comfortable in my echo chamber where Taylor Swift endorsements, White Dudes for Harris Zooms, and the Democratic Party’s massive war chest and obviously brilliant ground game had this thing sewn up. Vice President Harris was explaining how she was going to help Americans buy their first homes while Trump buffoonishly danced to “Ave Maria.” There was no way this convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender was going to get anywhere near the White House.
Boy, when you are wrong, you’re wrong.
The part of me that is a professional academic should have immediately gone into the post-game analysis. What macro-level trends were missed? What values were better communicated by one side and not the other? Instead, I just wanted to rage against the machine that allowed this calamity to happen. My emotions grabbed the wheel and I had nothing but vitriol for the fellow citizens of my nation. Wednesday morning, I sat in my bed and wrote one big “fuck you” to America.
It was ironic, because the work that I do with the Cure-PNW project is all designed to de-escalate political violence and here I was wondering out loud if I should buy a gun to protect my family (including a certain immigrant) from Matt Gaetz’s goon squads. Well, two and half weeks later, Gaetz is gone (for now), and we’re still here, moving forward in a nation where Trump won the popular vote. I de-escalated, but it took longer than it should have. My immediate reaction Election Night should have been, OK, now we have some real work to do, but instead what came out was my desire to just (metaphorically) blow up the whole idea of “America.”
When those swing states swung red, I thought about all the people, including friends, students, colleagues, and some family who will be greatly harmed if Trump follows through on his fascist plans. I thought of transgender friends who may lose access to health care. I thought of my DACA students facing very real plans of mass deportation. I thought of my daughter becoming a young woman in a nation that lifts up rapists and sexual abusers because they promise to lower the price of eggs. Andi wondered, as the results came in that night, if she should self-deport before Trump’s vigilantes started grabbing “illegals” off the street. (She’s not, but she was.) I thought about how this great nation may be unrecognizable in four years as the newly empowered bullies have a “permission structure” to attack the vulnerable.
My rage was for those who were hurting. In defense of them.
I want to use my straight white cis-male able-bodied privilege to both give voice to their fears and to stand as a barricade for what’s coming. But neither of those needs is achieved by attacking the people who voted for Trump. Much has been written about why people vote against their interests and much will be written about why average Americans, including a lot of women and Latinos, voted for the pro-billionaire Trump-Musk ticket. That’s academic. What’s not academic is how we heal this massive gash that divides us from each other.
The day after Election Day I posted a blog that was contrary to all the important work I do to heal that divide. As a human being (and a Pisces), I am prone to having emotions and I emoted a shit ton of anger that morning. Then I unplugged and started working on my mindfulness practice and found my way out. But that I posted that blog publicly meant that rage went out into the world. I wanted to give voice to all the anger that was out there, but the post-script about “give me some time to process this” was lost in the headline that probably sounded like, “Blazak wants women to rip Trump limb from limb.”
So, for the first time, I deleted a post. “America, I Quit” no longer exists. It was the product of my lizard brain and my need to lash out at this undeniable fascist and those who would enable him to harm to women, girls, queer folk, black, brown, and indigenous people, Muslims and other religious minorities, disabled people, and all the folks, including me, who do work for the federal government. But the tone of the blog post undermined the important work we do at Cure-PNW. It was more about burning bridges than building them. As I stated in the follow-up blog, I let hate win.
The truth is I have family members, dear friends, students, and (very likely) colleagues who voted for Trump and, while I think they made a disastrous choice on November 5th, I have great respect for all of them on so many levels. I hold them close and fight for their basic rights, as well.
I will continue to write about the fascist threat of Donald Trump and his weird circle of sycophants. I can’t not. I love this country and its people too much. But there is a way to do that that brings in his supporters instead of further alienating them, that doesn’t lean on violent language to make the point. As I have said in this blog, we’re all in this together. I have to offer grace to those that voted for him and to myself for having a very human reaction to this insane moment in human history. Onward.
One of the most depressing things about the 2020 election was seeing more white women move into the Trump voting pool. While only 47 percent of white women voted Republican in 2016, 53 percent voted for the GOP in 2020, according to Pew Research. While women of color largely remained Democratic voters, the “soccer moms” seemed to be falling for Trump. Those Republican women were rewarded in June 2022 when the Supreme Court took away their reproductive rights in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. Dobbs woke many of those Republican women up. That fall, conservative women in redder than red Kansas voted, en masse, against a proposed state abortion ban. Was the sleeping giant waking?
Dissertations are being written on why so many white women support a convicted felon, who brags about wanting to date his daughter and grabbing women by the genitals. “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said. A man who was found, by a jury of his peers, liable for sexual assault, in a case the judge equated with rape. Why would white women support this pig? What woman would tell their daughter that, “This is a good man and should be our president”? My theory is that their racism trumps his sexism. They see themselves as white first and women second.
Now, of all possible running mates, Trump has picked first term Ohio senator J.D. Vance to be his wingman. While it’s not surprising Trump picked a white male MAGA loyalist (who won’t stray like that Constitution-abiding Mike Pence), it is a little surprising that Trump would pick someone as anti-woman as Vance. Vance opposes no-fault divorce and wants a national ban on all abortion, even if a girl is raped by her father. (As J.D. says, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”) You’d think forced government birth for rape victims would not be a good look for the G.O.P., who should be trying to lure female voters back after Dobbs. But there is no G.O.P. anymore. There is only Trump, a party of one. In high school, I learned this was called “fascism.”
So the Trump-Vance ticket is the most misogynistic ticket of this century. And, suddenly, they are up against, not Old Man Biden, but Vice President Kamala Harris, who has also been a successful senator, state attorney general, and prosecutor of the same crimes for which Trump has been convicted. Sunday, after Biden’s announcement, I dove into right wing social media and charted the avalanche of racism and sexism that was being unleashed by the white men of MAGA. Then I took the shower.
Accusations that Harris is “incompetent,” “slept her way to the top,” and is a “DEI hire,” should be familiar to every single woman who has tried to find equity in the workplace. This includes Republican women – the ones in the workplace, not the ones homeschooling their kids. That women have to work twice as hard and get half as much is a lived reality known to all working women (and people of color). These are the women that belt out the line from the Taylor Swift song, “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.” But the fact that this avalanche of “women are not qualified” misogyny is coming from the supporters of Trump-Vance may work in Harris favor.
Kathleen Blee’s pioneering 2008 book, Women of the Klan, found that women joined racist hate groups with their racist men, not on their own, and were challenged by the sexism that went hand in hand with the racism. Trump women who fawned over Trump at the RNC, with fake bandages on their right ears, may start to fall away when they hear the uncheck anti-woman rhetoric coming from their men, especially when they start to understand Harris has their back.
I’ve already witnessed this. Don’t tell anyone, but I belong to a Gen X Swiftie Facebook page. (Not all Taylor Swift fans are 9-year-old girls, like my daughter.) Swift is a strong feminist and has come out as a Democratic supporter. The 2020 documentary Miss Americana tells the powerful story of her political coming out. Taylor’s epic break-up song, “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which is an updating of Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” contains the line, “And you were tossing me the the car keys, ‘Fuck the Patriarchy’ keychain on the ground.” Of course, being a feminist Swiftie over fifty, I went straight to Amazon and bought a “Fuck the Patriarchy” key chain.
After the Republican convention last week, which was the pinnacle of patriarchal bullshit, I posted a picture of my keychain on Gen X Swifties, with the tag, “Current mood.” I got hundreds of likes but some anger from a few Swifties that felt I had introduced politics into their “safe space.”
Then something amazing happened.
The other women on Gen X Swifties started a conversation with the “no politics” women. Not a “You’re stupid!” shouting match but a calm conversation that clearly stated, Taylor is political and so being a Taylor Swift fan is political. That Taylor has strongly come out for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights and against politicians who oppose those civil rights and you can’t separate these things. To be for Taylor is to be for women’s and queer rights and the taking of a strong stance against those that would suppress those rights is in line with Swift’s values of equality. People began posting memes of friendship bracelets that said, “In our Kamala era,” and repurposing Swift lyrics, like, “Kamala’s a relaxing thought.” And those “no politics” women didn’t bail. They stayed and listened.
I’d like to make a prediction. Swift’s Eras tour returns to the United States in October. As boyfriend Travis Kelce joined her onstage in London, there will be night when the vice president takes the stage. Preferably it will be during “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift’s brilliant anti-homophobia anthem, and Harris will do her famous Kamala dance. Swift will wink and that will be that. No words will be said and the massive Swift voting block will be activated.
So let Trump-Vance and their MAGA droogs unleash their pathetic misogynistic attacks. It’s like water off of Kamala’s back. She’s heard it all before. It can only work to peel those coveted white women, formerly known as soccer moms, away from the Trump cesspool and into the Harris camp. They may tell their men that they are voting for Trump, but in the privacy of the voting booth they’ll pull the lever for the prosecutor, not the felon. And when Taylor Swift sings, “Screaming, crying, perfect storms, I can make the tables turn. Rose garden full of thorns, keep you second guessing, like ‘Oh, my God, who is she?” They can sing along and say, “Yeah, that was me.”
As Cozy approaches the end of her stint as a fourth grader, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the evolution of peer culture for a 9-year-old. The difference between third grade (which is technically “primary school”) and fourth have been like night and day, and the primary shift is all about who she wants to hang out with. I’m still Daddy and get plenty of time and love, but her friend group is now her preferred time occupier. There’s a new sheriff in town and it’s a passel of pre-tween girls.
In her seminal 1982 piece of feminist scholarship, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Carol Gilligan charted how children generally play in mixed-sex groups through primary school. Cozy certainly had as many male friends as female friends. But then, as children begin to approach adolescence, they split up along gender lines; boys on one side of the playground and girls on the other. As a parent who is both at drop off and pick up, I’ve watched this phenomenon evolve over the school year. It’s like watching the formation of competing gangs.
We know that puberty is starting earlier for kids over recent decades. Every decade that passes, the average age of the onset of puberty moves up three months, according to recent research. This due to a number of factors including lack of exercise and changing diet. Researchers also think COVID accelerated precocious puberty, so there’s that. The bottom line is I was not ready for my child to be launched into adolescence quite yet, but here we are. Cozy has a bra.
At the moment, the gender split has a decidedly childlike element. It’s not about dating or harassment. It’s about bikes. That’s right, Cozy is in a biker gang. It’s a regular occurrence now that three or four girls on bikes show up in front of our house and holler, “Hey, Cozy! Come out and ride with us!” I encourage her to watch out for cars and then advise her to do a good job terrorizing the neighborhood. While her male counterparts are playing video games, the girls of Sabin Elementary are owning the streets and it’s glorious.
I spent a large part of my fourth grade year riding bikes with my friends, so I trust her as she rides out of view. In my time, boys ruled the streets while girls stayed home and learned how to fold clothes. If there’s any “domestic apprenticeship” in this house, it’s me telling Cozy to pick up her clothes before she ding dong ditches the boys on the next block. The girl bike gang is a revolution on wheels. I can only imagine what they talk about when they ride to the park to lay on the fourth grade gossip and pop culture obsessions.
The dark side of the peer bonding has been some actions that drift into the bullying zone. Cozy’s both flirted with it and been the subject of it. We’ve taken away her phone twice because of reports of chats that tease and exclude. I can’t police her interactions, 24-7, but I can limit her access to screens where impulsive actions are a lot easier. But the bright side is seeing Cozy’s peer group engage in pop culture separate from their parents. Her squad is firmly in the Swiftie camp and they will sing Taylor’s songs at full volume (including in the back of my car). It must be like what was like 60 years ago when The Beatles took over America. I love it.
Gilligan’s 1982 book offered a darker picture of this period. Gilligan found that when girls and boys peel away from each other, girls start to evaluate themselves by how well they can attract boys’ attention, not by how smart or athletic they are. She discussed that girls’ self-esteem plummeted around age 13 as they are repeatedly told that their worth is in their looks, forcing them to compete with each for the middle school Prince Charming. “Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
I’m hoping none of this patriarchal hell lands on my daughter. I can’t change 8000 years of male dominated culture, but I can hope, a) things have changed a lot since 1982, and b) she’s a lesbian. For now, she’s rolling with her girlfriends, having sleepovers, and evaluating clues in Taylor Swift songs (mostly clues about a guy named Joe). Unlike Gilligan’s 13-year-olds, Cozy is bonding with her diverse pool of girl power classmates. (In 1998, I presented a paper on how the Spice Girls were positively impacting girls ability to bond.) As they ride off into the summer, I’m going to support their freedom and close friendships. They’re gonna need it.
If I was my current age in 1964, as Beatlemania swept America, I would have absolutely hated the Fab Four. I would have been a 60-year-old jazz purist, dedicated to be-bop, hard-bop, and post-pop. I wouldn’t have had time for West Coast bop (sorry Brubeck), let alone mop top non-bop. I would have taken one look at the grinning lads from Liverpool, surrounded by millions of screaming girls, while they did their white people version of the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout,” and turned up my nose. “That’s pre-packaged bubblegum. I listen to serious music, like Miles and Trane,” I would have said.
Turns out those millions of teenage girls were right.
I’m not making that mistake 60 years later. I am fully in the grip of Swiftmania and I have my 9-year-old daughter to thank for it.
I’m deep in the bag for TS. The haters are the people who knee-jerk react to the trope that “Popular = Bad.” After all, the masses are asses, as L7 sang. Anything as massive as Taylor Swift must suck. That’s the same thing they said about the Beatles in 1964, who clogged up the pop charts with their “Yeah, yeah, yeahs!” But here’s the thing. You can dig L7 (and the Yeah! Yeah! Yeahs! and Miles and Coltrane) AND Taylor Swift. Tay is on my playlists next to punk bands like Destiny Bond and jazz freaks like Sun Ra. I’m not going to let your hipster elitism deny me the appreciation of this crazy trip, especially when it is being led by my Swiftie 4th grader.
Like a lot of people, I drug my heals on the Taylor Train. I prefer Tuareg music from Mali over the American Top 40. But her 2022 lofi dream pop album, Midnights, caught my attention. It took me to some unexpected places that I missed from my youth (like the sound of the wind down at 3 am). But it was when Cozy, my always enthusiastic about something daughter, switched her attention from the Animal Crossing video game to Taylor Swift that I bought my ticket onboard the Swift Express.
Cozy’s cohort followed mine in many ways. In third grade, it was all about the songs. “Cruel Summer,” always got a, “Turn it up, Dad” in the car. (For me it was “Burning Love,” by Elvis Presley.) Fourth grade is more about the artist. Cozy’s girl gang has lots of Taylor Talk before, during, and after school. (By the end of 4th grade, I’d seen most of Elvis’ 33 movies.) The Eras tour sweatshirts are like their team jerseys. Cozy makes song bracelets in hopes that one day she’ll be able to trade them at an actual concert. She’s made her bedroom into a shrine to Taylor with taped up magazine pictures and a rotating “Top 13” favorite song list. (13 is a magical number in Taylor-world.) At 13, my room was split between shrines to Kiss and the Beatles. She falls asleep each night to the TS CD’s I’ve loaded into her mother’s ancient iMac computer. And I assume all her friends live in a similar Taylor bubble.
Cozy’s fanaticism is infectious. She knows every Swift lyric, including to the “Anthology” version songs on Swift’s new album. She knows the outfits of the Eras tour including the “22 hat.” (I have no idea, but she tells me she’s going to show me a YouTube video that explains it.) When the new album, The Tortured Poets Department, dropped at 9 pm on April 18th, we sat together as it streamed into our lives. The next day we raced to the record store to pick up a vinyl copy and record a review for my YouTube channel. That night, her crew had a Swiftie listening party where all the girls dressed as a different era. Thanks to her mom’s make-up skills, Cozy nailed the Reputation look. I don’t know what would be the 1964 version of that, but I’d like to think 4th grade Randy (Ringo’s Version) would have most certainly been combing his hair forward.
It might be different if this was 1997 and I had a nine-year-old who was gaga over the Backstreet Boys. Taylor Swift is an insanely talented artist. Like Paul McCartney, she could sneeze and a brilliant song would come out. Like Bob Dylan, she can take the story of her life, slam words together, and create poetry that we will be analyzing for generations. If you don’t believe me, listen to Dylan’s 1975 track, “Tangled Up in Blue,” written after his separation from his wife Sara, and then the ten minute version of Swift’s “All Too Well,” written after her break up with Jake Gyllenhaal, and tell me they don’t fit together like two socks in a drawer. But because Swift is a young woman (and blonde and thin) her artistry is dismissed. There are plenty of music lovers who extol Joni Mitchell in 2024, who also derided her in 1970 for trying to “be Dylan.” I don’t know what will be seen as “classic” in 2074, but, if there is radio 50 years from now, “Cruel Summer” and the dozens of other Swift hits will be playing to welcoming ears of Gen Z elders and their mutant children.
The mission now is to get Cozy to a Taylor Swift concert. Taylor is playing at Wembley Stadium in London (where I saw Live Aid in 1985) on Cozy’s birthday on August 17th. The cheapest, behind the stage, tickets start at $1200. Tickets to see the Beatles in 1964 were five bucks. For the price of one Taylor Swift ticket I could have bought 240 Beatle tickets. (Yes, I did the math.) I’ve entered contests, bugged friends in London, and watched StubHub like a lunatic. I want Cozy to have this experience. She even described seeing Taylor in concert with her mom and dad as her “perfect day” in a recent family therapy session. When I was her age, my parents took me to see Elvis Presley and it turned me inside out. So, somehow, this will happen.
All this is just a truckload of fun. It’s as much about Cozy’s joy as it is about the wonderful music that Taylor Swift makes. Yes, some of those songs make me cry (“All You Had to Do Was Stay” was written about my own break up, I’m convinced). But I’ll remember (all too well) dancing in the kitchen with my kid to “Shake it Off” and re-discovering the way music can completely consume you. I have my Beatlemania thanks to Cozy. And I’m screaming my lungs out.
Watching the Wheels 