Fans’ Expectations of Taylor Swift Are Chafing Against Reality
Three songs have been playing every night before Taylor Swift has taken the stage on her current tour, and each one seems to convey a different message. One track is Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” a classic assertion of female independence. Another is Lady Gaga’s “Applause,” a pump-up jam in which a celebrity confesses her hunger for approval. Then there’s Ice Spice’s “In Ha Mood,” a recent hip-hop song whose presence shows, among other things, that Swift is paying attention to what’s hot in pop culture—an important fact to keep in mind when evaluating the controversy now brewing around her.
Ice Spice is a 23-year-old Bronx emcee whose whispery voice and puff of red hair have become internationally famous in a very short span of time, following the TikTok success of her August 2022 single “Munch (Feelin’ U).” She features on the new remix of Swift’s track “Karma,” released last week, and this past weekend she joined Swift to perform the song at the singer’s three concerts in New Jersey. From a distance, the story feels familiar: Established star allies with rising star for mutual benefit. But the remix has unleashed a wave of indignation online, making Swift, not for the first time, a focal point for conflicting attitudes about what entertainers owe their audience. Right now, the allegation that keeps coming up is that Ice Spice is being used as a “prop”—though she’s probably better thought of as a protagonist.
Understanding the outrage requires delving into the fraught subject of Swift’s dating life. Earlier this year, Swift broke up with her boyfriend of six years, the actor Joe Alwyn. According to media reports that haven’t been officially confirmed by any of the parties involved, she then began seeing Matty Healy, the singer from the rock band The 1975. Healy is a self-styled prankster whose lyrics satirize sex and society. Over the years, he has offended various constituencies, most recently by guesting on a podcast in which the hosts made extremely racist jokes about Ice Spice. Healy later publicly apologized to Ice Spice, but in a New Yorker profile, he remarked that the backlash “doesn’t actually matter.” He also said, “We used to expect our artists to be cigarette-smoking bohemian outsiders, and now we expect them to be liberal academics.”
That Swift might have to answer for Healy’s deeds is not, from a distance, obvious. Adults in relationships do not always agree on everything, and they are rarely called to explain to outsiders how they navigate disagreement. But Healy’s association with Swift, who has publicly spoken out for racial justice in recent years, has troubled many of her listeners. One tweet with 15,000 likes lamented that Swift has provided “no accountability, no apology for those that were harmed with her decision making.” When reading such sentiments, it is hard to distinguish idealism—the notion that a star should use her platform to do good—from the shaky belief that a famous person is in a real, give-and-take relationship with millions of fans she has never met.
Swift has, of course, built an empire out of parasocial fervor: Her songs conjure a feeling of intimacy between consumer and creator. Though she often refrains from making explicit public statements about her personal life—her relationship with Alwyn was pointedly private—much of her work does send coded messages. So when she announced that she would be releasing a track with Ice Spice, a takeaway seemed obvious: Swift was addressing the Healy blowback with evidence that she and Ice Spice were copacetic. To some observers, that subtext had another subtext, informed by the exploitative history of white performers using Black artistry to shore up their credibility.
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The funny thing about that line of thinking, in this case, is that it is so deeply entranced by Swift’s public-relations concerns, it minimizes Ice Spice’s agency. After less than a year in the public eye, Ice Spice could soon have her third top-10 Hot 100 hit thanks to “Karma (Remix).” Her other smashes have also been collaborations, with the rap legend Nicki Minaj and the bedroom-pop newcomer PinkPantheress. Most of Ice Spice’s songs are about the willfulness that has driven this rapid rise. Take these lines from “In Ha Mood”: “Pretty bitch, but I came from the gutter / Said I’d be lit by the end of the summer / And I’m proud that I’m still gettin’ bigger / Goin’ viral is gettin’ ’em sicker.”
The Swift remix is further proof of that ambition. As Swift told the roaring crowd at her concert this past Friday, Ice Spice was the one who reached out to work with her. That was early in 2023—at a time when Swift was listening to Ice Spice’s music constantly while prepping for the tour. So though Swift may well have timed the release of this remix for purposes of damage control, she also, quite plausibly, was planning on working with the rapper anyway. Whatever Ice Spice may feel about the situation, she did gleefully celebrate the collaboration on Instagram and join Swift for three nights in a row.
As music, does their pairing work? The “Karma” remix isn’t all that memorable, but it does feature an intriguing blend of attitudes and styles. Ice Spice’s trademarks are certainly apparent: a rasping, casual vocal tone; a host of methodically delivered, unfussy punch lines. She simultaneously conveys that she believes in herself and that she’s not trying too hard. This sense of ease, verging on apathy, contrasts with the gushing emotion and anxious assertiveness of Swift, an admitted try-hard.
In that way, Ice Spice’s unbothered air is a fitting accompaniment to the controversy: Fans are now having to reckon with the fact that Swift, who has for so long seemed to care about every possible connotation of her every move, is pursuing desires that don’t always neatly line up with her brand. Whether or not Ice Spice minds being part of the drama, she’s likely focused on her next move. As she raps on another song, “I’m still gettin’ money / I know who I am.”