Published just in time for Taylor Swift’s 35th birthday, The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: Taylor Swift is a collection of thirteen essays that discuss Swift’s self-fashioning, musical storytelling, and importance to pop culture in the 21st century. My own chapter, ‘We won’t be sleeping: insomnia and the feminist antiheroism of Taylor Swift’ , explores sleeping, and not sleeping, in Swift’s lyrics as a form of subtle feminist rebellion. You can find an excerpt below – to read the full chapter (and the full book) for free, head here.
“Does Taylor Swift ever sleep? It’s a reasonable question. A few months ago, I read a comment on Reddit from a fan who pointed out that ‘2AM is not a good time for blondie’. They’ve got a point. I can think of at least three references to the ‘AMs’ in Swift’s lyrics, off the top of my head, and countless more to midnight (of course). Swift’s nights are often sleepless, either due to restless romantic rumination (‘Treacherous’; ‘Back to December’; ‘hoax’) or the ill-advised consumption of caffeine after 4pm (‘You are in Love’). When there is sleep, it’s often unconventional to say the least. Sleeping in half the day (‘tis the damn season’). Midnights becoming afternoons (‘Antihero’). Eating breakfast at midnight (‘22’). Slumbering poorly in the hospital (‘Fresh Out The Slammer’). There has been a host of fan discussion about how Swift manages to perform the Eras tour so energetically, night after night, month after month, country after country (and, as she revealed in The Tortured Poets Department, even with a broken heart) but perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. If her lyrics are anything to go by, the woman doesn’t need sleep at all.
‘Who needs sleep when there is Swift?’ asked Alison Stine in 2023, discussing the promo surrounding the release of Midnights (2022), which was organised around the concept of meeting Swift – and the new album – as the clock struck twelve. Swift’s fans had expressed exasperation as well as excitement: ‘Can someone tell @taylorswift13 to please get a normal sleep schedule. I’m 32. How am I supposed to stay up till midnight on a work night?’ moaned one fan on X; ‘Taylor Swift never wants us to sleep again’, concluded another. It’s not just Midnights: fans have had to contend with a barrage of issues relating to different time zones when trying to purchase Eras tour tickets or watch Swift at the Superbowl, even braving ferocious jet lag for a glimpse of their idol on stage. It’s somewhat ironic, then, that the ‘Taylor Swift method’ for sleep-training babies gets rave reviews: the fans may not be sleeping, but their innocent babes are lulled into peace under starlight by her sweet nothings. Only the young, eh?
Swift herself revealed her unusual habit of semi-conscious ‘sleep eating’ in an interview on the Ellen DeGeneres show in 2019. She has often referred to her songwriting as autobiographical, and so it makes sense that her own disjointed sleep is reflected by a recurring lyrical trope: disrupted or non-normative slumber. This chapter will argue that this motif has a wider significance beyond the autobiographical. We can read Swift’s insomniac lyricism as a form of subtle rebellion: a deliberate, conscious rejection of certain ‘life rhythms’ in a way that has important implications for how we understand Swift as a modern feminist.”
Swifterature 