Taylor Swift, age 34-1/2, recently sang of feeling “so high school”—which is either a romantic admission or ironic self-own, depending on how you look at it. The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology track finds Swift recounting the suburban mundanity of her relationship. (“Touch me while your boys play Grand Theft Auto,” she sings, in the Lilith Fair-esque track’s best line.) But what it actually means for someone like Swift to feel “high school” has been under litigation of late, as Teen Taylor suddenly becomes an object of the internet’s ire and obsession. While her journey from artsy high schooler to one of the world’s biggest artists is well-documented, poking holes in her own myth-making has become an internet pastime—a nostalgia that Swift is, of course, capitalizing on.
The last week alone has been full of reasons to talk about the girl Swift once was. On r/travisandtaylor, one of the most prominent Swift-critical communities online, a poster resurfaced a video from 2006 of the singer as a sophomore in high school. Its origin is unclear, but it appears to be from a local news segment. In the clip, the 16-year-old takes a camera crew through Hendersonville High School, which she started attending when her family uprooted to Nashville to help launch her music career.
There she is, sitting barefoot (...?) in the school hallway, writing songs and singing to herself; driving her new Hummer to school; telling her friends that it’s been awhile since they’ve “driven around with the top down and harassed people.” Swift’s bestie Abigail Anderson of “Fifteen” fame even gets her own shoutout. If she weren’t Taylor Swift, she’d come across as any other rich, popular blonde, who writes and performs music. (Or, rather, a rich, popular blonde who writes and performs music with a clearly affected Southern accent.) But because she is Taylor Swift, Reddit has made a meal out of this clip and the version of 16-year-old Swift it portrays vs. the version she’s sold to fans over the years.
One oft-mentioned part of the Swift origin story, for example, is that she was bullied and lonely growing up. In an interview from 2008, when she was 18, she told the Tampa Bay Times that “people in our school decided [Abigail and I] were too strange to hang out with. So I’ve only had one friend my entire high school.” Of course, it’s impossible to judge whether someone truly felt lonely at a given point, especially on the basis of a short news clip edited for TV to make everyone look good. But Swift doesn’t seem to be wanting for friends in the 2006 clip, which, as Redditors have pointed out, runs counter to her long-held narrative. Cameras following her around at all underlines the amount of wealth that Swift grew up with—again, not on her! But it does seem to stand in sharp contrast to her claims of “just livin' room dancin' and kitchen table bills,” or daring listeners to try lasting “an hour in the asylum where they raised [her].” What bills, Redditors ask, could Swift and her family have been letting pile up? Is a multi-million-dollar mansion really on par with an asylum?
Taylor Swift at MTV's TRL in 2008
Michael Loccisano/FilmMagic via Getty ImagesThat this discussion picked up wildly—the thread received more than 1,400 likes and nearly 500 comments—right on the heels of a reported feature from The Sunday Times on Swift’s childhood seems like fated timing. For the lengthy piece, a reporter visited several places where the artist grew up, including the wealthy Pennsylvania suburbs where she spent the first decade or so of her life. Elementary school teachers sing her praises, calling her a curly-haired kid who hugged everyone and sang solos in all the class plays. Her family had a summer home in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, which they later sold for several millions; their next-door neighbor recalls hosting the Swifts often, with Taylor always writing songs in the corner. It’s a mostly endearing read with lots of colorful details about one of our most watched celebrities, even if it further highlights her family’s massive wealth and all the privilege that came along with it. (In first grade, Taylor reportedly said she wanted to be a stockbroker when she grew up, just like her dad; she brought her pet pony to show-and-tell.)
But there are no bombshell revelations in this piece, as one may hope for something so heavily reported. Swift was talented and determined; her parents had the resources to help her achieve her dream. And yet subreddits on both sides of the aisle—pro-Swift and against her—have found much to discuss, as they pick apart the girl she once was and put her up alongside the woman she is today. Fans and critics read the article to search for signs from her childhood that could explain her incredible rise, or validate their opinion of her as deservedly untouchable or frustratingly infallible. The truth is that they’re reading stale tea leaves that have been repackaged as brand-new, and Swift-obsessives are lapping it up nonetheless.
It’s unfair to compare someone to who they were nearly 20 years ago, or to judge them for the brassiness (or brattiness) they exhibited in their youth. But Swift has built a career out of intimacy, a desire to know who she is and how she feels, as for her songs to better resonate. And that career began when she was just a teenager; she released her debut album in fall 2006, not long after she filmed that now-circulating high school visit. She never graduated from Hendersonville High, as she took to the road to support what had suddenly become a massive career not long into her junior year. It makes sense that we are keen on poring over details of what she was really like during her teen years or moments of normalcy, as they’re what contributed to the makings of a superstar, of whom opinions are sharply divided.
And that superstar’s first album drew directly from those early years, too; the feature notes that she performed “Teardrops on My Guitar” in front of the ex-boyfriend that the song is about during a high school talent show. She’s been capitalizing upon the drama and heartbreak and angst she felt when she was 17 since she was 17, and she’s great at keeping even her way past exciting. It’s why fans are freaking out that she performed “Crazier” from the Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack, of all things, as one of the surprise songs during a recent Eras Tour show—it’s the ultimate hit of nostalgia. Many also continue to resent that Debut is the only album not to be represented consistently in the setlist, making even the smallest signs of her acknowledging her youth delightful and invigorating. Concertgoers’ LED wristbands were also lighting up green during the performance, the assigned Debut color—so perhaps she is gearing up to lean even more heavily into the old days.
It would be the perfect time for her to do that, based on the bubbling fervor for Teen Taylor. Admittedly, that we’re so excited for a 34-year-old pop star to revisit music she wrote as a teenager feels, frankly, so high school. But after 17 years, Swift wouldn’t have it any other way.
