Larissa Nolan: The Taylor Swift phenomenon is real and rare, and there hasn’t been such hysteria since Beatlemania

She’s here. Grammy award-winning, record-selling, tour-date-busting, music industry-dominating, ex-boyfriend-killing single-woman artist Taylor Swift is in Ireland.

The biggest pop star in the world will play in front of 150,000 fans at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium over the next three nights.

It’s the “Taylor effect,” every city she’s played on her Eras tour has experienced an economic boom. Yet while some are losing their minds, others are scratching their heads and wondering what it’s all about.

The Swift phenomenon is real and rare, and there hasn’t been such hysteria since Beatlemania. But what has propelled this 34-year-old American singer to such heights?

Why is she so obsessively adored by her fans, from children to adults with teenagers of their own? There are a number of factors behind this, not least the risk of social contagion.

Taylor has carefully built up an army of fans who do most of the work for her during this phase. The power of the “Swifties” is amplified by the reaction of the media and triggers a chain reaction.

Scientists say the phenomenon is a product of globalization in an age of 24-hour connectivity.

For me it’s all about passion and fashion. Your attraction and influence is based on love and looks.

Her lyrics speak to those who are going through the highs and lows of love, while those who are alone or lonely can relate to how she feels with a buffer. The rollercoaster of love is so addictive, its pain and joy are intoxicating, even secondhand.

Taylor’s psychodramas are a real soap opera. It helps that she looks consistently great, no matter how many times she’s loved and lost and loved again. She has different images for each album.

Musically, she sees the album as a complete work and is convinced that “albums are art.” She bucked the trend and it paid off.

I think Taylor’s music is brilliant and I love songs like Shake It Off and Trouble, but that’s a bit beside the point. It’s not about the music itself. Nothing more. It’s much bigger than that. Taylor is an idolized icon.

My assessment of her unique status as a superstar is based on observing her career over more than a decade.

In 2015, I called her the best songwriter of her generation.

I wrote: ‘She is tall, slim, elegant, young and beautiful, super talented, independent and doesn’t need to flick through magazines desperately seeking male attention.

“Don’t let the ’50s look fool you. This girl is a man eater.” Or as she puts it herself in her (best) song Blank Space: “Darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”

At that time, she was on the cover of every magazine from Vogue to Time and 2014 was declared Taylor Year.

Legendary journalist Barbara Walters described them as “bent on world domination.” I asked composer Denis Clohessy what their secret was.

He said personality, confessional style and the ability to write good melodies and lyrics were some of their qualities, but their X-factor was difficult to determine, adding: “If we knew that, we could bottle it.”

I think Taylor has bottled the power to knock you out.

She’s a mix of a hurt damsel in distress and a modern, vengeful power woman. Men don’t really matter if they can always be replaced and the new guy is just as wonderful as the last one.

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There is a precedent for this. It recalls the Victorian passion of Emily Brontë’s Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Or the heady, girlish love of the narrator in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Or the tortured poetry of Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson – apparently Swift’s distant cousin.

In more recent times, his success has been comparable to that of Sally Rooney.

In music, her confessional style was invented by the likes of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, the songwriter she is named after.
who wrote the heartbreaking book “Fire and Rain” about the suicide of his childhood friend.

Taylor is following a path that has been trodden by Fleetwood Mac, Alanis Morissette, Amy Winehouse and Adele. It is a hallmark of country music, from Dolly Parton to Ryan Adams. And Irish audiences are seduced by it.

This is just the most recent era. She’s been at it for almost 20 years now and this is something of a resurrection.

Her career was dampened in the 2010s by YouTuber Bart Baker’s parodies, in which she was portrayed as a bunny with a parade of celebrity friends such as Harry Styles.

But lately she’s turned into a parody of herself. What was once fresh, vulnerable and honest now seems boring and contrived.

Emotional outbursts about the new “love of her life” seem cheesy. Her friends are usually the newest, most famous men of the moment.

When he falls from his pedestal, he’s a villain and a heartbreaker. We don’t learn anything about Taylor’s role in the breakup. It was great fun when she used to poke fun at herself with lines like “I’ve dated too many times, but I can’t get them to stick around” or “I have a long list of ex-lovers who will tell you I’m crazy.”

But the predictable use of her songwriting pen as a vengeful weapon now seems like gossip as a blood sport. The energy she invests in men is a little sad.

For now, all fans are still loving the Taylor metaverse and her current boyfriend Travis Kelce. But don’t be surprised if the savvy Swift goes in a different direction.

In a song from her 2012 album “Red,” she asked herself a prescient question: “People love innocent women. Will you still love me when I’m nothing new?”

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