Music and Cats / Book of Abstracts - Catalog - Page 31
Abstracts
Panel 1: Musicians and Their Cats
11:05 – 11:20
The Cat-Mother is
Mothering
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The “Childless Cat Lady” Aesthetic in Taylor
Swift’s Musical Persona
Samantha Marley / University of Western Australia
There is one thing we can all agree on when it
comes to Taylor Swift—she loves cats, so much so
that she became one in the 2019 filmic adaptation
of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. Many scholars
have studied Swift’s persona and how it
contributes to our understanding of her music,
listing her various stages from innocent country
girl to zany businesswoman; however, Swift’s
reputation as a self-proclaimed “childless cat
lady” has been omitted thus far. Not only do her
three cats (Olivia Benson, Meredith Grey, and
Benjamin Button) appear frequently on Swift’s
social
media
accounts,
Swift’s
marketing
campaigns, interviews, music videos, lyrics, and
documentary accounts of her life are riddled with
cat references. While vastly different in terms of
depth and meaning, these instances can be used to
trace Swift’s history with cats and forms a
significant part of not only Swift’s persona as a cat
lover, but also her musical branding. Through a
transmedial analysis of cat-related content
throughout Swift’s career, inspired largely by Kai
Arne
Hansen’s
exploration
of
“personal
storyworlds” in popular music, I position Swift’s
“cat lady” aesthetic as being a key part of her
constructed musical persona. I argue that
understanding the historical associations between
cats and females can facilitate a deeper
understanding of Swift’s music and her persona,
correlating her love of cats to well-established
stereotypes
pertaining
to
female
independence, empowerment and patriarchal
defiance that have become a strong part of
Swift’s contemporary image. Furthermore, I
suggest that Swift’s self-marketing as a “cat
lady” works to deepen the connection she has
with her fans, extrapolating her image as an
authentic singer-songwriter and solidifying
the admiration her fans have for her as a
motherly figure in the modern music industry.
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