Tag: hollywood singer

  • University of Melbourne to host academic conference on Taylor Swift

    University of Melbourne to host academic conference on Taylor Swift

    Taylor wasn’t joking around when she said ‘Well they didn’t teach you that in prep school so it’s up to me!’

    The University of Melbourne in Australia has announced that an academic conference titled ‘Swiftposium’ will be held in 2024 to discuss the global and cultural impact of the phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. The conference will be held from February 11 -13, coincidently around the same time the ‘Anti Hero’ singer’s Eras tour concert will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

    The organisers, scholars from seven Australian and New Zealand universities, have said the academic conference will be for scholars to “engage in critical dialogue about Swift’s popularity and its profound implications for a range of issues including gender, fandom, popular culture, literature, the economy, the music industry, and more.”

    Organisers also said they will invite Taylor to make a special appearance.

    The conference’s co-founder Jennifer Beckett, a senior lecturer in media and communications at the University of Melbourne, spoke to The Guardian about the purpose behind the conference.

    “I think it’s very important to look at how celebrities or artists impact on our lives and the different facets of our life. Taylor Swift has such an outsized impact on elements of everyday life. For example, she’s been credited with drawing attention back to public transport in a post-pandemic era. A lot of the cities she’s going to – the public transport planners have been speaking out about adding extra services.”

    It’s nothing new that Taylor has become a topic of academic discourses. A string of universities across the US has recently announced a variety of courses inspired by the ‘Reputation’ singer. Arizona State University announced in August that a course titled “Psychology of Taylor Swift — Advanced Topics of Social Psychology” will be offered to students, connecting various themes from Taylor’s music like revenge, trauma, anxiety- and link it to psychology.

    READ MORE: Six universities are now offering courses on Taylor Swift

    In August 2022, University of Texas at Austin introduced ‘Literary Contests and Contexts — The Taylor Swift Songbook’, where the 12 time Grammy award winning’s music will be studied alongside masters of literature like Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath.

  • What is the Taylor Swift crossword puzzle on Google all about?

    What is the Taylor Swift crossword puzzle on Google all about?

    Love’s a game- and so is being a Swiftie.

    If you Google the name Taylor Swift, you’ll spot a blue vault on the right side of your screen, and when you click on it, a screen pops up with a series of letters asking you to decode the right answer, which will eventually lead you to the next puzzle.

    Millions of Swifties across the globe have been screaming, crying, perfect storms in attempting to decode the crossword puzzles- so we’ll explain what is happening and really what is the purpose behind these crossword puzzles.

    Taylor Swift has partnered with Google ahead of the release of her re-recorded album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) to design crossword puzzles which will eventually lead to the names of the new tracks included in the vault- previously written songs that weren’t included in the original album. Before the release of her previous rerecorded versions, Taylor teased fans by asking them to decode the names of the song tracks hidden in the puzzles. But it looks like this time she wasn’t kidding when she said “Darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream!”

    According to Google’s blog, there are 89 puzzles each user can solve, totaling up to 33 million puzzles worldwide- and solving them will uncover new song tracks to be included in the upcoming album. Swifties rose to the challenge on whether it’s gonna be forever or will it go down in flames, because Google tweeted on their X account that the app was jammed due to the overload of responses.

    Taylor had broken the internet when in August she announced 1989 (Taylor’s Version) on the last day of the US leg of the Era’s Tour, and sang the track ‘New Romantics’ for the audience after unveiling the album artwork and release date on the screen.

    “The last time that I was so pleasantly surprised by some stuff that you guys did was when I announced that I was going to be re-recording. That was something that I expected to be just a me thing, just a personal thing. Since I was a teenager, I wanted to own my music. The way to do it was to re-record my albums, and the way that you have embraced … that you have celebrated, that you really decided that it was your fight too, and that you were 100 percent behind me … I will never stop thanking you for that.”

    She continued, “And so now, here we are on the last night of the U.S. leg of the Eras tour in the eighth month of the year on the ninth day. You might have noticed there are some new outfits in the show. There’s something that I’ve been planning for a really, really, really ridiculously, embarrassingly long time, and instead of telling you about it, I think I’ll just sort of show you.”