Taylor Swift has endeared herself with teenagers, especially girls, by singing about teen love and her own heartbreak. Her songs even touched the hearts of the adults in the Recording Academy who awarded her four Grammys, one of which she dropped after the televised ceremony on Sunday.

Taylor, who just turned 20 in December, is the youngest to win the coveted Album of the Year. Previously, Canadian singer Alanis Morissette was the youngest winner of the award when she was 21.
Like Taylor, Alanis sang about love and heartache, but she had more adulterated content compared to Swift’s innocent, G-rated lyrics. For instance, Morissette’s 1995 hit, “You Ought to Know”, asked her ex if his new girl, “goes down on you in a theater” and “will she have your baby”. Alanis’ songs hit home with people of all ages all over the world for her debut album, Jagged Little Pill, to become one of the top selling international albums in the world. It has sold 33 million copies to date.
Taylor was a teenager when she made her innocent debut album, Fearless, that won her so much acclaim and so many awards during the last six months.
But The New York Times published an insightful article that discussed how Taylor is going to have to evolve into writing for a more mature audience since she is no longer a teenager.
Rihanna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are great examples for Taylor, as far as music goes. When Rihanna became an adult, she cut her long locks, dyed her hair black and released the album, Good Girl Gone Bad. An adult Britney sang about being a love slave in “I’m a Slave 4 U”, and Christina sang about getting “Dirty”. Britney and Christina took it a step further and French-kissed Madonna on MTV’s Video Music Awards telecast.
I don’t see Taylor Swift acting out to further her career, but it’ll be interesting to see if she makes the transition to more adult content on her next album.

By Teneshia LaFaye
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