Taylor Swift: ‘Red’ is number one on iTunes

Taylor Swift switches her yellow dress to something red for her appearance on Good Morning America on Monday morning (October 22) in New York City.

The 22-year-old musician sat down with the show’s anchors to chat all about her new record, Red — which is currently #1 on the iTunes charts.

“I don’t really talk about my love life,” T dished on the program. “I kind of sing about it a lot—because I really think that it sounds more, more poetic and romantic with music behind

it.”She added, “My fans know that I’m gonna give them the real version of what happened to

me in my music and they know what they read on gossip sites may or may not be true. And they can kind of tell if it’s true or not because they know me.”

The key things to consider when analysing this image and article about Taylor Swift is what message is she trying to portray to her audience.

When considering ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs’ theory and what people need in order to move up the ladder in becoming a complete person, what is this article telling people what they need in order to get to the ‘self-actualization’ stage? In the beginning of the second paragraph it begins with ‘the 22 year old musician’ and carries on to say she is at number one in the charts. This alone is suggesting to the reader that at a young age in order to start to reach ‘self-actualization’ you need to be at number one if you are a musician. Although I don’t think this is achievable in most cases for people I do think it is a good message especially for her young

audience to be hearing (have high goals and achieve them). The article then goes on to reinforce ideas of Taylor Swift being a desirable person to be like. The sense of her being a friend to the reader is shown when she is referred to as ‘T’ and she talks about her fans as knowing what happened to her in her love life (which is very intimate thing to know). She also says ‘they know me’ this is

directing the audience on a personal level.

We can see that from the images of Taylor Swift, she is possibly modern societies ideology of what a person looks like that has reached ‘self- actualization’ in todays society, she is: slim, blonde and white. This stereotype of a successful women can be found in

other areas of celebrity culture. It can mean people feel they need to look a certain way in order to be successful or reach their goals. These messages of

people looking all very similar that have been ‘successful’ can sometimes mean that people don’t always reach ‘self-actualization’ because they cant achieve the level ‘esteem needs’