An online tutoring platform put its English tutors’ pop culture knowledge to the test by asking them to determine whether a certain lyric was written by the Grammy-award-winning pop icon Taylor Swift or a classical poet/writer. Their responses have fueled the Swifties’ strong beliefs that Swift is a lyrical Mastermind, indistinguishable from the Greats of literature. And with her new album The Life of a Showgirl already receiving literary dissection, it looks as though Taylor Swift has truly shed her 2010s ‘pop princess’ persona for good.
Nearly 300 tutors at Superprof were asked to pair an extract with the correct author across ten questions. The lines came from classic tracks like You Belong With Me or Mirror Ball, compared against classic poems such as The Lover’s Song by Yeats and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by Eliot.
The average score was 79%, with only 7% of tutors receiving a perfect score.
Victoria Twisleton-Ward, an English tutor on Superprof, is a self-proclaimed Swiftie and speaks highly of the well-adored artist. She stated that ‘’Taylor Swift has an impeccable storytelling style that very much resembles some of those great poets her verses were compared to. I believe that this unique and touching style of writing is what’s leading all those tutors to confuse her poetry with others.”
She said that her love for Taylor meant that she was able to “identify her writing very easily”, suggesting that the tutors who received a perfect score were able to do so because they recognised Taylor’s catchy lyrics, rather than detecting a stylistic discrepancy between her and the poets.
One standout question tripped up more than a quarter of respondents, with 27% mistaking a Swift lyric for a Yeats verse due to its similar tone and literary style of prose.
However, takeaways from the survey were mixed, with some tutors evidently harbouring Bad Blood towards the blonde bombshell. One participant described Taylor Swift as a “hugely overrated singer and writer”, while another insisted she is a poet “whether or not she knows it.”
“The methods of interpretation and close reading that people use to interpret Taylor Swift’s lyrics are definitely transferable to other types of poetry and will hopefully lead people to explore poetry further,” said Neil Evans, a Superprof English tutor.
As living proof of this, over the summer Queen Mary University’s summer school started a short “Taylor Swift and Literature” course.
I suspect the question of whether Taylor Swift has earned her place among the classics will continue to haunt English literature professors and devout Swifties Evermore. With the release of The Tortured Poets Department back in 2024, she has been teasing an overtly poetic element in her work for some time now. And whilst I doubt Taylor Swift would ever actually see the survey results, I reckon she would appreciate the recognition.