Taylor Swift is right to call herself an 'English teacher'. I would know, I am one

The singer, songwriter, and pop star Taylor Swift recently described herself, in a social media post announcing her engagement to athlete Travis Kelce, as her fans’ “English teacher”. If you don’t follow Swift’s work very closely or know any Swifties, this might seem like a surprising thing for Swift to say.

But I am a lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London and have taught and studied the work of Taylor Swift for years. And, as an English teacher myself, I think Swift is on to something. Swift doesn’t lead seminars but she does create songs that encourage her fans to do the work of the study of English: to examine a text to understand what it means and what it can tell us about ourselves, the world, and each other.

Wherever Swifties meet – whether on social media or in person – we discuss the minutiae of Swift’s songs: why does Swift use a certain metaphor? Who exactly is speaking the words of a particular song (Swift herself? A character she has made up?)? Why has she incorporated an allusion to another work such as a classic play or novel into a song?

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Swift has always been interested in getting her fans thinking about literature, since at least 2008, when she rewrote William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet to give it a happy ending. The resulting song, “Love Story”, is a reflection on what teenagers can do: they can, like the young lovers she sings about, avert tragedy by taking control of their lives. And they can, like the song’s teenaged author, have the confidence to form their own opinions about and even rewrite classic texts.

Like a good English teacher, Swift asks her fans to consider how texts from the past can apply to the present. As she has evolved as an artist, she has only asked us to think harder and longer about this question. For example, her 2024 song “I Hate it Here” seems strongly situated in a response to a particular political moment, one of rising polarisation and mistrust of other people.

The speaker of the song describes herself as “scared to go outside” and says she hates living in a place that makes her “feel worthless”. She uses her memory of reading the 1911 children’s classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, to explain her coping strategy: she escapes to “secret gardens in [her] mind” that no one has a key to.

When I teach seminars as a lecturer, I ask my students to spend time with a text’s contradictions, to realise the ways in which it can tell us several things at once. “I Hate It Here” tells us that its speaker is afraid and angry at the state of the world, that she wants to escape it. But hidden inside the song is a reminder that there are ways to improve the world if you are willing to work with other people. This is because Mary, the main character of The Secret Garden, only starts out full of resentment and bitterness.

After she moves from India to Yorkshire after the death of her parents, to stay with a relative who acts coldly towards her, she hates her new home and acts rudely towards those around her. But she learns to love the landscape that surrounds her, and eventually to open her heart to other people, by tending a secret garden. By the end of the novel, Mary’s secret garden is no longer secret; she lets other people into it. Swift’s speaker has not yet learned to love other people or the place she finds herself.

The references she makes to The Secret Garden show that she has not yet learned the lessons of that book. But they remind us that her attitude is not the only one possible. A secret garden can be not a place you go to escape people, but a place you go to make yourself better able to engage with them, a place that improves your character.

Swift’s songs are texts that she knows we Swifties will share. The Life of a Showgirl will likely be no different. The songs bring us together over shared lyrics that we need to work together to understand. And by encouraging us to work together to compare notes and interpretations, her songs remind us of the value of being open to other people’s experiences and opinions. They remind us that other people are out there, people we don’t need to hide away from, who are willing to work with us to understand and improve the world.

Clio Doyle is a lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London. She focuses on contemporary popular culture and particularly on Taylor Swift and popular perceptions of the study of English literature.

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