Rooted in Queer Theory

The bulk of this research is heavily influenced by queer theory, especially as applied when interpreting music. Queer theory gives us the tools necessary to look at the meaning within a text and alter it to fit one’s identity and narrative. In Doris Leibetseder’s Queer Tracks: Subversive Strategies in Rock and Pop Music, she mentions that irony “occurs in a space between what is said and the unsaid” (21). This is always the start of how one really begins to queer a text. Relating this to the idea of how queer folk are often not included in the mainstream of things, to queer really starts almost anywhere and out of anything. It’s a special kind of skill that does have lots of room for irony—which can be very helpful in reaching across lines to curate a meaning that works for the person queering the text.

 

In Jodie Taylor’s “Music and Identity – Selves, Sexualities and Scenes,” she makes an important point of how “there is no style or genre that does not contain elements of queerness” (49). By laying that piece of knowledge on the table, it opens up the endless possibilities of how one can take a text that seems to be for a heteronormative audience and instead, push it forward to be read as queer. In the context of music, this is along the lines of what music really is and can be. Music is known to be something that is very open to the listener in terms of interpretation. In fact, it further aids with the development of a sense of self: What does one like? How do they relate to something? Music has the ability of either bringing together collectives in which individuals relate to one another when listening to something or allowing individuals to figure out their own identities based on how they specifically resonate with a song.

 

In her text, “Queer Relationships with Music and an Experiential Hermeneutics for Musical Meaning,” Sarah Hankins suggests an important idea that the queer relationship with music reveals musical meaning to be an ever-shifting dynamic between “multiple social objects on a field of social power” (84). This just essentially means that experiences of queer individuals and the world around them is what really drives the meanings they make with the music they listen to. This also ties in with the intersectionality of identity—queer individuals have different experiences depending on other aspects of their identity such as race, class, gender, etc. While queer audiences usually come together to understand a piece of music in a similar way, that doesn’t necessarily mean they all experience it exactly the same.

 

Throughout the midst of this broad overview of the importance of queer theory, Taylor Swift and her music can be situated within all of this as a perfect case study. When you propose the idea that Swift’s music is queer, those who aren’t queer themselves might not fully understand how that checks out. To them, and most of the world, Taylor Swift is a woman who loves men. That’s true and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, when queering something, it’s not about the artist or the other people who don’t understand it the same—it’s about the needs and perspectives of the person who is queer and doing the work.