THINKER TAYLOR

Taylor Swift Urges Fans to Vote Against ‘Fear-Based Extremism’

The newly political superstar continues to campaign for the Democrats ahead of next week’s vote.

Taylor Swift’s long-delayed political awakening—or at least the public exposition of her political thinking—continues.

After a decade in which she was almost entirely silent on all political issues and was widely claimed by the country-music-loving right (and worse), Swift burst into political activism at the start of this month with a series of Instagram posts in which she urged people to vote against the incumbent Republican candidates in her home state of Tennessee.

Now Swift has spoken out politically again on the photo-sharing site, which, thus far during her tour, she had primarily used to share the occasional picture of a fallen tree or her playing Scrabble with her mom. In a new post, Swift lobbied for Tennessee Democrat Phil Bredesen, saying, “We want leadership, not fear-based extremism.”

Swift’s fresh statement was surprising as the star has been keeping a low profile in between her tour dates in Australia, foregoing invites to appear on the country’s leading TV and radio shows, according to a report in the Daily Mail, copying the non-strategy she brought to the release of her album Reputation.

She did almost no in-person promotion for the album, instead allowing it to generate its own buzz.

It sold over a million copies in the U.S. in its first week, leading Forbes to declare: “Only a handful of artists on the planet are big enough to even attempt a strategy like this and still make it to No. 1.”

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.