Pop star Taylor Swift officially landed on Forbes’ billionaires list on Tuesday, April 2.
Gone are the days when she and her mother traveled by car from radio station to radio station across the country, personally begging the programmers and DJs to play her songs on their station.
Her syncopated little songs were clever and told the story of her latest boyfriend and how he broke her heart.
Those days are also gone.
Billionaire pop star Taylor is now telling the story of how God has let people down and warning her hundreds of millions of followers worldwide about the snares of Christianity.
Parents and Grandparents: Please be informed regarding the lyrics in her songs on her new album.
Be informed, not misled.
Forbes says, "More than $500 million of Swift’s fortune is from music royalties and touring. She made an estimated $190 million after taxes from the first leg of the Eras tour and another $35 million from the first two weeks of screenings of the corresponding concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which became the highest-grossing concert movie in history."
They continue, "Meanwhile, another $500 million of her earnings came from the increasing value of her music catalog. Her masters (Swift’s first six albums) were infamously purchased in 2019 by Scooter Braun and eventually sold to Shamrock Capital for $300 million in 2020.
My point is that a lot of people buy and listen to her music- her lyrics.
On April 19, the pop star released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, which is also adding to her massive earnings. Swift announced the new record during her Album of the Year acceptance speech at the 2024 Grammy Awards in February.
RE: "The Tortured Poets Department" and her attack on God and Christianity.
The Tortured Poets Department, which mocks God and suggests that Christians are hateful, is not the music and lyrics that made her a billionaire. But kids are listening to every word that comes out of her mouth nowadays.
If you are not aware of the lyrics, you should be because your child or grandchild is listening to her. Some of the songs in question are "Guilty As Sin," "But Daddy I Love Him," and "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)," several of which include expletives.
In the song "But Daddy I Love Him," Swift sings:
"But daddy I love him / I just learned these people only raise you / To cage you / Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best / Clutchin' their pearls, sighing, 'What a mess' / I just learned these people try and save you 'Cause they hate you."
In the same song, Swift sings:
"God save the most judgmental creeps/ Who say they want what's best for me/ Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I'll never see/ Thinkin' it can change the beat/ Of my heart when he touches me/ And counteract the chemistry/ And undo the destiny/ You ain't gotta pray for me/ Me and my wild boy and all of this wild joy/ If all you want is gray for me/ Then it's just white noise, and it's just my choice."
In the song "Guilty As Sin," Swift sings: "What if I roll the stone away?/ They're gonna crucify me anyway/ What if the way you hold me is actually what's holy."
Eleven of the 31 songs contain an "E" under the album's description listing, which stands for "explicit." And several songs have the F-word included within the lyrics.
Shane Pruitt, the National Next Gen director for the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board and co-author of Calling Out the Called, wrote in a Facebook post that there is a difference between being secular and being "Anti-Christian." He urged Christian parents to seriously consider allowing their children to listen to Swift's music.
How parents should respond.
Pruitt added that he used to listen to Swift but said he thinks "now it's time to reconsider."
"As Christians, who are filled with the Spirit, should we be entertained by, sing with, and expose our kids to lyrics that aren't just different than what you believe, but are actually mocking what you believe?" Pruitt asked.
The Christian entertainment review company MovieGuide believes the album "mocks Christianity."
"While it's no secret that Taylor Swift is not a Christian, she made her hatred for religion known through her newly released album 'The Tortured Poets Department,'" MovieGuide stressed in its review.
"The album is full of minor quips that elevate Swift above God while also featuring two songs devoted to tearing down the Christian sexual ethic."
MovieGuide contends the lyrics to the song "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)" contain rhetoric alluding to the idea that God doesn't want to "lift a finger."
The lyrics read: "They shake their heads sayin', 'God help her,'/ When I tell 'em he's my man/ but your good Lord doesn't lift a finger/ I can fix him, no, really, I can. And only I can."
MovieGuide says, "The fact that one of the most popular and famous celebrities of her generation cannot find happiness reveals that living in the world leads to death while living for Christ and under his teachings leads to life," the review stated.
Back in February, former Boyzone star Shane Lynch accused popstar Taylor Swift of engaging in demonic practices and satanic rituals during her sold-out shows and warned of the damaging effects such music has on children.
He said, “You’ll see a lot of hoods up and masks on and fire ceremonies. Even down to Taylor Swift — one of the biggest artists in the world — you watch one of her shows and she has two or three different demonic rituals to do with the pentagrams on the ground, to do with all sorts of stuff on her stage. … But to a lot of people it’s just art and that’s how people are seeing it, unfortunately."
Swift is skipping down the wrong path.
The solution.
McFarland finds it interesting that Swift does not mock Islam, Buddhism, atheism, or anything else – only the God of Christianity. That, he says, "should be plenty reason enough for Christian parents to say, 'Nope, that's not what our kids are going to listen to.'"
"Though she may not realize it, her success and her voice have been given to her by God," the apologist adds. "I want to encourage Christians everywhere to pray for Taylor Swift to really have an encounter with Jesus Christ, because she could be such an incredible force for good."
McFarland points out that Swift, just like everyone else, needs the Lord.
Takeaway
Swift now explains that she was actually singing about an illusion- a dream or a fantasy.
McFarland says, "Taylor desperately needs the God she mocks."
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.