They told me that if I voted for Trump things were going to get weird. Well, the day has come when I’m publishing an article about… Taylor Swift, so I suppose “they” were right.

Why would we be discussing the “Ready For It?” singer here? It’s because of her politics. Or, more accurately, her almost complete lack of them on the public stage. Swift received some criticism during the 2016 campaign for getting on with the business of producing music and performing on tour without jumping on the Hillary Clinton (or Donald Trump) bandwagon like most of the pop star brigade. Since that time, it seems that the attacks have actually stepped up in intensity rather than dying down, with some in her social circle claiming that she must have committed the unimaginable sin of actually voting for Trump since she hasn’t publicly disavowed the President. (NY Daily News)

Taylor Swift has remained notoriously tight-lipped on her political leanings, but her friend and back-up dancer Todrick Hall says that anyone who takes her silence as evidence she voted for Donald Trump is making a “huge assumption.” Swift faced criticism throughout the election season for remaining mum, and not following in the footsteps of her fellow pop stars, who expressed their support for Hillary Clinton and disdain for Trump. Her sole foray into the world of politics was as an apolitical Instagram post on Election Day telling her followers to “go out and VOTE.” But according to Hall, who has been friends with the “Look What You Made Me Do” singer for years, nothing about Swift leads him to believe that she’s set on making America great again.

This is apparently how bad the situation has become. Some of her friends are now forced to go out and defend Swift against the possibility that she might be a Trump voter (absent any evidence at all) without actually saying whether she is or she isn’t.

Here’s something for the peanut gallery to chew on. Taylor Swift is currently one of the hottest properties in music. In 2016 her album 1989 was the seventeenth best seller in the nation and it was released in 2014. Her newest offering is already on its way to platinum status. She packs stadiums wherever she goes… north, south, the coasts and the heartland. Why do you suppose that is?

Much like the very pronounced problems we’re seeing with professional football these days, the music industry never benefits from partisan politics. It’s poison in the system of the industry. Whether you are liberal or conservative, as soon as you go off on a rant you’ve turned off potentially half of your audience. And it’s not as if these musicians are particularly qualified as political analysts to begin with. How are we benefiting from hearing their liberal or conservative diatribes?

If you happen to be a conservative, when was the last time you actually tuned in for the Grammy Awards or any of the other various award shows? I know that for me it’s been years. Because rather than focusing on a celebration of the music, most of them have morphed into hours long lecture series on how awful Republicans are. Spare me. I can get that from cable news on a 24/7 basis.

Perhaps… just maybe… one reason that Taylor Swift maintains her universal appeal is that she stays in her lane, puts her incredible set of pipes to good use and leaves the politics to the politicians. And rather than lambasting her for it, some of her colleagues in the music industry could use her as a positive role model. They might see their sales go back up.

Here’s Swift’s latest single, Ready For It? I’ll confess that this particular music style isn’t really up my alley, but even I was able to appreciate the vocal quality and tight presentation.