In the Age of Trump, There’s No Escaping Politics

“I DON’T TALK ABOUT POLITICS,” Taylor Swift said in 2012. “I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.” That changed in a big way in 2018, when Swift endorsed two Democratic candidates in Tennessee, while blasting Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn for discriminatory and anti-gay policies. Swift proved that in the Trump era, the sidelines are no longer a safe space — especially after events that hit close to home, like the bombing of Ariana Grande’s 2017 concert in Manchester, England, and Vegas’ Route 91 Harvest festival, site of the deadliest mass shooting in American history. “Artists are less afraid to piss off the other side,” says a major music publicist. “The lines have been drawn. The divide is really a human divide.” Even conservative Nashville started to turn a corner; hitmaker Eric Church became a rare country star to blast the NRA in the wake of the Vegas massacre (“You shouldn’t have that power over elected officials,” he told Rolling Stone), while other country acts like Dierks Bentley and Florida Georgia Line started speaking out for gun control. “We’ve seen it firsthand,” said FGL’s Tyler Hubbard, who is currently urging fellow artists to join him as he calls for universal background checks. “Our fans and artists are getting shot.” Jason Isbell, another Nashville hero, became targeted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which called him an “unhinged left[ist]” after he appeared at several Democratic campaign events. But Isbell wasn’t phased. “I’m hinged as hell,” he joked at a rally, later telling Rolling Stone, “We’re at a point where if I’m alive in 40 years, I’m gonna need to be able to sleep at night if I don’t do what I consider to be the right thing — which is speak my mind.”

PATRICK DOYLE