Taytay

“At least I don’t just sit there bobbing my head like I’m at a Taylor Swift concert.” / Theo’s humor dissolves. “Dude, don’t knock Taytay.”

2016, JB Salsbury, Fighting Fate, →ISBN

So many people support Taytay over here, and we were all really upset when she didn’t bring her 1989 Tour here.

2016, Sarah Oliver, quoting Ella, Taylor Swift – Everything Has Changed, London: John Blake Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 215

Who cares if Taytay gets pay pay? Shake it off: The apathy of the contemporary music consumer […] Note / 1 Taytay is the nickname for the popstar Taylor Swift.

2018, Gary Sinclair, “Who cares if Taytay gets pay pay? Shake it off: The apathy of the contemporary music consumer”, in Steven Caldwell Brown, Thomas J. Holt, editors, Digital Piracy: A Global, Multidisciplinary Account (Routledge Studies in Crime and Society), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, pages 161 and 178

People don’t want you to make art. They feel threatened by happy artists and immediately move to vilify them for the crime of being arty and well-adjusted at the same time. They get demonised the way artists like … shit, I don’t know. Adam Sandler? Stephanie Meyer? Taylor Swift? Do we still demonise Taytay, or has she moved onto the vaguely-respectable older artist phase of her career?

2018, Peter M. Ball, You Don’t Want To Be Published: And Other Things Nobody Tells You When You First Start Writing, Upper Mount Gravatt, Qld.: Brain Jar Press, →ISBN

A biography of Taylor Swift is more likely to sell well than a biography of Keats. What characterizes the mental activity that people enjoy (Figure 1.5)? The answer that most people would give may seem obvious: “I think crossword puzzles are fun and Taytay is cool, but math is boring and so is Keats.”

2021, Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, 2nd edition, Jossey-Bass, →ISBN, page 9

Go ahead, get your Taylor Swift jokes out now. Because the second you listen to TayTay’s song about how much she loves her mom—complete with a music video of family-shot footage from her childhood—you will be a wet sack of sad bones.

2017, Kate Spencer, The Dead Moms Club: A Memoir about Death, Grief, and Surviving the Mother of All Losses, Boston, Mass.: Seal Press, →ISBN

With her mercilessly coiffured blonde hair, tailored black suit, watered silk blouse, and sky-high heels, she looks like Taylor Swift in boardroom drag—a version of TayTay that runs on type O negative and has a severe sunlight allergy.

2017, Charles Stross, The Delirium Brief (The Laundry Files), New York, N.Y.: Tor.com, →ISBN, page 14

I just spent an hour listening to Melie going on about how someone called TayTay thinks she’s so hot but she so isn’t and everyone knows that thing with thingy was such a stunt because he’s so far in the closet he’s hanging out with Aslan the lion and his woodland pals and it’s time she totes got over herself. […] ‘TayTay, what the hell kind of name is that? Some parents are just cruel.’ / ‘It’s a nickname.’ Maggie headed into the kitchen and put the wine glasses in the dishwasher. ‘Taylor Swift,’ she called through the door. ‘She’s a singer.’ […] ‘Go on then, what’s your favourite TayTay song?’

2019, Lisa Swift, When You Were Mine, London: Hera Books, →ISBN

My girl TayTay has gotten me through a lot of heartache. “All Too Well” speaks to every part of my soul, and I can feel the pain that she must have felt from the end of that relationship, even though I’ve never actually been in a relationship.

2020, Natalie Merrill, Anything Matches If You Wear It with Confidence, Bloomington, Ind.: WestBow Press, →ISBN

Although it’s always been taken for granted that the extended gap was caused by Kanye West constantly interrupting TayTay’s recording sessions by ringing her up with questions about Swedes (‘What do they rhyme with?’ ‘Do they make good pets?’ ‘How many to a box?’), the real reason is even darker.

2020, Dixe Wills, The Ultimate Bucket List: 50 Buckets You Must See Before You Die, Icon Books, →ISBN