The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of the Los Angeles Times, and they would be passed from one reader to the next. Back then, I swore that Prince was the best songwriter of my lifetime, and I thought Swift’s rise to teen-age stardom was an injustice. I’d look up from her wide-eyed face in the Calendar section to see gang fights and race riots. The jail was full of young men of color who wrote and performed their own raps, often about chasing money and fame, while Swift was out there, actually getting rich and famous. How fearless could any little blond fluff like that really be?
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