In pop music, one of the most time-honoured devices for upping the emotional ante is known colloquially as the “Truck Driver’s Gear Change”. In it, the melody stays the same, but is modulated up a whole note, with the effect of raising the emotional pitch. It’s a common device, but my (and my daughter’s) favourite modern example comes from Taylor Swift.

Released in 2008, Swift’s “Love Story” recounts the frustrations of a young “Juliet” kept away from her “Romeo” but longing for him to carry her away. In the final stanza, the song’s “Romeo” unexpectedly kneels and — cue Truck Driver’s Gear Change — proposes marriage. It’s hugely satisfying, emotionally powerful — and, in a way Swift has always instinctively grasped, it’s a story drawn straight from the collective female unconscious.

The central trope in “Love Story” is that of most romance novels: true love whose course doesn’t run smooth, but which ends Happily Ever After. It is, perhaps, the most conservative of all plot lines. So why, amid rumours that Swift’s own much-publicised romance with American football star Travis Kelce may be on the brink of its own emotional gear change, do conservatives seem to be furious with the real-life “Love Story” heroine, Taylor Swift?

The hate is not exactly new. Last year, MAGA activist Laura Loomer posted a long and impressively swivel-eyed X screed about how the Soros family has induced Taylor Swift to help the Democrats manipulate the media, in exchange for re-acquiring the rights to her own music catalogue. But the incipient lunacy of the 2024 US election cycle, plus Biden calling on Swift for an endorsement, seem to have inflamed the hatred to fresh levels. Presidential also-ran Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, has popped up with a nudge-nudge about the Superbowl being rigged for Kelce’s team.

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