Free Republic

Taylor Swift has broken her long-held public political silence in an Instagram post encouraging her followers to vote in the November midterm elections and slamming Republican Tennessee representative Marsha Blackburn. “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” Swift began the post, which was accompanied by a moody, black-and-white photo of the superstar. “I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the...

WEYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Taylor Swift is helping ease the pain of a Massachusetts city mourning the recent loss of a police officer. Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund tells The Patriot Ledger that Swift donated “a significant number of tickets” to the town for her shows this weekend in Foxborough, which were distributed among city police officers.....Hedlund says there were enough to send “every police officer, firefighter and extended family to the concert, and then some.” The extras were passed on to other nearby police departments.

Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, James Corden and Ian McKellen have been cast in Working Title’s upcoming movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash musical “Cats.” Tom Hooper, the Oscar-winning director of “The King’s Speech,” will direct “Cats,” which is set to begin shooting in Britain in November. The screenplay by Lee Hall (“Billy Elliot”) is based on Lloyd Webber’s musical, which was itself adapted from a book of children’s poems by T.S. Eliot. Hudson, who won an Oscar in 2007 for her breakout role in “Dreamgirls,” will play Grizabella, the former “glamour cat” who falls on hard times and gets...

When APD officers arrived on the scene, the say the suspect exited the building, carrying bottles of wine. Caldwell ran north in the alley before he was detained. According to an affidavit, numerous matchbooks from The Austin Club were found in his pockets. Caldwell told investigators he didn't know what was going on and denied being in the building when the fire started. Caldwell then told police "My name is Taylor Swift, I told him to burn it down and he did what I told him."

With the curtain rising on her “Reputation” tour, Taylor Swift blinked. She buckled by having Ticketmaster turn off resale ticket listings on its interactive venue charts for the first leg of her North American tour, according to music-industry veterans. The tour, which begins on Tuesday in Glendale, Ariz., shows plenty of primary tickets still available for the first nine shows. But the delisting of secondary, or resale, tickets — a move experts called unusual if not unprecedented — makes the inventory of available seats seem much smaller. On July 20, for example, Swift is scheduled to appear at MetLife Stadium...

The man suspected of gunning down four people at a Waffle House restaurant in Tennessee during an early-morning, half-naked rampage has a history of run-ins with police -- including once telling cops that music star Taylor Swift was stalking him. Authorities in Tazewell County, Ill. revealed Sunday that police encountered Travis Reinking, 29, in a CVS parking lot on May 27, 2016 during an apparent "mental health crisis," according to a police report obtained by Fox News. At the time, deputies said Reinking believed Swift was stalking him, hacked his phone and had climbed a building to chase him. He...

Pop megastar Taylor Swift, in a rare political statement, came out in strong support on Friday for the Parkland student-led campaign for gun control in a lengthy social media post. “No one should have to go to school in fear of gun violence. Or to a nightclub. Or to a concert. Or to a movie theater. Or to their place of worship,” Swift wrote an Instagram post. “I’ve made a donation to show my support for the students, for the March For Our Lives campaign, for everyone affected by these tragedies, and to support gun reform.”

Taylor Swift surprised the police department where Sgt. Delbert Pickney used to work by sending a heart-shaped wreath of roses in memory of the late police officer on Thursday.

In the chats, Jones was candid about his feelings about Taylor Swift (“We need more songs, man. F—ing songs, not hooks.”), Paul McCartney (“the worst bass player I ever heard”) and Michael Jackson (whom he called “greedy”), among others. Jones also said Jackson was a song stealer. Jones produced the legendary “Thriller” album in addition to producing Jackson’s “Bad,” and “Off the Wall.”

The phrase "haters gonna hate" is too "banal" to be copyrighted, a US judge has declared. Judge Michael W Fitzgerald made the comments while dismissing a copyright case against Taylor Swift. Songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler sued the star last year, arguing her single Shake It Off stole from their composition, Playas Gon' Play. They said the chorus of her song relied on their lyric, "playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate". Although short phrases are generally immune from copyright claims, the writers argued that combining the two thoughts was original enough to warrant protection. Fitzgerald disagreed...

What is Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” worth? Not the jacked-up prices she’s charging for concert tickets. That’s the verdict from ticked-off fans, who are balking at buying seats for the 28-year-old pop star’s tour to promote her new “Reputation” album, citing stratospheric markups and greedy sales gimmicks. “I paid $150 for my ticket with amazing seats for the 1989 tour. Now for the same seats I have to pay about $500,” Twitter user “swiftieloves” recently griped. A look at Ticketmaster’s interactive seat charts confirms that Swift’s schedule of 33 dates for the North American “Reputation” tour has yet to produce a...

I couldn’t tell you a single Taylor Swift song. I know everyone says that, but really, I couldn’t. And for a while I didn’t know which one was Taylor Swift and which one was Katy Perry. But I know now, and for the worst possible reason: politics. Perry, you will recall, ferociously backed Hillary at the last election, at the urging of her foolish management team. She isn’t now talked about for much else. As a host, she was a car crash at the VMAs, which I watched her stumble through from my ringside seat at The Forum Las Vegas....

Less than 48 hours after launching, Taylor Swift's new app has become plagued with Trump-loving trolls and homophobic comments.

December birth baby Taylor Swift is finishing 2017 in grand fashion. She just turned 28 and has the best-selling album of the year, a feat that was accomplished just one week after its release. Young, rich, talented, and the world is hers...what's not to be happy about? According to liberal America, everything.

Pop star Taylor Swift apparently struck a nerve with leftists and Internet trolls this week after she said she “couldn’t have asked for a better year” in 2017 and thanked her fans in a birthday Instagram post. “I love you guys so much,” Swift captioned a photo taken at a recent London concert. “I couldn’t have asked for a better year, all thanks to you. Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Can’t wait to see what 28 will be like. See you on tour.” That simple message was apparently too much for some Twitter users — and at least a...

Taylor Swift may be young, gorgeous and more successful than 99.8 percent of us, but she’s still a failure in the eyes of some. Why? Swift isn’t using her pop culture platform to tell us how to vote. Nor is she joining the celebrity chorus weaponizing the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally to attack President Trump. In short, she resists. And it’s driving select members of the media to distraction. It all started in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Nearly every other celebrity publicly cast their vote for Hillary Clinton

The man accused of trying to stab someone with scissors in Downtown Portland on Sunday told officers that Taylor Swift “told me to kill him,” a court document states. Officers were called out just before 11 a.m. on reports of a stabbing at NW 3rd Avenue and Burnside Street. Witnesses told police that Brent Shannon Thicksten, 43, was acting menacingly toward people in the area. The victim said he feared for his safety and started running away, which is when Thicksten allegedly chased him. The victim ended up with a cut to his lower back; police say he did not...

Taylor Swift’s reputation is a complicated mess. Love her or hate her, she knows this and we know this — it's what her newest album (uh, Reputation), is all about. One would need a corkboard and miles of red string to sort out the full medley of exasperation that has accompanied conversations about Taylor Swift over the past few years. In one quadrant of tacked-up evidence are Swift’s celebrity feuds, generally juicy but also exhaustively long-running. In another, you’d find everything about Swift’s personal life that alternately grates and thrills (depending on your preferences). Move over a little from there...

The ACLU and Taylor Swift are squaring off after the singer tried to get an article detailing how white supremacy movements have embraced her lyrics and music videos, and how her silence has exacerbated the matter, pulled from a website. On Monday, the ACLU sent a letter to Swift's legal team arguing that an article posted by PopFront that links the star to the white supremacy movement should not be taken down -- as Swift has requested -- because the writer has the right to free speech.

David Brooks took a brief break on Friday from politics and Bruce Springsteen idol worship today in his New York Times column to take on the role of rap reviewer. His subject was Chance the Rapper (authentic birth name Chancellor Johnathan Bennett) as he expounded at length on the subject of sincerity vs authenticity. In the process he slammed both Taylor Swift and, of course, the one who continues to inhabit his mind 24/7...President Donald Trump. Brooks starts off his rap review gig with a microanalysis of the recent debut of Chance the Rapper's unnamed song and quickly proceeds to talking...