Taylor Swift Ideas for the Music Therapist and Music Educator
Are your clients big Taylor Swift fans? Me too (truthfully, I’ve been listening since I was 12!). And lately, she has only grown more and more in popularity - with her re-recorded albums, record breaking tour, and movie coming out in theaters this weekend. At 100 million Spotify listeners a month, you’re bound to have requests for Taylor Swift’s music in your work. I’ve made or come across various music therapy resources that you can find below to share with the Swifties in your classroom or on your caseload.
Anti-Hero Songwriting
If you’ve been around Aspire, you know I love a good piggy-back songwriting. Having a clear template to follow can make songwriting more approachable for clients and help you address specific client goals. I made a template for “Anti-Hero” last year, providing a couple of opportunities for clients to discuss insecurities and fears as the original song focuses on. Once completing the songwriting, you could also continue the discussion by:
expanding on the client’s responses,
analyzing the lyrics/music video to the original song, or
looking at other Taylor songs that deal with insecurity, including: “The Archer,” “mirrorball,” “Castles Crumbling,” “Tied Together with a Smile,” and “Dear Reader.”
A download of the template is available below.
Song Decision Tree
One of my Swifty clients has been working on identifying personal emotions - so I made a flow chart listing a variety of feelings and situations that leads to a related song recommendation. Beware, one issue I came across was my client reporting feeling certain ways just because she wanted to listen to those associated songs (ie - saying she feels mad at someone so she can listen to “Bad Blood”). Taylor Swift has always been known as being relatable, and your clients might find that statement to be true with exploring all of these emotional categories.
A download of the decision tree is available below.
ME! Collage
What’s more fun than making a visual collage, inspired by “I’m the only one of me; I promise that you’ll never find another like me”? I’ve done this project with clients a couple of times - I bought old magazines from our local Half Priced Books to cut pictures out of, though you could also let clients pick out pictures online/from their personal collection and print to assemble. For telehealth, you could even do a digital version with a website like Canva! I loved seeing how my clients chose to express themselves, with an example shown here on this blog.
Lyric Strip Poetry
This music experience in itself isn’t specifically Taylor Swift themed, but has a great flexibility to be tailored to a client’s music preferences or expression needs. Choose several songs and cut each verse out (a paper slicer helps greatly), then let the client explore the lines to reassemble to their liking. My client and I taped / glued the strips down on a base to create a finished poem. What I love about this music intervention is that clients don’t have to have their own words to process their feelings and experiences. If you want to help you clients explore a certain topic, here are some song suggestions:
Depression: “this is me trying,” “hoax,” “Bigger Than The Whole Sky”
Starting Over: “Clean,” “Change,” “Everything Has Changed,” “I Forgot That You Existed”
Loneliness: “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” “tolerate it,” “I Almost Do,” “The Outside”
Grieving Sickness: “Soon You’ll Get Better,” “epiphany,” “Forever Winter”
Uncertainty: “Delicate,” “Out of the Woods,” “A Place in this World,” “Question…?”
A Mix for Clients to Choose From!: “22,” “Long Live,” “Welcome To New York,” “Bejeweled,” “Cruel Summer”
Eras Autobiography
If you want to expand on themes seen in Taylor’s music, we created a Musical Autobiography (Taylor’s Version), available for purchase in our store. It’s a playful twist on clients musically sharing about their lives, both past and present. We not only give you a colored version and a black & white version of the journal / art template, but also a 3 page guide that breaks down themes from each album and a variety of ways to use it.
You Need to Calm Down Songwriting
One of my first blog posts back in the day was a songwriting idea for “You Need to Calm Down.” I sat down to talk with Stephanie Leavell of Music for Kiddos to share how I turned this song into a discussion on coping strategies and share a template for my version - “I Need to Calm Down.” The blog has some free downloads and can be found here!
