Taylor Swift’s comeback at the 2019 Billboard Awards was everything her fans expected. Her performance of “ME” featuring Brendan Urie was packed full of sparkle, colour and fun.
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However… other fans weren’t so impressed with her performance. Mainly because they’ve accused her of copying Beyonce’s Coachella performance.
Taylor used a marching band for her performance, something that Beyonce did, which was also displayed in her Homecoming documentary on Netflix released last week.
Of course, Taylor’s fans defended her saying Beyonce didn’t invent marching bands. They even pointed out that artists like Madonna and Gwen Stefani used marching bands.
It’s true, Beyonce didn’t invent the concept of a marching band, but fans are calling out Taylor for how she used them. As cultural appropriation.
“Homecoming documents Beyoncé’s fraught personal journey to pull off her two-hour Coachella set, but it exists to put her personal journey into a larger cultural context, and serves as a celebration of a Black collegiate culture that utilises marching bands as a megaphone and connects those on campus to broader communities.
“Bey used her moment to uplift historically Black colleges and universities, which are underfunded and undervalued because education is still a powerful vehicle for racism. In doing so, she once again put her own Black identity front and center.
“She was honouring an art form that Black people have, per usual, transformed into something unique, and greater than what it had originally been.”
Most importantly: “For Beyoncé, for Black folks, Black marching bands are our legacy, and should be deployed with pride and context. Swift used her marching band to tell one of the dudes from Panic! at the Disco that he’ll never find another lover like her. And she did so in a performance that feels like it exists only because Beyoncé made drumlines cute again for 2019.”
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