by Jennifer Carr

A Personal Confession: I Never Caught the Swiftie Bug

I’ve never been a fan of Taylor Swift. Ever. From her very first single, I didn’t like listening to her voice. I’m not saying that to be cruel—it simply struck me as immature and pitchy. And her persona always came across as though she was always trying to be something she wasn’t. If her songs came on the radio, I changed the station. I never caught the “Swiftie” bug.

For years, I could avoid her music easily enough. Occasionally, as technology moved forward some of her lyrics would pop up in trending audio clips on social media, and that became the extent of my exposure. Then my daughter started making friends who were self-proclaimed Swifties so the artist became a topic of conversation in our house. THEN Taylor started dating a professional football player, and suddenly she was everywhere. Every game, every headline, every social feed. Avoiding her became impossible.

So I decided to do what many parents apparently don’t do—I started reading her lyrics. And what I found was sobering. Don’t even get me started on her newest album. It is essentially a tribute to sex, revenge, and childish conflict. It’s a masterclass in self-absorption set to lackluster melodies. And as I read, I couldn’t help but think: What a sad state music has become if this is what’s making billions of dollars. Even sadder, what a fragile state our children are growing up in if this is the soundtrack shaping their worldview.

What We’re Really Letting Disciple Our Kids

Pop culture is no longer just a mirror of society—it’s a catechism. It teaches our children what to believe about love, sex, power, and worth.

When we let our kids idolize hyper-sexualized artists—whether it’s Taylor Swift or some other major artist—we’re giving those individuals permission to disciple them. We may not say it out loud, but we say it through what we normalize, what we stream, and what we celebrate.

And this isn’t just about one artist or one genre. The message is everywhere. Some artists teach that emotional chaos and self-expression are the markers of authenticity. Others teach that rebellion, swagger, and blurred moral lines are signs of strength or maturity. Both are selling different sides of the same gospel—the gospel of self.

And you can’t form children on the gospel of self and expect them to grow into men and women shaped by the gospel of surrender.

The Gospel of Self vs. The Gospel of Surrender

The gospel of self says, Follow your feelings. Trust your instincts. Do what makes you happy.
The gospel of surrender says, Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow Christ.

The first calls you to autonomy; the second calls you to abiding.
The first says love is about passion; the second says love is about perseverance.

The gospel of self tells them that love exists to fulfill them. The gospel of surrender teaches that love exists to form them. One ends in exhaustion and emptiness. The other leads to holiness and peace.

And it’s not just Taylor Swift—it’s the entire ecosystem of entertainment that markets desire divorced from Design, pleasure without purpose, and autonomy without accountability.

The more we let these messages shape our children’s understanding of love and sexuality, the less capacity they’ll have to experience love as God intended it.

When our children are raised on a steady diet of self-centered art and entertainment, they begin to confuse intensity with intimacy and chaos with connection. They start to believe that love is something you chase rather than something you choose.

If we raise our sons and daughters to idolize self-expression over self-control, emotional chaos over emotional maturity, and romantic idealism over covenant commitment, we’re esentially forming hearts that crave drama, not discipleship; validation, not virtue.

Formation Always Precedes Attraction

Here’s the truth we often forget: formation always precedes attraction.

Who we are influenced to become determines what kind of love we find desirable.

If our children’s imaginations are formed by the lyrics of pop culture—songs filled with obsession, revenge, nostalgia, and lust—they will subconsciously crave those things. They’ll seek out relationships that mirror the stories they’ve been singing.

Because what we dwell on shapes us. We don’t just hear it and move on—it lingers. It carves grooves into our minds and hearts. Every repeated lyric, every emotional high from a movie scene, every “anthem” we belt out in the car becomes a small act of formation. Over time, fact and fiction become neighbors with blurred property lines. We start treating fantasy as truth and dysfunction as normal.

That’s why we can’t dismiss media as “just music” or “just entertainment.” These stories are catechizing our children—and us. They are teaching us what to love, what to laugh at, what to long for. And the more we let them, the more our hearts will begin to take that shape.

Our children are being discipled by a culture that glorifies lust, conquest, rebellion, and self-worship. If we raise children on pornography (in images, words, in music, etc.), bravado, entitlement, or passivity, we can’t expect them to grow into adults who value wisdom, virtue, and integrity.

But if their imaginations are shaped by the fruit of the Spirit—love that is patient, kind, enduring, and grounded in grace—they’ll crave something deeper. They’ll desire relationships built on peace, honor, and humility.

The Idol of Influence

There’s something deeply disturbing about adults making billions off selling sexualized content to teenagers—and doing so under the banner of empowerment and authenticity. When a nearly 40-year-old woman writes explicit songs about casual sex and revenge and performs them for crowds of young girls, that’s not empowerment. It’s exploitation dressed up in sequins.

And when other artists build their brand on rebellion, arrogance, “boys will be boys,” and lust, that’s not harmless fun. It’s formation.

We have to stop confusing relatability with righteousness.

We cannot raise children on rebellion and expect righteousness to bloom. We cannot fill their playlists with pride and expect humility to take root. We cannot separate their entertainment from their discipleship and still expect faith to flourish.

Reclaiming the Imagination

The good news is that it’s not too late. We can reclaim our children’s minds and their hearts.

We can help them see that love isn’t about revenge—it’s about redemption. That desire isn’t dangerous when it’s disciplined by truth. That beauty isn’t performance—it’s purposeful.

We can teach them that joy and holiness can coexist. That boundaries aren’t about restriction—they’re about reverence. That God doesn’t ask us to reject our desires, but to realign them.

This doesn’t mean we burn every record or ban every playlist. It means we disciple through discernment. We teach our kids how to think critically about what they’re consuming and how it’s shaping their hearts.

Ask them:

• What does this song say about love?
• What does it teach you about yourself—or about others?
• Does it draw you closer to truth, or make you comfortable with compromise?
• Would I sing it to or with Jesus?

These are the conversations that cultivate wisdom.

It Starts With Us

We can’t expect our kids to live differently if we’re feeding on the same culture ourselves. Formation happens by proximity. What we draw near to shapes who we become.

If we want our children to grow into men and women who value humility, holiness, and honor, we have to model those things ourselves. We have to show them that holiness isn’t about fear—it’s about freedom. But not freedom to wander into the muck and the mire.

It’s freedom from the chains that keep us there. Freedom to choose what is good when everything around us calls good “boring.” Freedom to love with purity of heart in a world obsessed with performance and pleasure.

When our kids see us turn off a show that doesn’t honor God, speak kindly about someone who hurt us, or admit when we’ve been shaped by the wrong influences, they learn something no sermon could teach them: holiness is not about perfection. It’s about presence. It’s about walking with God in a world that’s forgotten how.

That’s the invitation—for us, and for them. To live so deeply rooted in Christ that what once entertained us begins to grieve us, and what once felt restrictive begins to feel like rest.

Because the truth is, our kids won’t rise above the culture that’s discipling us. They’ll follow the example we set.
And if we can show them that holiness is not the absence of joy, but the abundance of it, we’ll give them something the world never can—freedom that lasts.

This means we listen before we lecture. We explain why before we forbid. We help them see that God’s boundaries are not burdens but blessings. We help them think critically. And most of all, lead them toward a better story—one where love looks like Jesus.

The Better Story

We don’t need another breakup anthem to understand love. We already have the greatest love story ever written—the story of a God who pursued His people not with manipulation or lust, but with covenant faithfulness and self-giving love.

A story that begins in creation, is redeemed at the cross, and culminates in restoration. A story where love lays itself down, not shows itself off.

That’s the story I want my daughter to live by. Because in a world teaching them to crave attention, Jesus calls them to dwell in his presence.

And that will always be enough.