On Brand: A Podcast About Branding For Brand Builders, By Brand Builders

In this episode of On Brand Taylor's Version, we're joined by Stephanie Burt, poet, critic, and professor of English at Harvard University. Stephanie made headlines when she created and taught one of the very first college courses on Taylor Swift at Harvard, Taylor Swift and her world. We discuss what it means to study Taylor seriously at Harvard, why her storytelling resonates so widely, and what we can all learn from her profound cultural impact. What You’ll Learn in This Episode How Taylor Swift’s approach to storytelling parallels the way we relate to literature and life, making her English-teacher-like to her fans The narrative techniques and structural choices that make her songwriting resonate across diverse audiences How she revisits, rewrites, and evolves previous stories in her music to deepen character and theme The role of collaboration, marketing, and audience awareness in building a fan community that scales from niche to mainstream How joy, friendship, and shared experiences