It can be a complicated business becoming one of the world’s most popular recording artists, and between disputes over compensation, copyright and a never-ending flood of digital harassment, you’re liable to run into some Bad Blood, legally speaking.
That kind of litigation can also make for an interesting set of case studies, and for students in Mohamed Khimji’s course on the legal history of Taylor Swift, it’s exactly what they’ll get.
Launched earlier this year at Queen’s University, "Law (Taylor’s Version)" is a seminar course for upper-year students with an interest in media and business law, taught through the lens of the pop icon’s career.
Swift, who recently concluded a billion-dollar world tour with finale performances in Toronto and Vancouver, has often grabbed headlines not just for her music or the celebrity gossip mill, but also for a series of episodes exemplifying the hard business of super-stardom.
For Khimji, director of the Queen’s business law program and a dedicated Swiftie, the artist can make for an engaging focus in training prospective lawyers.
“We’re dealing with a very, I think, special-case individual here,” he said in a Saturday interview with CTVNews.ca. “She has touched so many people, and is an inspiration to so many people, and so what I was fairly sure of when I pitched the course was that enrollment wouldn’t be so low that it would be cancelled.”
He was more right than he knew. The course’s roughly 30 slots filled out, a waitlist grew and soon, Khimji says there was a petition circulating to add a second section of the course to the law school’s schedule.
“People are extremely enthusiastic to learn from this lens, and the fact that she’s involved in the issue makes the issue more engaging to the students,” he said. “I think that’s beneficial, because engagement is what it’s about, ultimately.”
Swift case studies ‘illuminating’: professor
It’s not the first time Queen’s has taken a page from the Tortured Poet. In 2022, the English department introduced a cultural studies course on Swift’s "literary legacy," in what lecturer Meghan Burry called an effort to “blu[r] the boundary that often exists between academia and pop culture.”
Khimji says his own course materialized following a series of conversations about the singer-songwriter’s efforts to re-record her first six albums -- the original master recordings of which she did not own the copyright.
“The most common question I would be getting from my colleagues is: ‘Why would Taylor Swift decide to do that?’” he said.
“That … leads to explanations and discussions about the distinction between rights to a music composition, and rights to a sound recording. And I just thought: ‘Oh, this would be a great way to at least begin the course.’”
But that’s not her only notable case. The star at one point pulled her catalogue from music streamer Spotify amid an industry-wide debate on revenue sharing, and as so many aspects of pop culture become saturated in her brand, advertising and even an infamous music video have raised questions about depicting Swift and Swift-adjacent imagery without authorization.
“I find case studies can be very illuminating,” Khimji noted. “There are so many interesting things that have happened in her career that I think there’s enough there for a course, for sure.”
While there are some clear Swifties among his inaugural class, the professor says the course has also attracted students with a more general interest in business law. Case studies like Swift’s, he says, can offer the chance to apply concepts from the more nuts-and-bolts course work in a student’s schedule.
Eagle-eyed law students may spot the professor proudly displaying his Eras Tour T-shirt around the Queen’s Law offices, or maybe even back in the lecture hall this September, when Law (Taylor’s Version) is expected to have a re-release of its own.
“Her fan base is actually quite diverse,” Khimji says. “And most definitely includes middle-aged men, like myself.”
He says although it was Folklore, the pandemic-era album featuring folk artist Bon Iver, that converted him into a fan, he’s developed an appreciation for many parts of Swift’s oeuvre; the more upbeat tracks, especially.
“I generally think of myself as a happy person, and so I would say on most days, my favourite album is 1989," he revealed. “There are no fillers, right? These are all hits.”
