Taylor Swift infamously stayed silent in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, declining to speak out on behalf of Hillary Clinton or against Donald Trump. (Or vice versa, for that matter.) But it's unlikely she'll make the same choice again. That's one big takeaway from the first trailer for Miss Americana, Swift's new Netflix documentary, which will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival before dropping on the streaming platform (and in select theaters) on Jan. 31.
"Throughout my whole career, label executives would just say, 'a nice girl, doesn't force their opinions on people; a nice girl, smiles and waves and says thank you.' I became the person everyone wanted me to be," Swift says in somber tones at the start of the trailer, before referencing the period before the release of 2017's Reputation and after her public battles with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. "Nobody physically saw me for a year, and that was what I thought they wanted. I had to deconstruct an entire belief system, toss it out and reject it. It woke me up from constantly feeling like I was fighting for people's respect. It was happiness without anyone else's input."
Directed by Lana Wilson (After Tiller), Miss Americana promises to bring the viewer into Swift's modern reality, one where she doesn't shy away from supporting progressive causes—like she did when endorsing Tennessee Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen for Senate in the 2018 midterm election against his Republican opponent, Marsha Blackburn. (Blackburn would go on to win, despite Swift's opposition.) "I want to do this. I need to be on the right side of history," Swift says in the Miss Americana trailer. The result of her first public political stand was more than 2.1 million likes on Instagram:
In an interview with Variety, Swift opened up about that moment: "This was a situation where, from a humanity perspective, and from what my moral compass was telling me I needed to do, I knew I was right, and I really didn’t care about repercussions."
Beyond politics, Miss Americana promises to provide Swift fans (and detractors) with plenty to chew on and meme. The trailer opens, for instance, with Swift preparing to go on stage: "I'm just going to go have fun. No one out there that I know of in the audience actively hates me. Not get dead face." Later, she's briefly glimpsed embracing boyfriend Joe Alywn.
"I feel really good about not being muzzled anymore," Swift says toward the end of the teaser. "And it was my own doing."
Miss Americana is out Jan. 31 on Netflix.
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