Why you don't want to be famous

With death threats, cancellation, mental health issues and lack of privacy, fame is a poisoned chalice

If you were being stalked, would you find it so easy to Shake It Off? Photo by Nicole Alexander.

Apparently kids these days just want to be famous. For what, you might ask? Nothing in particular: they don’t say ‘pop star’ or ‘footballer’ anymore, just ‘famous’. And, given the prospect of untold riches, fame, awards, success, glamour and adulation, you’d also be forgiven for thinking ‘sign me up.’

Well, I’m here to disabuse you of that foolish notion. Why? Because a celebrity’s life, at its worst, is far more scary, crazy and miserable than yours or mine. It’s a poisoned chalice, a beautiful glittering gilded cage, an illusory cavern of happiness and self-worth within which only the grotesque lies.

As Billie Piper told the Guardian last year, “Fame is awful. It’s gross. It’s such a dark thing. And it will change your everyday experience of life in a way that is depressing, frankly, in my experience of it. When I imagine some of my happiest, and my freest times, most of them are pre-fame.”

I don’t want to be a celebrity. Yes, I want to be a pop star - that is, I want to record and release albums, make music videos and occasionally tour, making a living from my music - but the thought of stratospheric, Taylor Swift-level fame makes me shudder.

Thankfully, no matter how strong my records are (and they really are, blowing my own trumpet, though there is no trumpet on them), middle-aged single mums don’t tend to greatly interest the press. Which is a relief, because when I was briefly mildly high-profile back in 2009, I had a major nervous breakdown.

To be fair, Taylor Swift seems to handle global superstardom pretty well. But let’s look into her life a little more deeply.

Why you don’t want to be Taylor Swift

In Rio last month, a young fan tragically died at a Swift concert. Numerous Twitter users blamed Swift for not cancelling or stopping the show. I can’t even imagine how it must feel to think you could be held partly responsible for a fan’s death.

That was probably the most traumatic incident in a career which has seen the tabloids lambast Swift for her colourful love life (Harry Styles, John Mayer, Tom Hiddleston) and numerous celebrity feuds (Katy Perry, Kanye West, Olivia Rodrigo) while criticising her for taking 170 private jet trips a year.

She stays out too late, goes on too many dates… that’s what people say. Photo by Cosmopolitan UK.

The hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty regularly trended on Twitter during her row with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. As Swift asked in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana, “Do you know how many people have to be tweeting that they hate you for that to happen?”

As well as the haters, imagine all the scrutiny, the criticism, the poisonous column inches, the pressure - the total inability to lead a normal life free from the glare of paparazzi lenses. Never feeling able to be unguarded, in case your words get recorded and taken out of context. Never being able to have a normal, fuss-free interaction with a stranger.

But that’s nothing compared to all the crazed fans. The New York Post reported last year:

“The threats on [Swift’s] life have become so persistent that her security team installed facial recognition software at the venues she performs in to specifically distinguish her stalkers from her fans,” says Jake Brennan in the new true-crime podcast Disgraceland, which explores the dark side of the music industry.

“Imagine that you’re so famous and so harassed that [you’d need] technology that is specially programmed and installed to identify the lunatics that want to kill you,” he says in the episode, which premiered Tuesday.

The barrage of stalking incidents has had a dramatic effect on Swift, who wrote a candid essay for Elle in March 2019 where she opened up about her peeping Toms.

“You get enough stalkers trying to break into your house and you kind of start prepping for bad things,” she wrote. “Every day I try to remind myself of the good in the world, the love I’ve witnessed, and the faith I have in humanity. We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears.”

I mean, fucking hell. My biggest problem right now is that my roof is leaking and I can’t afford to fix it, which is paradise in comparison to the above. I don’t know I’m born.

Why you don’t want the pressure of fame