Why can’t politics in the UK or US get to grips with Taylor Swift? Because she is a force in her own right | Gaby Hinsliff

On each side of the Atlantic, so much rests on what she says, positions she takes and who meets her approval. She is where pop meets politics now

When people say that music can change the world, they don't usually mean songs that capture with bright, sharp intimacy how girls feel.

They mean protest songs, political songs, anthems against the Vietnam war; not the soundtracks to aching teenage summers or to eight-year-olds' dance routines in the playground. They don't, in short, mean Taylor Swift songs. But that was what Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel peace prize-winning campaigner for women's right to an education, used to sing with her friends growing up in Pakistan. Music, she posted on Instagram, after attending one of Swift's London gigs this summer, made me and my friends feel confident and free". Which is why, in Afghanistan, the Taliban bans it.