We were thinking today, Taylor Swift, or whoever’s behind her, must be pretty smart about her fame. She totally wants to be in the public eye – duh, it’s her job to be a celebrity – but she also gets to keep some things pretty private.
And while you’ll have other, lesser celebrities blabbering on about all the charity work they do in order to make up for the fact they’ve, say, driven a car 140mph in a residential area and then pissed on the police officers who subsequently arrested them, Taylor keeps a bit quieter about her charity work.
That’s why it was New York’s Department of Education (DoE) and not actual Taylor who confirmed that the singer gave all the proceeds of her song Welcome To New York to the city’s education department.
Website Capital got in touch with the DoE with a Freedom of Information request on the topic, to which the department’s spokesperson said, ‘I am informed that Taylor Swift has made a donation of $50,000 (£32,278) to the DOE, without restrictions to support DOE schools.’
How did this come about? Taylor had previously been criticised about the song, as it apparently oversimplified the city she’s moved to. So she told The View: It’s selling really, really well, which is good because I’m donating all my proceeds to New York City public schools.’
But that was the last she said of it. Seems like she’s a girl of few words, who sticks to those words. Which hardly surprises us as much as the fact that, with 500,000 copies of the song sold, she only made $50,000 off of it. That’s like, 6p per song. We’re not saying oh boo-hoo her for only making 30 grand off of one song, but it does hit home how pop stars are just the face of a mahoosive industry that once used to pay a helluva lot more.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.