“This Explains A Lot”: Taylor Swift’s “Petty” Advice About Getting “Hate” Is Raising Eyebrows

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Being the music industry titan that she is, Taylor Swift has been known to mentor younger artists: Gracie, Olivia, Sabrina — although some of those partnerships have worked out better than others.

Well, this year, it's become evident that she's been buddying up with Sombr, the 21-year-old singer known for songs like "Back to Friends," "Undressed," and "12 to 12."

In June, Taylor hand-selected Sombr, whose real name is Shane Michael Boose, to honor her at the Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony, where he performed "Cardigan" and "Dear John," two of his favorite songs of hers.

At the event, Taylor described Sombr as "the future," saying: "His writing is so exceptional that it makes me actually envious, and I love that feeling — he’s gonna be the top of my Spotify Wrapped this year guaranteed, it’s locked, it’s in the bag. A lot of my late-night debates with my friends about the state of the music industry involve me saying very loudly, ‘Sombr is the future and he does it all on his own and he doesn’t need AI. The kids are fine.’ And so obviously, Shane is a very well-adjusted person and artist, and doesn’t need any of my advice at all."

Well, despite what she said, Sombr recently shared some advice he received from Taylor on navigating "hate" — and people have a lot of thoughts about it.

"One of the best pieces of advice the legend has given me— the person I look up to most has given me. The amazing pop star. Is that if these hate comments go away, maybe you’re not at your peak anymore," he told Elle magazine in a new cover interview. "I think it’s a privilege to be receiving these and rise above it. Ever since she gave me that advice, it’s really changed my perspective and has helped."

Taylor is certainly no stranger to public scrutiny — she basically wrote a whole album about it in 2017. And while she's definitely qualified to speak on the topic, people can't help but feel her advice to Sombr is a little questionable.

Ironically, the criticism over on X is pretty intense. One user wrote: "this is awful advice. people confuse 'hate' with criticism. being unable and unwilling take criticism only leads to decline in quality. there’s confidence in your artistry, and narcissism and arrogance. take a guess which one people are easier to fall into."

Someone else suggested that the belief that "'having haters is healthy' is not a good outlook" for Taylor to promote to a younger artist.

That said, some people feel that there's some validity to that mindset, suggesting that the message behind it was "don’t stress about something u can’t control."

Obviously, we've not heard it from Taylor herself, but I think I can understand what she was trying to imply: that public scrutiny is an unfortunate but inevitable part of the experience. However, directly equating "hate" with success isn't helpful for anyone.

Notably, Sombr faced pretty intense backlash in 2025 after a 25-year-old TikTok creator called Meg posted a video calling out his inappropriate and "vulgar" behavior in front of young fans at one of his shows. At the time, Sombr hit back against, but did not explicity deny, Meg's claims, saying that he's "never uttered a serious word in [his] life." In his response, he also accused her of body-shaming him.

Sombr's retort only resulted in further criticism of his behavior. Now, reflecting on the experience during his Elle interview, the 21-year-old said he thinks that responding to backlash "only makes it worse." "I was a teenager when I was kind of just pushed into the spotlight. All of a sudden, this is one of my first instances of being hated on a larger scale. I thought I needed to defend myself," he said, going on to admit he was at fault in that instance.

"I want people of all ages, sexualities, and races, everyone at my show," he added. "I’m an awkward kid. I don’t know what to do in weird moments. That video kind of woke me up. I was like, 'Wait, yeah, that is weird.' If you still choose to look at me in a type of way because of that, so be it, but just know that that doesn’t represent me as a human. I plan to never say or do something that would even make someone uncomfortable again."

Let me know your thoughts on this whole thing in the comments. You can find Sombr's full Elle interview here.

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