It’s fair to say that the reaction to Taylor Swift being appointed New York City’s 'Global Welcome Ambassador' has been mixed.

Taylor Swift NY
Taylor Swift was controversially selected to be a cultural 'ambassador' to attract tourists to NY

Dee Snider, the frontman of rock/metal band Twisted Sister who hail from Long Island, said to the Daily News “I’m incensed. It’s insulting. She doesn’t have any life experience here or connection to the town. There’s so many others — Jerry Seinfeld, for instance, if you want a big name. But Taylor Swift is the pop culture queen, so she moves into town, and she’s the ambassador.”

Others questioned why a born-and-bred New Yorker such as Jay-Z or Alicia Keys couldn’t have been selected to provide a more authentic touch. After all, they duetted on the global smash hit ‘Empire State of Mind’, a grimy and gritty urban tale referencing drug making and pushing that’s in stark contrast to Swift’s experience of New York. She recently bought a luxury apartment in the well-to-do Tribeca area of Manhattan, estimated to cost in the region of $20 million.

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But Swift moved to counter those critics by announcing in an appearance on ‘The View’ on Wednesday that all of the proceeds of ‘Welcome To New York’, the next promotional single from her new album, will go to the city’s public schools. It’s a canny piece of PR from Swift that ought to do at least something to dampen some of the more vocal criticism of her recent appointment, though as they say, haters still gon’ hate.

Swift’s recent move to New York may well have inspired her change in musical direction on 1989, released on Monday this week. Virtually everybody noticed how pop-orientated her recent single ‘Shake It Off’ sounded, in contrast to the country stylings of the music which made her famous. She was raised in Pennsylvania and launched her career in Tennessee, before moving to New York earlier this year.