Misty Harris, “Old kid on the block: Mick Jagger on fire with swagger” (Postmedia News, Aug. 12, 2011)
According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer, former On Language columnist for the New York Times, musicians’ sweetness for swagger took root fully a decade ago, when Jay-Z used it in the song All I Need (“I guess I got my swagger back.”) …
“It feels like it’s become something more entrenched, and not just a flash in the pan,” says Zimmer, likening swagger’s potential sturdiness to “cool,” which has waxed and waned as a slang term — but never disappeared — since the 1940s.
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