August 2012
I brought my laptop to the kitchen table during dinner. This was a big deal because laptops do not belong at the dinner table. Back then I had a mock-up fake Blackberry, a non-touch-screen phone with a full keyboard and zero access to the internet or anything exciting, so I was glued to my computer anytime I wasn’t at school, but even I had boundaries.
Dad rallied me to eat only a few minutes into the stream, poking his head into my room as he tended to do, and I begged him to make an exception just this once so I could watch the livestream at the table. Dad was never one who needed much convincing, especially when it was just us, and Mom wasn’t going to be home tonight for whatever reason. For someone as unmoved and indifferent as him, Dad has always been very respectful of the lengths to which I would go for this woman. He shrugged off the whole thing, and didn’t bat an eye when I lugged my computer downstairs after him. It looked out of place at the table, a silver robot that stood out in stark contrast against our out-dated kitchen.
We hadn’t renovated it yet, a few months away from flashy marble and colorful backsplash and frozen dinners in the basement. The cabinets were woody and worn to match the table, and everything looked comfortably lived in. That’s what you say when your house goes out of style, it looks lived in. Mom’s woven placemats and slightly out of season decor kept us company as I fixed my eyes on my computer screen. My little brother was around here somewhere, but I had tunnel vision. I vaguely heard a sports announcer talking loudly in the background outside my earbuds, and there were muted screams of fans playing on a loop on ESPN.
We ate something. Or rather, Dad put food in front of me, and he ate in his own time, maybe even over on the couch. I don’t know what I put in my mouth, but it was irrelevant. I was just a body at that table, watching a bunch of teenage girls gathered together in a room, wishing I was lucky enough to be there with them.
Back then, everything was predictably unpredictable. Being a fan of Taylor Swift was difficult, but it was also the easiest thing in the world. There was a rhythm to her artistry, her promotion. You expected a new album every two years, but you never knew just what you were going to get. Every roll-out was a little different, but the timelines were similar, the content was the same, the marketing made sense. Silence, livestream announcement, lead single and video, lead-up singles, album. You could expect an album in the fall, usually in October or November. You’d except a livestream at the end of the summer, often around August. And the singles would crop-up as school started in September.
And through it all, we would blog. We’d share paparazzi photos, secret messages from past albums, tweets and Instagram posts, gifs of old YouTube vlogs. Fans became celebrities overnight, making posts that blew up or went viral or became widely circulated. You started to learn cliques by name, recognizing people as they posted about traveling for release week. That’s the girl who recreates Taylor’s outfits. That’s the girl who lives in New York and has seen Taylor dozens of times. That’s the girl who drew Taylor’s lips and met her in Japan. We were all in it together, each one of us hoping for our five seconds of fame, our five minutes with god herself. And all we had was one common thread pulling us together: the lyrics of a woman who was just like us.
As I sat at our dinner table at seventeen, I watched the big reveal, a red curtain revealing a red album. I couldn’t imagine what it would sound like, what it would become, where it would take me. I had no idea in that moment that I would move to Nashville the following year, almost a year to the day since that livestream. I had no idea that I would spend nearly $400 to buy tickets for me and my best friend to see those songs live. I had no idea my “I only need to see her in concert one time” mantra would turn into nine shows in ten years. I didn’t know who I was becoming, who Taylor was becoming, all the joy and chaos that were in our futures, the friends and people we would meet because of livestreams like this. On that day, I was just a teenage girl watching her friend talk about her new album and her new song. I bought it on iTunes. I listened to it at our dinner table. I reblogged the audio on my Tumblr. I felt freedom.
August 2014
My sophomore year of college had gotten off to a rocky start. I got my wisdom teeth removed in the summer and picked up bizarre kind of ear infection around that same time. A week or so later, I was plagued by a high fever and subsequent cold, and this intersected almost exactly with my move down to school. (Which, by the way, my parents could not help me with because they took a trip to Canada.) Even though I felt miserable, I was lucky to have help from my best friend who roadtripped with sick little me for seven hours and climbed numerous steps to get my microwave and personal possessions into university housing.
But all of this was inconsequential because any day now Taylor was going to announce her new album. It was guaranteed. Two years ago I had sat at my dinner table listening to “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” and last year I got to sing it live in concert, and now we needed something new. Everyone knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when.
For the longest time, I’ve tried to be subtle about my Taylor fandom. When I was in high school it consumed me, and I could not contain my joy and obsession. Everybody knew what I was (Say it. Out loud. Swiftie.) and they quietly made fun of me for it, even when our entire year had “You Belong With Me” on repeat on their iPods. And with every subsequent album, there is more Taylor hate and more criticism and more people who get so annoyed by her existence that I feel compelled to shrink myself so that nobody tries to tell me how much they hate her. During Red, she was everywhere, and I thought we had reached the peak. (Ha.) I did not want anyone to know where my allegiances lay while I was in college.
But I’m pretty sure people can just smell it on me. My Swiftie scent.
It happened one evening, around move-in week, when I was just starting to know my new roommate and suitemates. I hadn’t hung up any Taylor merch, I only really yelled about her online, and yet still everybody knew. When I turned on the livestream, uncomfortably seated sideways on my bed with my back to the wall, I found that I wasn’t alone. My roommate was right there with me, eagerly waiting for Taylor to change the world.
This livestream felt different, if only because Taylor looked different. Tumblr had seen the paparazzi photos, we knew who she was now, how she had evolved and cut off her hair on tour and moved to New York, but it was like visiting a friend who had moved away. She was the same as ever, but something was different. A lot of things were different. And when she pressed play on the lead single for 1989, I felt the universe slide out from under me. I felt the planets shift. I felt like every second of my life had lead to this moment. And when the internet shrugged it off, when my roommates were still trying to decide if they liked it or not, I hit purchase on iTunes and turned that shit up as high as it would go when I drove around in my new car. The freedom I had found from Red was nothing compared to the ecstasy that rolled through my body when I played “Shake It Off.”
In the lead-up to 1989, I went through a lot of shit.
I got a new job working at Panera making a whopping $9.25 an hour (the most I had ever made!), but unbeknownst to me, I had made a deal with the devil. It was a thirty minute commute there, so I’d wake up at 4:30 or 5am just to get there in time to open, and on top of that, they didn’t respect my availability, so my schedule was all over the place for weeks. My body ached in ways I hadn’t felt before, and I spent most of my time off lying in bed trying not to move.
Then, to make everything worse, on my drive back from fall break, the day after “Out of the Woods” was released as a single, I got my very first speeding ticket. In a work zone. For over $400. (Yes, I cried.) It is a little ironic that I got a ticket while I was listening to the song about vehicular manslaughter (this is legally a joke), but at the time it was devastating. And on top of my struggles at school and at Panera, this almost broke me.
It’s not overdramatic to say that Taylor’s music saved me that year. (And every year.) I don’t know where I’d be if I couldn’t have listened to “Bad Blood” on repeat while driving down I-65 at 85mph trying to beat rush-hour traffic on my way home from a never-ending shift at Panera Bread in Cool Springs after my boss refused to listen to me about why I needed a different schedule. God bless.
August 2017
I don’t need to write about it. My vlog footage is more than sufficient.
If you weren’t there, then you won’t get it.
May 2023
We are at the top of the nosebleeds in Nissan Stadium. I turned twenty-eight this past week. It is a (delicate) rain show. I told my friends that I’m hoping for “Sparks Fly” as my surprise song because it just makes sense. It is my first time watching the Eras Tour, online or in person. It is five years since I last saw Taylor in concert and five years since she gave me a high five.
There is an electricity that happens during the acoustic set at a Taylor Swift concert. You and everybody else in the crowd are connected, strung together by a handful of lyrics, and in that moment, you are untouchable. You are in the middle of a news story. You are at the center of history. You are there, when there are millions of people across the globe staring at their screens, desperately wishing they could be you. There is starlight coursing through your veins.
When she steps up to the microphone tonight, something feels different. She doesn’t say a lot at first, but she’s in her purply, maroon dress. She’s being vague and cagey. She’s excited. And with all the rumors that have been swirling around today, for as much as I have not gotten my hopes up because what if they’re wrong, she is generous and kind and overwhelmingly good. And she is predictably unpredictable.
I still don’t know how the universe works. I’m not sure how much luck we are allotted when we step foot on this earth, if we use it up by a certain age, if the universe divvies it out little by little until we leave this place, but I often find that the universe distributes luck at the most unexpected moments. Maybe that’s why it’s called luck. Luck is about being at the right place at the exact right time, and even though I find myself incredibly unlucky in my day to day life, I am a Swiftie miracle. There are things that have happened to me that I could never have predicted when I was thirteen, listening to “Invisible” on my iPod to fall asleep at my grandmother’s house.
When I am standing there, thousands of people screaming with me, with my inner teenager holding my hand beside me, I feel invincible. I feel like I was born for this moment. I feel freedom in ways I’ve never felt before.
For the first time in the fifteen years that I have known her, I am in the same room as Taylor Swift when she announces an album. I’m not stuck at my kitchen table or sitting in my dorm room or reading an Instagram post. I am there. And it is the announcement for my favorite album of all time. And I am listening to “Sparks Fly” and thinking about all the roads I walked to get here, and I am hugging my younger self, telling her everything is going to be okay.
(And even now, thinking about it in hindsight, it brings me to tears.)
February 2024
I have long since stopped looking for album announcements. While a lot of fans have fallen off the deep end digging into theories and easter eggs, I prefer to sit back and think less. (Do I still obsessively text my group chat? Yes. Do I still reblog a bunch of shit on Tumblr? Also yes.) I actually enjoyed being hand-fed livestream album announcements every two years. I liked when we didn’t have to work for our news. I appreciated when things were simple.
Everything is different now. What I thought was the peak in 2011, in 2013, in 2015, in 2018, in 2020 has nothing on 2024. I have seen the changing tides, watched the public opinion wax and wane, and like clockwork, the dominos always fall down. There will come a time, very soon if I’m right, where this will all become too much and people will start tearing everything down, hoping and expecting that this will finally be the end of Taylor Swift.
Today is not that day. And if I know anything about Taylor and her fans, tomorrow is not that day either.
I am standing in an Instagram-Art Pop-Up Gallery in Austin, Texas. I am not watching the Grammys. One of my best friends has taken up the duty of live-texting every moment for me and our groupchat. She is a reporter, a diligent newsie, reading the headlines for me while I go about my night. I am with three friends, miles and miles away from anything and anyone I know. I told myself I was not concerned with anything that happens, that all the rumors are just rumors, that nothing will happen tonight other than a white dress.
Like I said, predictably unpredictable.
I am standing under strings of multi-colored lights. There is ambient music playing. I am wearing purple and thinking that I am lucky to exist in the same world as my best friends. I am wishing that time moved slower. I am wishing I was at home in bed. I am checking my groupchat like an addict looking for their next fix.
Years ago, I dreamed of this life. When I was thirteen, I scrolled through my iPod in the backseat of my dad’s Nissan, wishing for the day when I had more than one Taylor Swift album to listen to. At the time, it felt light-years away. When I got Fearless, I remember looking at the tracklist on Amazon, wondering what “White Horse” would sound like. When we got the singles leading up to Speak Now, I thought, “I never need to her make music ever again. This is my favorite thing she’s ever done.” At every turn, on every album, this woman has defied the odds and captivated me over and over and over again.
But in the early days, she was contained. She was trapped by businessmen and societal standards and industry norms. Modern artists did not release endless amounts of music. Nobody was that interested in hearing a teenage girl sing about love and loss and heartbreak. She dominated the country charts and outgrew herself. She switched genres. She got too big, she had to take a hiatus. She wasn’t sure if her fans wanted her to come back. She wanted to try new things. She met new collaborators. She couldn’t stop writing. She couldn’t stop writing. She couldn’t stop writing.
Modern pop artists do not write songs alone. Modern pop artists do not perform for three hours every night on tour. Modern pop artists burn out. Modern pop artists get worse over time. Modern pop artists cannot change genres. Modern pop artists cannot be successful rerecording their old albums. Modern pop artists do not win album of the year at the Grammys four times.
But modern pop artists are not Taylor Swift.
Other artists are not Taylor Swift.
This time, when she announces her eleventh album live on stage at the Grammys, I am not watching it. I am staring at my best friends, watching them walk around in wonder, praying that this time I will be normal, I will not care, I will not be the person I’ve been for the last sixteen years. I know it is a pipe dream and a lost cause, and I wonder when I’ll stop trying to change the person I was always destined to be. I wonder when I will stop feeling embarrassed for caring so much. I wonder what this new album will sound like. I wonder where I’ll be in two months.
I do not have to wonder if it will be good. I do not have to wonder if I’ll love it. I do not have to wonder if it will break records. I already know it will.
This is such a great post! The lines "I do not have to wonder if it will be good. I do not have to wonder if I’ll love it. I do not have to wonder if it will break records. I already know it will." just got me. I can't wait to listen to this album and for it to definitely become a new favourite 🤎