Part of the Fandoms series.
I love Taylor Swift. Doesn’t everyone? Even the people who claim they can’t stand that type of music definitely have that one song that they sing in the shower. It’s Taylor’s world, we’re all just living in it.
There have been female pop stars that have reached the stratosphere that Taylor Swift exists in (Madonna, Britney, etc.), but none of these is the storyteller that she is. The devotion Taylor Swift inspires is because her fans feel like they know her. She bears her soul so authentically that you feel what she feels. I don’t generally follow celebrity goings-on, but I feel for her through her break-ups because you know how in love she was. Her lyricism is so vulnerable and raw that you can tell when she falls hard, and then has her heart broken. Yet she keeps on making the choice to love openly anyway. That’s an almost unfathomable level of bravery. She’s such a role model to us all with her strength, the permission she gives us all to have our messy feelings. It’s okay; we’re entitled to them, and it’s healthy for us to feel them without fear of judgment from others.
Since she started making albums nearly 20 years, as she has matured as a person, so has her music. We can see the person that she’s become, certainly older and wiser, but still deep down the same. Again, she’s so completely honest in writing about where she is in her life that the different periods are distinct. You can tell when one era she was going through ends and another begins. There are markers and themes throughout that create a snapshot in time, something you can look back on and be nostalgic for. There’s the bombastic snake of the Reputation era and the dreamy pastels of the Lover era. They’re each their own land you can visit and re-visit whenever the mood strikes you, whenever you see or hear or smell something that reminds you of that time in your life, because let’s face it, a lot of our affinity for Taylor Swift’s musical journey is that we’ve mapped our own growth on to it as well.
Taylor Swift is queen of the break-up song, the unrequited love song, the hell-bent on revenge song. Her superpower, beyond sharing her own life and experiences in a moving way, is allowing the listener to see themselves in those experiences and emotions as well. Everyone has loved and lost and healed along with her, and she has given them so many anthems by which to do that. There are “Enchanted” and “Fearless” for when you’re young and full of hope, “All Too Well” for the first sting of heartbreak, “New Romantics” for finally stepping into your power, and “The 1” for all the wisdom that comes with maturity and looking back without bitterness on lost love. Dressing in the colors and the outfits and even different song lyrics isn’t just about connecting with other Swifties, it’s about choosing to relive and LARP that period in your life. It’s about embracing the same exact revelation that Taylor did throughout her Eras tour– that there are so many different versions of ourselves existing simultaneously inside of ourselves, making us who we are. As we go from one era to another, the person we were doesn’t die, it becomes absorbed into who we go on to become in our next era.
True confession time– as much as I do love her, I don’t consider myself a real Swiftie. I can’t automatically tell you all the different Easter eggs in songs and videos and Instagram posts. I don’t own all the special editions of her albums on CD or vinyl. I definitely didn’t fly somewhere to see the Eras tour, as many die-hards did, in some cases more than once. I think that’s great that there are people out there who do– who have loved her from the beginning and have never stopped. Perhaps that makes you braver, more willing to feel your feelings than I am, if you’re one of those. I applaud that. The world needs more sparkly dresses, friendship bracelets, and love songs. It’s the strongest people who can wear their heart on their sleeve. I hope we can all learn to be more like Swifties someday.