Why I love Taylor Swift

This may seem off topic, but it’s not.

The purpose of my writing is to make people feel less alone, less ashamed, less hurt by the things that have happened to them by sharing my own stories that may be relatable. This is not something I’ve always been comfortable doing. People will say that I’ve always been honest, blunt, and open; but truthfully, I have kept a lot of these things to myself because I was conditioned to feel a certain way about them by my family, my upbringing, my peers, my government, my society, my … everything. So, it’s only recently that I’ve felt the strength to share these things and to let go of the embarrassment or the guilt that I have because they’re all just human experiences and responses; and a lot of them were done TO me, so I shouldn’t be taking on any accountability for those things, at least in the way that I have for most of my life.

Taylor Swift and I are both 1989 babies and grew up in similar societies, despite being across the country from each other. And this is not anything unique to me. A lot of us in our mid-thirties now have gone through similar situations with similar assumptions / understandings of the world and our place in it. So, because of this, and because of how open Taylor Swift has been with her experiences and people’s reactions to those experiences, I know that we have some of that same baggage about being honest and open. But from day 1, she has shared with us the gory details, regardless of how she may be perceived, how they may make her look, or how it could impact her future. And that is impressive and amazingly brave.

Self-titled

I fell in love with Taylor’s music from the moment I heard “Tim McGraw”. I was 17 years old and felt that yearning from the first guitar chord and knew that she has wanted like I have wanted.

I wasn’t unpopular in school, but I definitely wasn’t part of the “popular group”, and this was a little by choice. I worked very hard in my younger years to fit in and to be something that I was not. This led to a dip in my education, some questionable decisions with boys and drugs, and a body just brimming with self-esteem issues. By the time I got into my sophomore year, I started to reprioritize school, stepped away from drugs and alcohol, and didn’t focus as much on the boys at my school, but that was mostly because I spent a majority of the year in a very abusive relationship. Following that breakup, I had to rebuild myself and my friendships, and that allowed me to get to know myself a bit more and it shined a lot of lights on my flaws and qualities.

I’ve always been one to fantasize about the perfect romance, to live my life like I’m the star of a rom-com. I would tell lies about the sweet things that boys did to make myself seem more appealing, more desired. I set up expectations that would never be reached, but I couldn’t help wanting them.

In Taylor’s first album, she sings a lot about young love and dealing with sweet boys and also dumb boys. It’s very exaggerated, because boys this age don’t really do the things that she talks about. And she has explained after its release that these songs are not autobiographical, but rather things that happened to others around her or something from stories, etc. So, she’s doing the same thing I was doing, but on a much larger scale and without shame in admitting that it wasn’t really what was happening.

The song, “Tim McGraw” is about being remembered by an old love even after the relationship ends. This could be the underlying definition of my issues with men. From being abandoned by my father at a year old, to desperately wanting the Hollywood movie moment in all of my relationships / situationships, it all comes down to wanting to make an impact and to be missed by those who left. Safe to say that even though I didn’t understand the depths of my feelings at the time, I clung to this song instantly as the soundtrack to my fantasies.

Because this isn’t actually something that Taylor experienced but rather something she imagined and sang about as romantic, she really showed her vulnerability by describing what she wants. She wants someone to think about her anytime a certain singer comes on because she made such an impact that he cannot possibly disassociate her from the sound. Amazing.

Because Taylor and I are generally the same age, we experienced a lot of the same experiences and themes at the same time. With each new album release, I found more and more things to which I could relate and I couldn’t shake my love for her music, despite it being super uncool to like her.

Taylor started as a country singer. For most of my teenage years, the correct response to “What kind of music do you like” was “Anything but country”, so strike one (well, technically two since she was a young woman and this country hates women). When she moved into pop, I remember a lot of comments were about how she abandoned her roots, or that she only started in country because it was easier, but the goal was always pop. No one recognized her skills at moving from genre to genre and creating new and interesting sounds. Instead, she was just a hypocrite or a snake.

Fearless

When “Fearless” came out, we really got to hear her discuss actual events in her life, and she didn’t hold back. I remember watching an interview with her during the release cycle and she explained how they had basically completed the album when Joe Jonas broke up with her in the infamous voicemail, and she quickly penned “Forever and Always” and basically forced them to let her add it. I told my boyfriend at the time about it, saying how cool it was that she could write it so quickly and get it out immediately to really share her grief, and he said, “That’s insane how petty she is. Like, ‘oh let me just add this song that totally shit-talks my ex before I release this.’ That’s just embarrassing.”

That’s just e m b a r r a s s i n g.

Something that I thought was so cool suddenly was seen as embarrassing by a boy. And I definitely made a note of that in my mental processing of future events.

But it’s not embarrassing; it’s honest. It’s fucking awesome. You have a platform where you can air your shit in a super poetic way and call out bullshit that happens to you that us girls get to listen to to finally get a second opinion on a situation like this. Boys are fucking shitty and they’ll say things that they don’t mean, and then cower away and leave you feeling less than even though you didn’t do anything. You’re not allowed to question what happened or point out that he said “forever and always” and then dumped you. That’s something you keep to yourself and you save face by pretending like it didn’t happen that way.

But Taylor said, fuck that, and told us exactly what happened.

This album includes other, seemingly embarrassing wishful songs, like “Love Story”, “You Belong with Me”, and the one that really resonates with my heart, “If This Was a Movie”. These are all fantasies that she’s sharing with us, of happy endings occurring for her, where she is the exception to the rule and she gets this super heightened romance from high school boys … I mean, come on! But it’s what we all wanted. It’s what we all fantasized about, desired from these loser teenage boys that surrounded us.

“If This was a Movie” literally says, if this was a movie, then you’d be doing exactly what I want you to do. You would make this right, you would save our relationship, and you would love me like I love you. But it’s not a movie, so he’s not. And that honestly took me years to untangle in my own life. But she’s here, basically a child, explaining this vulnerable truth that she wishes life was like a movie because she would get what she wants. Being so blunt and sharing such a silly truth is incredible.

Speak Now

“Speak Now” is the fucking best example of this vulnerability, especially from such a young woman. Taylor has lived more life now, she has been fucked over, used, and harshly criticized in the public eye. I felt all of those things too, just obviously on a much smaller scale. “Dear John” is so fucking brutal and amazing. I finally started writing about my terrible experiences with men only this year. This was the first time that I’ve really called them out for the shit that they did, the way that they abused me, groomed me, tested me, betrayed me all for their own gain and glory. And she’s here, so freshly out of the relationship with John Mayer, and she calls him out immediately.

She starts the song claiming, “I should’ve known” that this wasn’t a good situation and it wasn’t okay. This was a terrible relationship that really forced her to grow up and destroyed a lot of her innocence, and she’s still figuring out the fallout from that (e.g. “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”). By the end of the song, she changes it to “You should’ve known”, and that is so brave. She’s no longer taking blame or responsibilities for these actions. She was a child and he was a fully grown adult. This is on him, not her. And he should’ve known, but he did it anyway. On this huge stage that she’s created, she’s calling out a very famous singer and straight up saying that he abused her and took advantage of her, knowing full well that he could. Fucking legend.

This album also has the song “Mean” on it, where she describes the experience of being written about so rudely by an adult man when she’s just a kid putting out music that she made. This song tells girls it’s okay to stand up to bullies and to not suffer in silence. This man wrote shitty things about a literal child and she’s like, “okay, well I’m gonna keep moving forward in my life, find more happiness and success, and you’re just always gonna be a dick.” Again, baller move.

It’s important to note that Taylor doesn’t only write about when guys fuck her over, she also openly sings about her own mistakes and regrets. “Back to December” describes how she broke up with someone because she thought she would find something better, but she’s bummed because she let someone good go. This is very typical for girls coming into their own. You have this nice guy, but he’s not giving that excitement and drama that you think you want or expect, so you bail. And then you end up with terrible dudes and you’re like, “why the fuck did I do this? Can I go back in time and not break up with the nice guy?”

Red

I could talk about and write essays for days on “All Too Well” 10-minute version. I always loved this song when “Red” first came out. I would belt it and feel everything that she was saying. Hanging onto something that was so important to her and wondering if he was affected by it at all (again, theme of my trauma).

When the 10 minute version came out, I was much older, obviously, but listening to it brought me right back to those early 20s years when I felt the words deep in my soul, and then you get the extra verses. She is airing out all her dirty laundry for us to hear in the most beautiful way. She was so fucking in love with him and she thought he was in love with her too, but he didn’t take her seriously because she was young and he broke her heart and just moved on. She is stuck in this time and she can’t get past it and it’s so hard when you see your ex and they’re just fine. It’s like an additional dagger in the heart.

This extended version of that song and “The Moment I Knew” is so pivotal to my love for Taylor Swift. She straight up admits that her boyfriend, with whom she’s in love, does not show up to her 21st birthday party, with all of her friends around. She cries in front of everyone, has to “say hopelessly, ‘he said he’d be here’”, and just falls apart with everyone’s attention on her.

This is the classic definition of embarrassment and shame, and instead of hiding this story away, she tells us all the details from what happened to how it made her feel. And how this act told her that it wasn’t gonna work out. Again, just taking this shitty situation and turning into a lesson for us that we should not put up with this behavior from men. It’s beautiful.

1989

In her next albums, she really embraced the fans’ reactions and the public opinions about her, using her intelligence and wit to feed into the lore or to claim the negative stories as her own. “Blank Space” from “1989” is an historic song. The media spent a lot of time shaming her for having boyfriends, for dating, for being at all sexual, and for not hiding this from anyone. We were all doing this in our early- and mid-twenties, but we weren’t being captured by the paparazzi so we didn’t have the same scale of audience that she did. And again, instead of changing her ways and keeping relationships secret or trying to fit the virgin persona, she wrote an ironic song about how she goes through men and how she’s crazy. Again, I don’t know if everyone grasps how hard that is to do and how much bravery it takes a woman to do that in this country.

“1989” is noted as one of the best pop albums ever released, and it’s from someone who started in country music. It is an album that changed her musical trajectory and changed music in general. Fight me on this.

Taylor moving into pop is additionally interesting because it’s a genre of music that is not taken seriously and is considered feminine, and thus less than. So, on top of her vulnerability, she’s smartly pairing deep, poetic lyrics with dance beats to confuse your brain in the best way. Up to this point, only Taylor could make me dance and sob in the same song.

Reputation

What can I say about “Reputation” that hasn’t already been said? It’s an incredible album that Taylor herself says she can’t redo.

It’s the comeback for the ages and it also has one of the most romantic track-lists of her discography. What a combination! When “Look What You Made Me Do” premiered after years of not hearing from her, I sat in silence for a full minute after the song ended. It premiered with a lyric video that I watched as well, and I remember being like, “WHAT TAYLOR IS THIS?!” And I was not ready for that answer.

Side tangent: my friends and I went to see the Eras Tour in Miami following the European shows and seeing the performance of this song in the pouring rain on that Sunday night show … my god. I will never forget that moment.

“Reputation” Taylor had a very hard exterior, almost a grunge punk aesthetic, and yet, we hear her singing “Delicate”, “King of My Heart”, “Dress”, and “New Year’s Day”, which all just pierce through my heart. This album was her latest release when my now-husband and I started dating. These songs spoke so directly to me, I felt like she wrote it for my relationship, in addition to her own.

I remember a conversation about “Dress” really focusing on Taylor’s dad. What does he think of this? Could you imagine being her dad knowing that she’s slept with all of these people? It was a real reminder that anytime women discuss sex, it has to always be scrutinized through a male lens.

Who cares what her father thinks? She’s in love and finds her partner sexy. That’s great! Men sing about fucking women constantly, and we’re never asking, “what does his mom think of this?” Taylor owning her sexuality as she continues to grow and be in the public eye, where everyone has an opinion of her relationship history takes a lot confidence, and that’s something that a lot of us didn’t have at that age (or even now. I’m still figuring out how to be comfortable with it).

Lover

As I said, Taylor and I really experienced similar life events around the same time, so her music was not only relatable, but almost always relevant to my current life. “Lover” was released a year into my relationship with my husband. I listened to this album on repeat for months, just feeling giddy for her and for me that we found partners and loving relationships.

I really love the songs on this album that point out her insecurities. Yes, she has a partner and is in a long-term relationship that appears healthy, but she’s still got doubts and baggage from her past that she has to work through with him. “Afterglow” is a real confession of how she fights / argues. She picks and pokes and knows that she’s being unreasonable or even hurtful, but she doesn’t mean it and she just wants to skip forward to when they’re happy again. Women are not perfect and we try hard to keep our calm because being called crazy by a man is basically a death sentence. But she’s out here being like, “yeah, sometimes I’m crazy in these situations, but we know we both love each other, so let’s just get through it.”

Another major hit of this album in this theme is “The Man”. What a banger. What a poetic thesis on the terms of our society. If she was a man, would she be even further in her success and in her life? Would her actions that have been scrutinized for years be lauded if she wasn’t a woman? And she’s really calling out how it’s fucking bullshit that this is even a question. She’s done so much and has made amazing business moves, but is not recognized for that. Instead, she’s a woman, so she’s not taken seriously, despite her historical success.

This makes me think about when she wanted to make an Eras Tour movie. She went to a bunch of production companies, offering the rights, and no one said yes. They didn’t think it would be successful. So she went directly to the theatres and signed a deal with AMC to play her tour video. And both Taylor and AMC made an insane amount of money from that.

I didn’t have the cash available when she played near me, so the first time I saw the Eras Tour was in theatres. And still in my seat, I looked up tickets for her European shows while the credits roll and bought some later that day because I HAD to see this in person. So I saw her in Paris and then once more in Miami. But she’s a woman and a pop star, so the business savvy is ignored.

“Lover” isn’t as deep as some of her other albums, but we witness her in love, and that’s amazing fan service that she provides. Because she’s been so open and honest about her life, we do feel like we know her, even though we’ve never met her. So, when she’s happily in love and living her life, we feel that joy with her and for her. And it’s wonderful.

Folklore & Evermore

I know “Folklore” and “Evermore” are two separate albums, but they really represent a single moment in time for me in my parasocial relationship with Taylor, so it’s hard for me to talk about them separately.

These are the COVID albums and what a surprise they were. They just randomly dropped one day and she’s like, “yeah I wrote these while in quarantine” and then we all collectively questioned our time at home and what we did with it. I started a bunch of new hobbies and immediately quit them; so basically the same level of achievement.

When I first heard these albums, they felt like breakup songs or retrospective love songs, which was confusing. Did she and Joe break up? She described them as made-up stories that she came up with while locked inside, but has later confessed that these are more aligned with her life than she originally let on.

I love that she used these albums to profess her love for someone else while in a dying relationship. It’s all at once a romantic gesture, a puzzle for listeners to figure out, and a desperate plea for her partner to pay attention and right the road before its too late. Taylor using these songs as her emotional outlet while she clings to her long-term relationship is so vulnerable and risky, but she takes the chance. And she delivers some beautiful tracks.

“Cardigan” is a flawless song. The verses, chorus, double bridge … it’s perfect. And such an apt metaphor for feeling lonely in an relationship, where it takes someone else to make you feel important again. She pairs this with “Betty” and “August” for the love triangle plot, but also sings about “Illicit Affairs” in a very movie-like way. All of which made us fans question what was going on in her life. She kept it close (we didn’t know until TTPD), the albums acting as her secret messages to a specific listener.

“Evermore” is even more obvious in hindsight. “Ivy”, “Cowboy Like Me”, “Right Where You Left Me”, “Tis the Damn Season” all speak of a lost love or a connection that shouldn’t happen, but it does. And songs like “Happiness”, “Champagne Problems”, “Evermore”, and “It’s Time to Go” feel like she’s already moved on from a significant relationship. But throughout these two albums, Joe was still by her side, so we took it at face value that these were musings of her imagination. Again, the confidence it takes her to do this is staggering.

Midnights

Talk about hidden messages and perplexing lyrics, “Midnights” came to the scene with a lot to digest in incredible song compositions. This grammy-winning album is full of beautiful poetry in synth-pop masterpieces. All about late night thoughts and things that keep you up, Taylor markets it as reflecting on the past, but after her and Joe’s breakup, it definitely feels more current than retrospective.

I already brought up “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” as it relates to “Dear John”, but I could continue talking about this banger all day. This is so beautifully written and performed as someone looking back on their experience with an older, abusive boyfriend and how that impacted her life. Basically what I’m doing now with this website.

The first time I heard the line, “Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first” I cried. My memory shot me back to the early relationships that I had with men and how they redirected my life path so severely with their actions. I was so changed after those experiences, and at the time, I was okay because I felt older and like I knew more; but in hindsight, I see the destruction that it caused. I lost my innocence, I lost my power; and they knew that that would happen and they didn’t care. And it hit really deep.

“Maroon” is one of my favorite songs. When “Red” was released (song), I fell in love with her descriptions of love, comparing them to colors. Here, she extends that to a more mature lens, and it’s fantastic. It’s more somber, a darker red, and the chorus displays some amazing breath control. I’m never not here for it.

Similar to previous albums when she exposes her own flaws, “Anti-Hero” is an amazing deconstruction of her persona, letting us in even further. This is not a song that celebrates her traits, but rather points out that she’s the problem; and again, we can all relate. This isn’t about taking the blame or accountability on things that happen to you, but owning how you grow from those events and your response to what life gives you. And she’s admitting that she’s not great at it.

Because we all watch Taylor from afar, it’s easy to assume her life is perfect and she is perfect, but she is telling us in no uncertain terms that she’s not. And it’s not because she’s a woman or has imposter syndrome; it’s all just very human.

And, I can’t not talk about “Midnights” without mentioning “You’re On Your Own Kid”. It is a beautiful song to her fans and to herself, reminding everyone that you can handle anything, because you already have. Definitely more direct, but still so powerful.

The one vault track from this album is potentially one of the best Taylor Swift songs I’ve ever heard, “You’re Losing Me”. It’s so beautiful and sad and a desperate plea for her partner to ONCE AGAIN pay attention and make changes otherwise he’s gonna lose her. It ties back to “Tolerate It” and other “Folklore / Evermore” songs, feeling like she’s giving everything in a relationship and not getting what she needs back. I think every woman can relate to this.

And she’s singing it as a warning to him, not as a sad song for herself. She knows she’s a good partner and deserves one back, so he better shape up or she’s gone. It’s a very confident approach to attempting to salvage a relationship.

The Tortured Poets Department

I have to admit, when I read that Taylor’s next album was titled, “The Tortured Poets Department”, I rolled my eyes a little. How corny! But, my god, when it came out and I listened to the full anthology, I knew there was not a better title for it.

This album is a straight, poetic trauma dump. It’s full of hard truths, confessions, pettiness, anger, and heartbreak; and every song is written so god-damn well, it’s impossible to understand the full depth of her intelligence. As fans, we assumed that this would be a deconstruction of her breakup with Joe, but then we were let in on the decade long foreplay that preceded the 2-week relationship she had with Matty Healy.

The lyrics on this album describe how one feels (namely women) when they believe a lie told so compellingly by a partner who then suddenly leaves without any real explanation. It’s so raw and emotional, and (again) embarrassing to admit these things. From the outside, they had a small romance in the summer following the breakup with her long-time partner; but in actuality, he love bombed her for years, told her he would provide to her what her current boyfriend was not, and then bailed when he got what he said he wanted. And she was left, alone, feeling like she just lost the love of her life.

Unfortunately, I’ve been there. Not to this extreme, necessarily, but I have fallen for the idea of someone and something based on how they have presented it. Fallen so hard that I change my life, my personality, my needs to give them what they want so that we can get the ending that they promised, only to be dumped so easily that I couldn’t speak from the insane whiplash.

Not only does she sing about her hurt and anger, in absolute masterpieces like “loml”, “Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, and “The Black Dog”, but she also provides details about how we got here. “Guilty As Sin?” is straight up an outline of her fantasies about this man while she was still in her relationship, asking whether she actually did anything wrong since she never touched him while with Joe. “Fresh Out The Slammer” tells us that she not only had a plan for her post-breakup, but how this new relationship was instrumental in ending the previous one. “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” and “Peter” shed light on the last ten years and answer some open questions left by the “Midnights” and “Folklore / Evermore” albums.

Not only is Taylor sharing her story that ended in absolute heartbreak, but she’s describing how she fell for this. She wasn’t stupid or imagining things; he made her fall in love and then he left and she had to figure out what the fuck just happened. She gives us a summary of the events in this perfect bridge:

You shit-talked me under the table, talkin’ rings and talkin’ cradles
I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all
Dancing phantoms on the terrace, are they second-hand embarrassed
That I can’t get out of bed cause something counterfeit’s dead?
It was legendary, it was momentary
It was unnecessary, should’ve let it stay buried

Even today, Matty talks about the relationship as a fling and nothing serious, making comments that imply that Taylor is making more of this than it is; and this is a classic case of gaslighting. So it’s amazing that Taylor says, no, I’m gonna tell you what the fuck happened in a way that makes sense for him since he’s also noted as an amazing song writer.

The levels that she brings to every song are endless. The lyrics are one thing, but then there’s the beat, how the song is composed, how certain words are said, the cultural references behind the use of certain words or phrases. You can find so much meaning the deeper you go, but also just love the song at a surface level without any further understanding required.

“So High School” leans into the idea of this essay so well. This song brings us back to having crushes, being so enthralled with someone that you can’t hide your giddiness. It’s fucking adorable, and it calls out things that girls do in the sweetest way. “I wanna find you in a crowd just to hide from you” brings me back to being young and desperately searching for my crush only to watch him from afar. We did this, but never admitted it. Yet, here she is, not only calling out that this is obviously a thing that she’s done before, but that that feeling is so pure and exciting, that that’s how this relationship in her adult years makes her feel. COME THE FUCK ON!

The songs that seem to point to her breakup with Joe are beautifully tragic, including “So Long, London” and “How Did It End?”. It’s almost like “So Long, London” is the response to those in the song asking, “How did it end?” She calls back to the media’s opinion of her and her dating history, and the need for people to gossip and discuss another Taylor Swift breakup.

“So Long, London” tells the story of how she felt lonely and isolated in a seemingly happy relationship (the followup to “You’re Losing Me”). This is a feeling that many women experience and it’s hard to move on because he’s not a bad guy, but he’s not providing what you need. It takes strength to say, “this isn’t what I want” and then to be able to leave. Yes, she had a man waiting for her, which perhaps makes the decision easier, though, of course, that falls through.

Finally, she gives us a lot of introspective songs that show us how she’s learned some things about herself and where she’s trying to grow. “Clara Bow”, “The Albatross”, “The Prophecy”, “The Bolter”, and “Robin” are incredible songs that blend how society looks at Taylor, how she looks at herself, and what she now prioritizes in life. These are post-therapy songs FOR SURE!

Finally, her closing track, “The Manuscript” is a stunning ending chapter that gets us ready for the next era. She directly tells us, “okay, here’s all my shit, now it’s yours. I’m done being hurt and sad about it. I’m ready to be the next version of myself and I’m letting this all go.” What a bold statement! But, from what we’ve seen coming for “The Life of a Showgirl”, it appears that this bold statement is quite accurate.

Is Taylor a perfect person? Of course not. I hate that she’s a billionaire when I believe that they shouldn’t exist, but I also recognize that her fortune and success has come with so much of her own hard work and struggles, rather than from exploiting others, like so much of the top 1% has done. And I know that people think Taylor Swift fans are crazy and annoying; and that’s fine. I am a fan of her as a person and as a musician. Though we’ve never met, I do feel connected to her through her incredibly vulnerable songwriting and through the relationship she chooses to have with us fans.

She is a fairly private person, but (especially lately and pre-Reputation era) she has wanted to tell us things directly, whether it’s music related or personal. Her engagement post was an amazing example of this. She shared it on her site, with very personal pictures from the moment, and with a little sweet inside joke that her fans and his fans understand. And we LOVED it!

Is this a healthy fandom? Probably not, but it’s fun. And she plays with us, and THAT’S fun.

I know people (my husband included) say, “I don’t understand why you love Taylor Swift”, but it’s because she’s made all of us feel like her friends, her sisters, her closest confidants as she spills her soul to us through her music. She makes us feel seen and less alone; and she shows us that even at her level, shitty things happen but the best way to get through it is to talk (or sing) about it. And that’s the whole point of this website!