0.38.0 - So Make The Friendship Bracelets

 Dashboard!

I'm not using the album cover as the header image because its a woman in a bikini top and Bluesky will probably label that as "explicit content"

Being an avid Taylor Swift fan is one of the things which has brought me the most positive and rewarding experiences in my music listening history.  This isn't a gimmick, or an affectation, a quirky oh-so-unexpected contrarian opinion I have to make myself sound interesting.  My love of Pop music, infectious pop music, inspiring and lyrical pop music is deep seated and almost certainly dates back to seeing Kylie Minogue perform in a tent in 1997 and redefining the boundaries I'd erected for myself around what was and wasn't 'acceptable' music for me to listen to.  I've listened to Lady Gaga and Kylie and Girls Aloud and Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, and Carly Rae Jepsen and a host of Eurovision artists this year because pop music, like all music done well. has the power to touch and express parts of your emotional spectrum, to enhance already treasured memories and express the emptiest and most tragic despair.

There has never been a better, more effective producer of pop music in my lifetime than Taylor Swift.  

This isn't clout chasing, this isn't fairweather fandom.  I worry that people see me talking about Taylor and assume I'm some Era's Tour hanger-on, someone who's relationship to Taylor's music is rooted only in a tracklist of forty-four songs, a global greatest hits tour*.  I bought a copy of Red in 2012 and wore out the grooves** on it after hearing I Knew You Were Trouble once and having it stuck in my head for a week.  When 1989 unleashed Shake It Off and Style and Blank Space onto the charts I was already sold;  and I gave it the same reverential treatment that I had given the previous album.  At the time I appreciated her music, thought both albums were incredibly musically strong, and if someone had asked me what I thought of Taylor Swift back in 2014 I would have said I was a fan of hers.

But I wasn't a Swifite.  I wasn't ride or die for her, wasn't invested, didn't have the deep appreciation required to earn that title.  Times changed, priorities changed, and when Reputation and Lover arrived, I let them pass me by.  I heard Look What You Made Me Do and kind of thought she'd lost her mind;  it didn't hook me, bring me in like the other singles had.  I was happy for us to drift apart, secure in the knowledge that I would always have the memories of the albums of hers I enjoyed.

Hopefully I can safely post the album cover here away from the misguided attentions of the Bluesky content moderation team.

In December 2021 I was slowly losing my mind along with everyone else. We had been through six months of lockdowns, Catherine and I seeing no-one except except each other and our friend Rachel in our little 3-person support bubble, and what had started as a fun novelty for someone who loves being an introvert and has a slightly misanthropic outlook on occasion had turned into a sanity-eroding tide of isolation and repetition.  In an effort to keep myself slightly rooted in reality I'd turned, as I always do, to music.  I listened to music constantly, and I took recommendations from anywhere and everywhere to find new albums to consume for the dopamine hit which always comes from hearing something new and special for the first time.  Folklore had come too early in the year to attract my attention;  Evermore arrived in December when I needed it the most, and with such expansive coverage that it couldn't help but come to my attention.  

"I like Taylor Swift" I told myself as I read some online music magazine marvelling at Taylor releasing two albums in the same year, "I should listen to this".

Over the course of the month to follow I listened to Evermore constantly.  I replayed champagne problems three, five, eight times in a row a some points.  The title track would fade into the close of the album, and I would cue willow back up and start the cycle anew.  In that album I discovered the modern incarnation of the James Taylor and Carole King albums I inherited from my parents, a kind of wistful, characterful narrative wrapped up in considered lyricism and beautiful, low-key instrumentation.  By the time the dopamine hit of revelling in the existence of Evermore was wearing off, I had Folklore waiting in the wings to repeat the cycle again.  Then I went back, revisited the old albums I'd enjoyed then further back, into Speak Now and Fearless through the enduring project which was the Taylor's Version re-records***, filling in the blank spaces I'd left in my Taylor discography.  

This wasn't planned or coordinated;  organically, the combination of a historical familiarity, a moment in time and a pair of stripped down, story heavy albums which touched the core of what made music I grew up listening so memorable, captured me.  In 2014 I was a Taylor Swift fan.  By the end of 2022, I was a Swiftie, convinced thoroughly that she was not only one of the most important figures in western music to exist in my lifetime, but that I felt a connection with all aspects of her music throughout her long career.  

By 2022, when Midnights was released, I experienced my first new Taylor Swift record as a real fan.  I drove my hour commute to work and back as we filtered back into the office as lockdowns eased and lifted, listening to the album on repeat.  At relentless pace, Taylor's Versions rained down on me, along with the Era's Tour.  I knew when the UK dates were announced that I had to try and go, to see her at any price, to be a part of the singularly most significant live musical event I'm ever likely to witness.  I registered everywhere I could, and got my name picked out of a hat for a show in Edinburgh.  On the day of the ticket release, I spent two hours on my computer, trying initially for three tickets, then two tickets;  finally, unwilling to miss out but unable to get tickets for anyone else, I bought a single ticket for myself for Edinburgh Night 3, booked a hotel, booked train tickets, and spent the following twelve months learning every song from the Era's Tour setlist, every lyric, every bridge, every break.  

Through that process I finally went back and revisited Lover and Reputation.  I overcame my initial feelings about Reputation the more time I spent with it;  I spent a fourteen hour long haul flight to Japan listening to the entire album on repeat, and then Don't Blame Me, one of the most transcendent pieces of music in her entire back catalogue, singularly restarting over and over again as I peered down at the lights of Tokyo in the darkness.

I wrote expansively about The Tortured Poets Department back in February for my 200th album of this project, but I hope by now my feelings are clear - I think Taylor Swift is an incredible musician, her music has given me both access to a wide range of my own emotional states, it's informed the way I think about language, and it's acted as my own personal antidepressant and emotional anchor in some weird, weird times.

I knew she wouldn't let me down.

We are about 36 hours after the release of The Life Of A Showgirl.  Last night I very self-consciously went alone to the album release party cinema experience at the local movie theatre, where by gender and age I was the significant minority.  The album is receiving mostly glowing reviews and the usual set of "I'm so over it / we're so back" mixed feelings from 'fans' who only want her to make music in a certain way that they enjoy, and never to change, or where it's on trend to create credibility by aloofly and snidely tearing down the enjoyment of others because the music doesn't meet nebulous standards only you have set****.

I'm not interested in other peoples views, and I know my own will evolve and refine in time as I have more time to sit with and dissect this record, but for now I am enthralled by it; in raptures at the way it makes me feel and the sounds it creates and the mood that radiates off it like sunshine.  I've heard this album called a 'victory lap' but who is she performing for?  Who is even racing against her?  This is an album that exists because I don't think Taylor Swift can exist without wanting to make music.  It's a passion that she has to satisfy, a hunger to write and express and create that will never go away.  People have assigned all manner of motives to the production of this album but I think the fact is it exists because Taylor Swift wanted to make music, more music, was energised and existed by success and love and needed and outlet for that.  

So it will be celebrated and torn apart and motives attached to it which bear little to no resemblance to the reasons for its existence and that's just how it is when you are the biggest pop star in the world I guess.  Personally, I really like it and have spent the last day and a half playing it on repeat.  I'm not sure it's going to convince anyone in the world to change their stance on her music, but what could at this point?

Speaking of which...

I saw this question and was struck by it.  I'm not interested in trying to blast the person asking it but to try and unpick the sentiment behind it.  When you are nineteen years into a musical career and releasing album number twelve, having just completely a generationally successful tour which demonstrated the insane size of your existing fanbase, who are you writing for except yourself and your fans?   Does she need, every time, to try and convince the people who've remained unconvinced for the last decade plus that now's she's really going to reach out to them with something new and different?  Were there people in 1970, as Let It Be is heading for the presses, asking "Have the Beatles really done anything to try and make their music accessible to new fans since Revolver?". 

I recognise the frustration.  "I don't find this thing appealing, but it seems many other people do.  Why is it not also for me if it's so popular?"  You can feel like you are missing the secret, the punchline, the key that unlocks what it is.  You can place yourself outside or above the people enjoying themselves because you have to believe that those people are somehow not being critical enough, are enjoying things because they feel they are required to based on their declared fandom, and are deluding themselves somehow.  If they could just stop being a fan of this persons music, then maybe they would like it less.

Does that benefit anyone?  If it does, I can't see how.  

I've been putting off writing holistically about my fandom of Taylor Swift in anticipation of his moment, a new album release this year, and that it happened at exactly the right time to allow it to be both the 800th album I listened to, and The Life Of A Showgirl to be the 10,000th new song I heard this year was kismet.  I said at the head of this article that being a swiftie has been a positive and rewarding experience, and I meant every word;  it's also the thing which has made me more self conscious as a music fan than anything I've ever done.  

In my Bluesky bio I describe myself as a 'Sideline Swiftie'.  There's a supportive, incredibly active community of swifties I'm connected to on social media.  They're almost exclusively women anywhere from the age of 18 upward.  They're incredibly positive, helpful, uplifting people who deeply enjoy their shared interest in Taylor's music.  When I went to the Era's tour, everyone I spoke to was excited, helpful and chatty.  I must have been asked to take a hundred photos with other people's cameras - them in front of the stage, having the time of their lives.  I chatted with people in the row next to me and in the merch queue and walking out of the stadium after.  I've met colleagues and strangers who, when they see me in my Taylor shirt or Era's Tour hoodie immediately find a common starting point for a conversation.  I sat in a room of 147 women and 5 men last night to watch the Life Of A Showgirl release party, but before that happened I spent at least a day asking myself if I should even go.

The space that swifties occupy - in person, online, anywhere -  is a place primarily for women, often young adult women, to bond and express themselves and feel safe.  I'm deeply conscious that I'm a white man staring down the wrong side of 50 in less than a year and I look like I belong more at a Grateful Dead concert than a Taylor Swift one.  I look like a threat, like someone trying to fake their way into this safe space with ulterior motives.  I'd be suspicious of me;  if I didn't know me, I'd be constantly asking what my agenda was, and rightfully so.  I don't ever want to be in a position where someone's enjoyment is diminished, where they are made less comfortable, less open, less able to enjoy themselves by my presence.  

So I ask myself how I indulge my musical interests without impacting anyone else's?  I convince myself I can stay out of the way, not engage, arrive late and leave early, keep my head down and not make anyone too uncomfortable.  Online, I relentlessly avoid engagement where I can;  I bask in the reflected light of community without trying to involve myself in it.  I sit on the sidelines, where I can't cause any harm but can still feel like I'm a part of the excitement.  So if you are reading this and you are one of the many swifties I followed in Swiftie Starter packs way back when the Bluesky migration happened, know that I cheer for your successes, commiserate with your setbacks, and appreciate your bonds of support and love for each other, it's a wonderful sight to see.

* This is not me minimising the importance of the Era's Tour, which is individually most the impressive musical live performance I have ever witness and I am constantly in awe of the production value and dedication that took to perform once, never mind 150 times across two years.

** It was a CD and did not have grooves but you take my meaning.

*** I might have talked about this before, I don't remember, but the respect I have for Taylor investing such time and effort and money into undoing a great wrong which was done to her and her music, and the degree to which the fans supported and uplifted those efforts gave me such appreciation for both her and the community of fans around her it convinced me that being a 'swiftie' wasn't a shameful tag to be glossed over or avoided, but something to declare proudly.

**** Someone should write a song about how being impassioned and genuine and empathetic on the internet isn't cool but being genuine and impassioned and empathetic as a person is what makes people want to be around us IRL.  I'm sure someone will get to it eventually.