It's 2006, and I am 4 years old. To your average 4-year-old, the world seems to be doing okay. I go through my days with simplicity, an electric feeling for the spontaneity I attribute to the mundane. My mum is playing the new country album through the speakers, my sister screams to turn it off, I scream to turn it up. This is the beginning of something big. My mother is raising a fan girl; she can see it in my eyes, I can feel it in my bones, and we can hear it through the speakers. A song about Tim McGraw plays, and I swear there are sun rays dancing around the walls, 'putting the stars to shame'.
Fast forward two years, it's 2008, I'm now 6 years old, and I'm sitting under the Christmas tree eagerly awaiting permission to open the gifts. Very delicately, I rip the paper to shreds and underneath lies a round disc in perfect condition. Before I know it, I am dancing around my room, 'head first, Fearless'. 'I don't know how it gets better than this'. I dance, I scream, and even though I am 6 years old, I understand every word. This is honesty. This is songwriting.
It's now October 25th, 2010; I am 8 years old and declaring that Speak Now is and will remain my favourite album until the end. I haven't listened to many albums before, but I am positive this album is groundbreaking. I thought that Fearless was honest, but these songs are splintering all the boundaries of music that I know. She is singing about this relentless world in a way no artist has done before. You can tell she is writing from the very bottom of her heart. This album is standing with me now; this album 'will stand by me forever'.
It's now 6am, some years later. No one is awake. My childish behaviour has left me 3 hours of daylight before anyone else decides to lift an eyelid. I'm bored, so I hook up my pink stereo. "I'm walking fast through the traffic lights…" I dance and cry and enjoy these few hours I have to myself. At first, I played Red at least 15 times a day. But slowly, my parents put a restriction on it; they're sick of listening to the same songs over and over and over. It starts with once a day, then once a week, once a fortnight, once everyone in the house is happy to listen, once more, never again. I'm forced to turn it off. Did they not like the songs? Did they not like the lyrics? Did they not like the artist?
It's 2014; I'm now 12 years old and about to enter High School. I've convinced myself, or those around me have convinced me, that it is uncool to enjoy Taylor Swift's music. So on a trip to the plaza, I smuggle the CD out of the store, the only time I have ever stolen. I am desperate. I need this music to run thoroughly through my bones; my pulse must mend itself to the tempo, and my muscles ache in desperation. I play it on the softest volume; no one can hear it, hardly even I. You may think I am being dramatic, but I promise you, I am not. But I know this is what I've been waiting for. The songs play, the album finishes, and I replay it. And replay it. And replay it. I swear to myself, this is The Last Time I cave. I replay it. This album will be her last; I won't have to do this again. I replay it. No one has to know that I am enjoying this. I replay it. If I listen to this album enough today, I'll be sick of it tomorrow. I replay it. I won't have to hide. I replay it. I am insecure, I am scared, and I am scared that I am insecure. I replay it. It was not always like this, but it is like this now.
I hit pause.
It's been three years, and Taylor Swift hasn't said a word. The conversation dies down, and she becomes irrelevant. Her music is predictable, it's deafening, it has been done before, she is a bad role model.
The years that follow are a blur, and when you take Swift's music out of the equation, I remain despondent. I go through the wars, bleed and crack, and the walls slowly cave. I am drowning in a harsh unending melody of negativity. My first therapy session saw silence on my end. I have never been good at talking about my emotions, nor am I good at listening. So where there were questions, I sat with answers unspoken. I tend to make up stories in my head, but none have ever been worth telling, so I cover myself with blankets. I crawl into bed, close my eyes, and call it a day. At this stage, I hadn't listened to a Taylor Swift song in three years. I regret to inform you that society's judgements of her remain tethered to my brain, and I play along with their games. I explained this phenomenon to my therapist. I was so afraid of judgement that I did everything possible to ensure I wouldn't receive it. I believed that if I pretended to love the music others loved, then they'd like me more, I'd be prettier, I'd be smarter, I'd be the star, I'd be worthy. But I was wrong because, without the music, I continued to lose. If I was so quick to push away a love for music, then I'd push away everything and anyone that crossed my path. My therapist's response was clear - listen.
These ideas seem simple - if I enjoyed the music, I should just listen to it. But slowly, in the middle of her career, Taylor's music became more than music. It became a statement. A statement that you were uncool, not to be liked but to be judged. When fighting for a status I would never achieve, I knew I had to be everything I was not. I hated Taylor for making me feel this way; I hated that she'd given other people a reason to hate me. I hated her, I hated her, I hated her. I hated her so much.
I press play.
Taylor deletes everything. No one 'has heard from her in years'. What remains are albums full of stories; how did we not see this coming. She's leaving us. Going, going, gone, building a Reputation. Are you ‘Ready For It….??'
We are 'Ready For It'… Reputation is an album I do not understand immediately. Taylor is angry, and I want to know why she is angry. I don't have my moment with this album right away, but it comes, it comes in a few years' time. I feel anger and desperation coursing through my body, and this album stands beside me through it all. In a way that I don't expect anyone to understand, Reputation holds my hand when I most need it.
Again, her next album, sincerely titled 'Lover', comes, but at the wrong time. I still believe, somewhere deep down, that if I don't listen to her music, then I'll be more likeable. I am not allowed to love this music. So I don't. If I don't listen, I can't… love. Ironic, isn't it? And I continue this mindset for years and years. I go through the start of a pandemic, having dug my depression even deeper.
It's July 2020, we've been locked inside for a few months. Taylor secretly releases an album without any prior press. Panic. There is panic across the globe because how dare she give us a gut-wrenching-tear-jearking-giggle-worthy album of lyric proficiency. We are emotional wrecks still coming to terms with what a pandemic even is. For the first time, an artist pulls at all of our heartstrings. She yanks, and yanks, and yanks, and mends, and mends, and mends. Folklore wraps its arms around me tight, keeping my feet planted, I can breathe for a moment. 5 months go by, I'm still grappling with the impact of Folklore when Taylor Swift releases her second album of the year. The twin pillar of Folklore, Evermore, sits calmly as it tempers and sweetens our country-tinged eardrums. We sit with this album calmly and embrace the uncertainty that is being captured. These albums are making me reshape, repaint, and reexamine. Taylor has been doing this since I was four; it is only now that I am realising, there is safety in music.
It’s October 2022 and Taylor Swift releases an album titled Midnights. Taylors previous albums have been reinventions of who she has wanted to be, they have forced the public eye to reconsider who she is, she has rebranded herself time and time again. This album is a reflection on it all, a love letter and a hate letter. It is sassy and melodic, shit-stirring and honest, heroic and misleading. It is a binding gift, inviting us all in.
It's June 2023, Speak Now, the album I declared my favourite in 2010, remains hardwired to the speakers. Taylor has announced its re-release; she is claiming it back. And now, at 20 years old, I am too. These songs have new meanings. I have loved, loved hard, and lost just as much. I have been angry and been let down, lifted, and held up high. I have stood on the pedestal, and I have stood there proud. I have stepped back down. I play her songs through my headphones every day, and still, my heart does its little dance. Taylor Swift and I have a complicated relationship. My insecurities were held by her; she egged them on and she gave them a stage. But amongst it all, I do not blame her for this, not now, not ever. How could I? She writes from perspectives I am all too familiar with, some I am not. She has written a song for everyone; our playlists are riddled. I will meet her at midnight today, tomorrow, and every day that follows.
This is a story of self-definition because behind every song there are girls and boys growing up with Taylor and all of her friends. There is a girl listening to Fearless on the way to her first date, listening to Happiness in the aftermath, and listening to 22 on her 22nd birthday. There is a boy learning the chords to You Belong With Me when he gets his first guitar, a girl listening to Sweet Nothing when she is homesick, listening to Better Than Revenge when she isn't quite ready to move on and Back To December when she is. There is a couple reciting Lover to one another, a high achiever relating to This Is Me Trying. And me, sitting with Taylor as she sings Afterglow. I am meeting her 'in the afterglow'. Taylor has written the love letters of my life. Taylor is writing the love letters of our lives.
'Debut' was our country girl, moving on and out, a homage to the small hometowns I have had the honour of understanding. 'Fearless' was the geeky girl getting dumped for the hotter chick; it was the heartache and the heart mend. 'Speak Now' was a storyteller's guide to living through the earthquakes, and 'Red', a rebounded lover of honesty. '1989' was the concealment of fear, the dance party through our 'Wildest Dreams', a proclamation for 'This Love'. 'Reputation' was a reclaim, a stance, a power move. 'Lover', a melodic thank you. 'Folklore' and 'Evermore', our twin pillars, our standing points, living and breathing for and with us. 'Midnights' is our binding string, an invite to friendship, a hand-holding-love-letting-honesty-giving treasure of melodies.
Long live all the magic she's made.
