Taylor is inescapable right now, and so if she isn’t for you, click away now it’s fine.
But if you’re still here, this is me trying to remember this moment…
It’s not just a concert…
It was all of it. The planning a year in the making with friends. It was making the friendship bracelets. It was spending time with people who get it. It was making new friends online and in person because they shared it. I know my hockey girls and guys who love Taylor now and we have an extra thing in common. I have theatre friends who love her and we’ve shared stories and memes and Taylor joy. It’s sharing my concert joy with others and sharing theirs.
At the concert itself too it was giving bracelets to staff, chatting with them and being excited for Taylorland. It was complimenting everyone’s outfits or just admiring them from a distance. On that note wheelchair user who made themselves a UFO at Edinburgh night 3: no notes. Or hijabi Queen whose birthday it was at Cardiff that outfit slayed and you are a birthday queen. We laughed and enjoyed all the puns. We lived for a Swiftie boyfriend in a Cheifs t-shirt being a supportive Ken to his Barbie. We worship a Swiftie Dad either wearing something he clearly didn’t pick out, or just his regular Dad Uniform. But watching the show in the audience go by was just as much part of it.
As has been the debrief reliving it, seeing your show on social media hearing other people’s experiences. Sharing the joy. It might have been a year in the making but it will live on in so much more.
My Barbie
That’s the best way I could think to describe when she truly took my breath away during Speak Now era (ok song) in my second show. She’s so beautiful, so enchanting (!) in that dress, and I thought ‘she’s a real life Barbie!’ now she’s so much more, but also I think it’s ok to have both the shallow thoughts (hello Rep Bodysuit and Midnights Bodysuit) and it’s ok also to just say, yes I fully worship this blonde lady with a guitar.
For me when I was younger I never felt I fit with pop music culture. Being the Queer girlie I never fit with the ‘omg I fancy him soooo much’ culture of boybands (there’s nothing wrong with boyabnd culture I just didn’t fit in). And Spice Girls aside there wasn’t as strong a girl group culture back then. Similarly female artists have always been dismissed, not as important. But also I didn’t feel their world was for me. I didn’t fit in there either. Again they were often singing about sex and men a world that felt alien to this little Queer Girl.
But Taylor, who came about in my early 20s, Taylor felt different. Yes, she sang about boys still but it felt like a thing I could relate to. It was that country-from-the-heart storytelling that said you don’t have to have experienced this exact thing, but I bet you know that emotion. Also, Taylor felt real, accessible, like a real human not like the other popstars who didn’t feel like they were for girls like me. Taylor also from the start said let the weirdos, the quirky ones, and the outcasts come with me…and she took us along, for nearly 20 years. So seeing her, my ‘Barbie’ was in fact, seeing everything I didn’t get from pop music as a teenager when you’re supposed to. It was being given permission to live out that bit of my life.
While people mock excitement, it’s okay—it really is—to be excited about things you love.
It’s Girlhood; It’s Unmasking, It’s Joy
For me too, it was yes, Girlhood. It was that safe space to do all the things we didn’t get to do as teenagers to heal all that too. But as an autisitc person too, it was a space to be unmasked, free and myself. Part of the reason I don’t like concerts generally is I don’t know how to behave. It sounds stupid but in full masking mode it’s like ‘how do I behave at an indie/rock/pop concert’ where do I put my hands? What should my face do? Am I allowed to be emotional? Oh shit I’m emotional what do I do…
The only other concert I’ve felt ‘safe’ enough to unmask is fittingly The National, who after 20 years of loving I was only brave enough to see last year. And who I think attract enough neurodiverse people and quirky folks that it felt like a safe space to be me. Interesting that intersection Mr Dessner. Anyway.
At Taylor, I felt so free to be myself. Partly because I was with people I could be myself with. But also because everyone at Taylor is doing them, being themselves and embracing that moment. So while the girls in front of us did a full-on performance for one song (you smashed it, girls), I could SCREAM along to The Tortured Poets Department one night with a friend and the next quietly sob instead. I could stand and just stare at her in wonder, and nobody was bothered by what my face was doing. I could flap my hands in excitement or clutch them to me in delight as much as I could shout ‘I, 2, 3 let’s go bitch!’ with abandon, and nobody cared….it really felt like a judgement-free space.
It also felt like a celebration of joy. And a safe space to do it. Firstly along with outfit watching, we were joy watching. From the girls lying on the floor together to the dancing and the joyous 22 Hat kids…seeing other people’s Eras joy was all part of it. So was the fact that along with female rage, there was female joy (and I’m not erasing my boy and nonbinary Swifties here, I feel like your joy is an extension of female/girlhood joy too). We were truly doing that cliche internet thing of ‘girlhood’ because the Eras tour created a safe space for that.
And it felt like every version of a safe space. With that many people, as female/nonbinary persons, there would be a feeling of general safety awareness, as in any public space. But also policing our behaviour, our outfits, and ourselves. The Eras tour creates a space safe from that. We could wear what we wanted, behave (with joy and emotion) as we chose without someone judging us, and leave in safety. That’s huge.
But also, I extend that to all the Swiftie boys there. Especially the man living his best life at Paramore in Cardiff or the one who came with a friend for Paramore but kept discovering his love for Tyalor. You’re all honorary Girlies in the best way. But also all the Swifite boyfriends (including the one we took) and Swiftie Dads, you made that space what it was too.
It's the Songs We’d Never Hear…
In her speeches Taylor comments on how usually they’d tour one album then another. So as is the norm, you’d get ‘Red’ or 1989’ on tour, and really, besides a few token ones from the album before (Rep had 3, maybe 4 older songs thrown in) or some guest songs, the older songs have as is the way been put in if not a vault into storage.
For an old Swiftie, one who has been a fan just not a concert-going one, since Tim McGraw, then the thought of hearing some songs live is a distant fantasy. I hadn’t realised how important this was to me until I stood listening to ‘Love Story’ in Edinburgh. I didn’t think I’d cry that early, but I did…that song has been in my life for 18 years, nearly enough, and I never thought I’d hear her sing it live. At least not until some mythical future time when I was revisiting this singer from my youth…but the Eras tour gave us all that last two decades of growing up together, of the music to teens or twenties. And that felt like a special thing.
Equally, as Taylor herself said, the folklore/evermore music was music we never thought we’d hear live because it came at a time when we didn’t know what that looked like. That set felt particularly emotional for me because folklore and evermore were both my emotional support albums and writing albums for those dark years. And yes, I’m talking about the pandemic, but for me, too, the dark times that have followed those albums have been a place of solace. I guess, like for Taylor, in writing them, their fictional worlds are a place to hide. But more so they were tools to shut out the world, to regulate my emotions, to feel my feelings and more. I only have to hear the opening bars of ‘the one’ and feel calm. But at the same time, I feel passionately Betty’s story as a storyteller, I feel the burning rage of illicit affairs and the peace and sadness of Marjorie. Those stories feel special, sacred almost in Taylor’s back catalogue, and they were an emotional ride to hear live because we thought we never would.
And finally, unexpectedly, The Tortured Poet’s department was a gift of a set that we didn’t know we’d hear about or even didn’t know we needed…when we booked these tickets, it didn’t exist, even before it was on the setlist we didn’t know what it was what that would look like…and yet for me, it might be my favourite part of the concerts. It’s half an hour of burning female rage. I said when it came out that getting to scream ‘You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me’ would be healing, and I was right…that and ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ I didn’t know, even when I first listened to the album how much I needed, but I did.
Surprise songs…
The surprise songs are so weighted with everyone seemingly ‘competing’ for what they get…I wasn’t that invested either way. Though if I’d got Tim McGraw, I would have actually lost my mind. In my first show, Edinburgh Night 2, the surprise songs were fun…we got The Bolter and Getaway Car mashed up. And let me tell you, the excitement when she sang ‘Like Bonnie and Cl-yde’ was something. Then we got ‘All the Girls You’ve Loved Before’ and ‘Crazier’ cute fun, love that for me getting to hear such a deep cut. In the second show (Night 3), we got Its Nice to Have a Friend and Hey Dorothea. Excellent times for Lover and evermore girlies (I’m girlies) and for gaylors…(I couldn’t possibly comment, but a friend of Dorothea in PRIDE month Blondie? hmmm…). Then. THEN. That little blonde woman sat down at the piano and played Haunted from Speak Now. Huge for the early Swifties. Zero notes. Oh wait, she’s not done. She sings the words ‘I think I’ve seen this film before…’ and the noise that left my mouth as my soul left my body. We get a lot of ‘it’s a cult’ bad press, but singing the Bon Iver part to exile is stuff I’m willing to join a cult for, to be honest.
Then there was Cardiff.
I need a moment.
La Swift really said ‘Happy Birthday, Scooter Braun’ out loud with the first two. She stood there in the orange dress of chaos and started ‘I Forgot That You Existed’ oh girl, ‘it wasn’t love, it wasn’t hate, it’s just indifference’ you tell him. Then. THEN. She starts ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’ oh shady Queen we have no choice but to stan right now. You drag that man. That she stopped the song because she, and I quote ‘couldn’t even say it with a straight face’ at the line ‘forgiveness is a nice thing to do.’ and while I might be I quite agree, it’s impossible to say that with a straight face in that context.
Joy, pure joy. We love revenge, Taylor. We love petty Taylor, and she really did the thing.
Now I thought I’d ‘won’ surprise songs with Haunted x exile. I’d have been a happy woman with that. I got fun with The Bolter (love to hear a never-before-heard one), and Getaway Car is a stone-cold classic. I was a happy surprise song girlie right then. But when she sat at the piano, she floored me in the most unexpected way.
She started ‘I Hate It Here’ from The Torturned Poets Department. And mashed it up with ‘the lakes’ from folklore. When I say, I sobbed through the whole thing. Every time I thought I might stop crying, another line hit me over the head and sent me spiralling in the best way. There’s something- before I explain why- about being allowed to hear those songs, the ones she picks, live. They’re usually ones you wouldn’t hear elsewhere, and they don’t get sung much. They have been picked together for reasons. And it feels like a privilege.
But these songs…I couldn’t have picked them for you because I think I’d have been scared to say I wanted to hear them. Maybe the lakes in a whimsical wish list she’s never going to way. I wouldn’t have picked I Hate It Here because it’s the one I didn’t think I’d cope with (turns out I was right, Taylor).
I Hate It Here cuts so deep and personal for me. It’s my Autistic introvert outcast song that feels like both a place to hide and a knife to the heart. It’s the pain of that song ‘I’m lonely but I’m good’ ‘This place made me feel worthless’ that encapsulates my experience that way. But also the way I cope ‘I hate it here so I will go to secret gardens in my mind’, the way I disappear into stories in my own head to cope with the world, that daydream is a safe space…a refuge from sadness ‘I save all my romanticism for my inner life and get lost on purpose.’ actually that encapsulates what Taylor means to me…a way to get lost on purpose. It’s like, for me and always has been her music has been a way to help me get lost on purpose. That song, it feels like me, the perfect distillation of all the Taylor songs that have felt like pieces of me.
That she mashed it up with the lakes. Which had the same effect but also was that pandemic, refuge song part of folklore on top of that…I lost it, truly. For me the lakes was a perfect place to cry when my life felt like it had come crashing down around the time this song came out. But also, like ‘those windermere peaks’, it looked like a perfect place to cry. But also like I Hate It Here it has that feeling for the outsider the ‘I don’t belong and my beloved neither do you’ it’s again the refuge for those who never found their place, who needed a person to understand. Whether that person is a song or a real human. The lakes became my muse, my perfect place to cry at a time I needed it.
Hearing those two songs on my final Taylor show felt like the reason, the reason she is my person, my muse, my parasocial love, the person who has through their work kept me going at times. But also those songs feel like a message about it being ok to hurt to fall apart (and fall apart I did) because we find ways through art we love and art we make to put it back together. Reading too much into it? Maybe but would I be a Swiftie if I didn’t? All I know is Taylor picked me up and put me back together from worlds away time and time again before this week. But this week, she did it in person as well.
I had the time of my life fighting Dragons with you (and Taylor)
As above, it’s the people who made it- the people I went with and the people I didn’t. Sharing something special with friends who get it, who get me. Was as Taylor said in Cardiff, ‘one for the books’. Getting to share that will go down as something I think we’ll all remember, whatever directions our lives continue to take us in, even if those friendships disappear, we’ll always have that moment with Taylor, and I like to think that yes, we’ll point to the pictures and tell them our names.
But also sharing that moment with Taylor. Yes she’s a distant billionaire popstar. But the Eras tour was something special. Whatever she goes onto next (I don’t personally buy the retirement rumours), wherever she ends up in five, ten, another 18 years' time…it’ll be nice to say, ‘It was rare I was there’ about the Eras tour. To have been part of that moment, a cultural phenomenon that also felt incredibly personal.
Taylor, I did indeed have the time of my life fighting dragons with you.
Your not, your feelings, bring me so much joy.