13 moments Taylor Swift soundtracked my life
Hello, and welcome to this delicious Swiftian (yay!) romp through my musical memory. The kind of detail we don’t have time to cover whilst I’m counting us in and out of jumps on the bike. The moments listed below are numbered 1 through 13 in the completely random order in which they occurred to me. The vibe is catastrophic blues with a dash of psychedelic pinks…
(Me experiencing psychedelic pinks (the opposite of catastrophic blues!) moments after exiting the O2 following Taylor’s surprise appearance at the Haim show!)
1. All Too Well (Ten Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version). It’s NYE 2022 turning into 2023. Lou, my now partner is spending new year at my place. It’s our 4th date but her first time coming over to the flat we now share. Important context for our (at that moment) fledging romance is that we connected online over our shared love for T Swizz, or more accurately “something I should know about her” was that she was “probably listening to Taylor Swift or Self Esteem”. A hinge prompt which elicited feverish excitement as I responded to ask what her favourite song from Midnights (then a mere few months old) was. As we arranged to spend NYE together we acknowledged the auspiciousness of the holiday for any Swiftie and jokingly wondered about how many times we’d manage to play Tay’s song New Years Day on New Years Day 2023. After a dizzyingly wonderful NYE we found ourselves giddy and giggling in bed circa 4am. I asked if we could play one final song before we slept and before I knew it ATW(TMV)(TV) was playing from my phone speaker and we were singing along in the dark.
2. folklore/the 1. It’s summer 2020 in the weeks following the surprise release of folklore, Tay’s eighth studio album. My memory of that time is hazy as to specific dates/events, something I suspect many of us feel about that first pandemic summer. BUT, in the midst of all the anxiety and very real fear one thing was certain: the landscape of loving Taylor had changed. As of late July, us Swifties (with ZERO warning!) had a folk album on our hands! One in which TAYLOR takes a backseat and enchants us with folk stories about other people. I have such a vivid memory of a moment alone in my flat one morning (no idea which morning but it was definitely in The Morning) pottering in my kitchen having recently woken up. I put folklore on and as the first piano chords opened I had the urge to stand on my tiptoes and twirl. “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit, Been saying yes instead of no” sings Taylor, gentle confidence announcing her totally new sound. As I twirled on my tiptoes alone in my apartment I felt a moment of such pleasurable presence and hope. That song, that opening line and that album will always soothe my nerves and ease me to sleep, reminding me that hope is possible even in the scariest of moments.
3. Shake It Off. It’s June 2018 and I’m at Wembley Stadium with one of my best Swiftie pals Mairi. We are attending the Reputation Stadium Tour, our seats are in the nosebleeds and we are surrounded by an abundance of dad/daughter combos. We arrived early enough to watch both Camilla Cabello’s and Charli XCX’s support sets, both of whom were invited back to the stage to join Tay partway through Shake It Off. To this day I covet the translucent, rainbow hued, tracksuit Charli wore for her Shake It Off cameo. Until that point I’d felt slightly embarrassed about being a grown adult woman bopping along in a sea of children but, seeing three grown women throw themselves into the sticky sweetness of PURE POP MUSIC released something inside of me. A swell of joy rose up that couldn’t be compressed and before I knew it, I was shake, shake SHAKING my booty along to the tassel shimmys of Tay’s multicoloured tinsel dress without a goddamn care in the world.
4. Red (song & album!) It’s sometime in March 2016 in the middle of the night and I’m driving from Manchester to my Mum’s house. I’m scream crying fresh from a particularly hideous break up during which my now ex forced me out of his flat (this was before I had allowed myself to believe I was gay). Many people have said that Red is an album for driving to and on that night in my tiny Renault Cleo I felt it’s open road quality viscerally. “… LOVING HIM WAS REEEEEEED, oh losing him was blue like I’ve never known, missing him was dark grey all alone, forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you’ve never met”. God did I feel those words TO MY BONES that evening. At one point, I pulled into a motorway petrol station car park because frankly, I was crying so hard it wasn’t safe for me to drive. I turned Taylor up as loud as she’d go and just screamed the words letting them rip through my body. Ridiculously cathartic, downright ludicrous behaviour but good lord do I recommend a middle of the night scream cry to Red (album and/or song) in the immediate aftermath of a break up.
5. Look What You Made Me Do. This song, more than any other of the many MANY Taylor songs I have ridden to in my classes, IS spinning to Taylor in my mind. I’ve always liked the song but there was a moment back in the early days of spinning to Taylor, I think actually in the very first Taylor album versus class I taught (the I-C-O-N-I-C 1989 vs Reputation), when the bass hit and the entire room just lit up. As we surged manically, embodying our Rep era energy, us spinning Swifties were galvanised in a way I’d never felt before. I’ve played it in class countless times since and there is something in the way this Look. What. You. Made. Me. Do beat hits my body that just GETS ME GOING. It’s irresistible. It’s the song that really taught me the power of being a Swiftie in community with other Swifties.
6. Gasoline/Love Story mashup (Haim O2 show). It’s summer 2021 and I’m going to see three of the coolest sisters in Alt Pop/Rock - Haim. Long story short, Taylor lives her (and all of our) fantasy, embodying the role of fourth Haim sister when she joins Este, Alana and Danielle on stage for a glorious mash up of Gasoline and Love Story!!!! It’s hard to describe how I felt when I realised what was happening - the first live gig performance Taylor had been part of since before the pandemic. As Taylor strolled onstage, I remember the distinct sound of screaming, mine and an entire arena of (mostly) women - the Haim/Swiftie crossover is STRONG. When the song started, I wished I could exist for 5 minutes without blinking and willed myself to be present and in the moment. I stared wide eyed and screamed, surrendering myself to the magnitude of the moment. In the aftermath, I received countless messages asking, “if I was ok?”, proof of just how much a part of my personality enjoying Taylor’s music is at this point. Back when I was chatting to Lou on Hinge, before we’d even met, but whilst we were already seamlessly weaving Taylor into our shared history, she mentioned that she’d had a pretty epic live music year which included seeing T Swizz at the O2 with Haim. I love that we were both there, our screams mingling as we experienced an iconic pop culture moment separately but together. Our invisible string getting stronger.
7. I forgot that you existed. Remember that break up I mentioned when talking about Red?! Well the absolute GIGGLES I got when I put Lover on for a first listen through. “But then something happened one magical night, I forgot that you existed, and I thought that it would kill me but it didn’t…”. SAME TAY, SAME. “It isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”.
8. Hey Stephen. It’s 2009. I think that means I’m a year into university (the first time around!) and I’m living between my uni house in Leeds and my Mum’s house in Preston, depending on if it’s term time or not. When I am home with Mum, I share a bedroom wall with my (ever so slightly!) younger sister who’s going through some stuff. Big stuff. Hard stuff. She’s listening to this up-and-coming American country artist named Taylor Swift. I’d heard the odd Taylor song on the radio, but this is the first time I’ve heard her consistently and in album form. It’s Fearless Era (the first time around!) and Taylor is pining over crushes and what it’s like being a nerdy girl in high school. I feel seen. I like that feeling. I’ve picked Hey Stephen as I have a vague memory, one that’s in my body’s response whenever I hear that song, of deeply felt sisterhood. The songs I heard through my bedroom wall that year formed the beginnings of a musical relationship I’ve since nurtured for 20 years, one of the longest relationships of my life (a fact that will always make my brain explode slightly)! Whenever I listen to Hey Stephen there’s this sense that my body is telling my brain, “it’s a love story, baby just say yes” (the love story being the one between Taylor and I, obviously).
9. The Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) Vault. Yay, a more recent and happy moment with Taylor from last summer. Lou and I were visiting her hometown of Eastbourne together for the first time. During our visit, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was released - the first Taylor release we’d experienced together. As is probably apparent from now, this was a Big Deal. I know there are a variety of approaches amongst Swifties in terms of how to approach listening to a re-release but I (and thankfully Lou is too!) am absolutely a head straight to the Vault and listen kind of Swiftie. Once I’ve listened to the Vault a couple of times, I’ll then listen to the album in full in a more luxurious, slower fashion, including the Vault at the end which is then put into context in terms of how it sits within the world of the album, what it adds - you get the picture. Anyway, I remember the July heat, the bright sunshine and the incredible sensation I felt in my whole body waking up next to the woman I love, knowing that the day was a New Taylor Day, and we would get to experience that New Taylor Day together.
10. Eras Tour. It’s absolutely fascinating to me the extent to which this cultural event has soundtracked my life when I haven’t even been to the bloody thing myself yet! BUT, I am so here for it. I woke up the morning after that first show in Glendale (Arizona) to the knowledge that the setlist contained 44 SONGS, including an acoustic set of 2 surprise songs that would change every show. Immediately I wondered if I could somehow facilitate an Eras Tour spin class. How would that work? Would anyone (apart from me?!) want to spin for 3+ hours? I settled on breaking the setlist down into 5 separate classes (very casual) and got to work on making the playlist for the first one. I set myself a couple of clear ground rules including that I wanted to ride to the songs from the setlist IN ORDER as much as possible. When I set out on this endeavour, I had no idea quite how unique and special a thing it would be to experience the tour from afar in this way. I tracked the secret songs closely, as well as the happenings/announcements/moments from each show to see if these could be incorporated to make the experience as UP TO DATE as possible. I loved it so much when Long Live was added to the setlist and I got to fall in love with that song all over again. It was so fun when Jack Antonoff joined in New Jersey resulting in Getaway Car as one of the evenings (and the corresponding ride’s) surprise songs. Similarly, when Haim joined in LA for No Body, No Crime, we rode to it in our Eras Ride that week. I think my favourite moment of synchronicity was when we emerged from an Eras Ride to the announcement made, WHILST WE WERE IN CLASS(!), that the Eras tour would come to Europe in summer 2024. FINALLY!
11. Our Song. I played this song in one of the first classes my beautiful friend Maddie came to. I remember the tentative “woo” and the big, beautiful smile beaming up at me from the corner of the room as the first country strings blasted from the speakers. I didn’t know Maddie before she came to class and one of the first things we bonded over, outside of spin, was our mutual love of Taylor. The detailed discussions we have had, interrogating every era and comparing our favourite songs. Adult friendships, particularly between mutual fangirls, are precious. There is something so beautiful about embracing our passions completely, free of the shame that accompanies much of what we do as teenagers. What was once cringe is now something we bond over, something we allow ourselves to enjoy unabashedly. I will always be grateful to Taylor for that.
12. Lavender Haze. This is on the list because I have a beautiful fur child (sausage dog) named Lavender and her name both is/isn’t completely influenced by the Taylor song Lavender Haze. There are many reasons why the Universe decided, in the middle of the night (a Swiftian time if ever there was one) to present the name Lavender to me as the only option for the puppy I had recently decided to bring into my life. The fact I was about to become a dog mum didn’t feel real until I’d decided on a name for her, an impossible seeming task until suddenly it wasn’t, and Lavender was perfect. A Swiftie reference, a shade of purple (a well-known favourite colour of mine) and a word with so much queer history (for the briefest of summaries of this, see https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/plants-LGBTQ-symbols). It also smells GREAT and is one of my fave flowers. So yeah, I’ve got a special relationship with Taylor’s and my own Lavender Haze, in every sense of the beautiful phrase.
13. Welcome to New York. I have a vivid memory of riding the escalator up from the tube one day back in my early years living in London. I was reading Lena Dunham’s book Not That Kind of Girl and the album 1989 (the original version) was in my headphones (a 2014 MOOD if ever there was one!) I must have just hit play on the album because Welcome to New York blasted in my ears and my body was filled with an all-encompassing sense of contentment. As it was happening, I was aware that, despite its complete mundanity, it was a perfect moment. Lena/Jack/Taylor/New York/London/1989/Me/Girls/the precipice of adulthood. As I rose up into the London streets, I thought about Taylor dropping her suitcase in New York, like I had in London only a few years earlier and I felt invincible, like anything was possible.