I was 16 when I first heard Taylor Swift’s music. My bus driver would listen exclusively to WMZQ, a Country radio station that played the same 6 songs every single morning on the way to school in a small Virginia town.
Back then, I didn’t just dislike country: I hated it with a passion. America first/bro country was inescapable, and I conflated all country with the “boot up your ass” brand that cheapened the genre. A genre whose titans I now know wrote songs about working class solidarity, racial injustice, and abortion access. In my teenage naiveté, I disregarded a young Taylor Swift’s “Our Song,” one of the 6 in rotation on that bus, as guilty by association.
Throughout her “Fearless” and most of her “Speak Now” eras, I only regarded her as a singer whose genre I didn’t care for and who Kanye West was an asshole to.
But something happened in mid-2012. I was fresh out of college, struggling to find work in journalism, and spending a lot of time on YouTube, when I came across the song “Mine.”
Was it the light and breezy hook? The rhythm of the chorus? The earnestness of the bridge? Whatever magic she wove into that song, I was in from that day on. I spent months discovering her catalogue, even learning to love “Our Song,” which initially turned me off from her music, fake twang and all.
That fall, she dropped the album “Red.” I was 22 when “22” came out — Taylor and I are the same age, less than 2 months apart. I could easily relate to the cacophony of emotions the album encapsulates about your early 20s. Similarly, the album 1989 came when I was a young adult, figuring life out, partying with friends, and, yes, moving to New York.
And so on and so on, the beats of my own life lining up with the beats of hers as we aged.
I saw her 1989 tour. I was a broke 20-something taking the DC Metro to go sit in the nosebleeds, having the time of my life.
But now, at 33 years old, I’m still reeling a week later after seeing her in Santa Clara. By some miracle, I managed to get two floor tickets at face value, weeks after the Ticketmaster debacle. I took my friend Casey, who is as big of a fan as I am, knowing he would get the most out of the ticket.
Being in our 30s, our friends are in pretty good places in their lives. One of Casey’s friends organized a party bus down to the stadium and back, and holy shit did that beat the hell out of taking Caltrain.
We popped champagne and speculated which surprise songs we might get (I was hoping for “New Romantics” and “Cornelia Street”), listening to non-Taylor pop songs, deciding to save her music for the concert.
At the stadium, I felt like a rock star. I had spent weeks making my outfit, an obnoxious rainbow fringe getup inspired by what she wore to Wango Tango in 2019 during the Lover Era. The pièce de resistance was a bright yellow “no its becky” t-shirt (if you know, you know).
Two different Swifties gave me “no its becky” friendship bracelets, one of whom spotted me from far away and charged up the stadium steps to reach me before I disappeared in the crowd.
At one point, I asked Casey to take some photos of me (because I am The Worst ™) with a few more Swifties stopping to give me more friendship bracelets. I regret not making my own bracelets to give out, too, but all my time and energy was spent dying all the fabric and hand-sewing the fucking fringe to the sleeves.
Part of me expected to be one of the older people there. Certainly, two of the people who gave me bracelets were significantly younger than me, but others were my age or older. I went to the concert expecting to stick out in a sea of women in their late teens and early 20s.
But Taylor Swift is the great unifier. I feel lucky to be in the exact sweet spot to experience life in the same ways at the same time as her (albeit with several hundred million fewer dollars in the bank), but her songwriting is so specific and masterful that it captures universally relatable emotions that anyone can easily relate to their own lives, whether they’re 7, 15, 22, or older.
Regardless of age, we are all here, together, to celebrate the music that has been the soundtrack of our lives for nearly 20 years.
Are we in a cult? Probably. But let’s not dwell on that right now.
Soon the concert started. It’s at this point that I should mention I don’t remember much of it at all. I remember how I felt during it, and I remember Casey and I singing along to nearly every song until we lost our voices. But both he and I struggle to remember the actual performance itself.
Apparently, this is very common, from Swifties not being able to remember the show to people not being able to remember their own wedding. Something about the brain struggling to form new memories during periods of high excitement. I suppose struggling to remember the show is a sign that I was enjoying it and living in the moment.
And the concert will inevitably be available on Netflix or somewhere else eventually, so I’ll just rewatch it then.
Santiago Melli-Huber is a San Francisco-based writer.
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