Suddenly Swiftie!

A Story, A Review, A Profile

Standing in line for the concert film Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour, a wave of panic consumes me as I wonder: does this make me a Swiftie? Like an alcoholic in a moment of clarity, simply asking the question implies an unfortunate answer. But here I am, on an assignment of my own creation, surrounded by women of all ages wearing short skirts and sequin dresses and concert t-shirts as we wait for the sold out movie by the world's most famous pop star. I will spend the next three hours in a crowded theater watching Taylor Swift do Taylor Swift things.

I am the portrait of excitement and anticipation.

What brought me into this gauntlet of girlie pop culture is a haunting sense that Taylor Swift is the answer to some profound question that I must ask myself, if only I can conjure it. She is a singing and dancing enigma. The Eras Tour movie release being Friday, October 13th seems ghoulishly divine, but I must know what Taylor Swift is trying to tell me.

Maybe it was an elaborate PR campaign to sell tickets, but it all started when her relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce was forced onto timelines and TV sets in early October. My knowledge of anything Taylor was limited to the Kanye West fiasco, when he interrupted her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, and a few of her biggest hit songs. That was it. I immediately plunged myself her mythos; every album, every song, every music video; until I was all caught up.

Taylor Swift is a fairy tale story, almost too perfect to believe. The child prodigy, the parents moving to Nashville for their daughter's aspiring career, the girl that becomes an icon.

But the fairy tale is true.

Boldly entering the music scene at the age of seventeen with her self-titled debut album, Taylor Swift began her career as a pure country artist complete with cowboy boots and a twang in her voice. Her follow up albums Fearless and Speak Now showed hints at a slightly more neutral sound, still with banjos and a country feel but blended seamlessly with pop and acoustic rock elements. It wasn't until Red, her magnum opus, that she emerged as a tour de force by infusing synth elements, catchy acoustic guitar riffs, and verses that feel like private diary entries but lead to explosive choruses like "I Knew You Were Trouble," my personal favorite, and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” a magnetic hit that begs you to let go and belt it out along with Taylor. She began to mature; her public aesthetic became more metropolitan, her performance visuals more cutting-edge pop. Themes of love and relationships darkened with her next album, 1989, titled after the year she was born in a clear metaphorical rebirth of her career and sound going forward. With hit singles "Blank Space", "Shake It Off," and the thunderous anthem "Bad Blood," 1989 tells the world: Taylor Swift is all grown up, and she's here to stay. Her subsequent album Reputation explored more electronica, and she hit a new stride in 2019's Lover, with mellow tracks like "You Need to Calm Down," "Cruel Summer," as well as another upbeat personal statement, "ME!" Folklore and Evermore were interesting additions as more storytelling albums without her standard mega hits to define them. Her latest album, Midnights, released in 2022, utilizes chill-out and electropop grooves to create a distinct vibe, like "Karma," which feels something like a soothing tranquilizer buzz, a welcome sensation in a post-2020 world...

Which brings me into the theater for The Eras Tour, surrounded by crazed Swifties as I try to keep a low profile, to give off no creepy vibes. But it doesn't matter, all eyes are focused on Taylor. The film shows her Eras Tour on the final stop of its US leg in Los Angeles in a packed SoFi Stadium, and it is presented in its entirety, relatively uncut. Near the start of her performance Taylor Swift says, “We're about to go on a little adventure together, and that adventure is going to span seventeen years of music and it's going to be one Era at a time. How does that sound?”

The movie crowd gets on their feet and cheers along with the concert crowd. Sounds like they love the idea. They are treating it like an actual concert, dancing and singing and clapping to the on-screen performance. The production is superb, impeccably clean aesthetically and certainly one of the most grand concert experiences of all time.

Taylor Swift starts her performance in a blue and pink sequin leotard with matching knee high boots, and with each Era comes a costume change and a new themed set piece. She knows when to ham it up and when to let go and be an absolute rock star. Her command of the stage, the stadium, the theater, and her Swifties, is total.

Leaving the theater, I am inspired by the constant reinvention and personal evolution that define Taylor Swift's Eras. Perhaps it is her long and steady career, her innovation and absolute dedication, a loyal fan base that has grown up with her, or her personal branding and storytelling qualities, but Taylor Swift creates crowds and album sales and hit songs that simply defy modern trends. The ticket release for The Eras Tour concert series crashed Ticketmaster's website.

She conjures, out of sheer determination, ingenuity, and cunning, the "old model” recording industry, with a crafted narrative and superb product and delivery, and she does it with a certain purity and style that feel almost like a throwback to some other Era. Her entire business model operates in stark contrast to the dying pop culture at large, the void felt across virtually all of the arts and entertainment industries; the decay of traditional publishing, plummeting record sales, and the disappearing golden era of Hollywood.

A two year global tour, a movie for those that cannot afford the concert, guerrilla marketing with her alleged football boyfriend... It is layer upon layer of performance art, public relations, and personal branding, year after year for nearly two decades. Am I her target audience? No. Do I love all her music? Not particularly. Is she a bitch? I have no idea.

I am on the verge of a breakthrough, the epiphany that Taylor Swift has so elusively inspired.

And then it hits me: How can an artist survive the implosion of the entertainment industry?

That is the question. And Taylor Swift is the answer.

Taylor Swift shows that perhaps the old model isn't dying, it is simply losing. Quality is losing to convenience. Appreciation and study are losing to short attention spans and mass consumption for immediate gratification.

But artists can defy that trend, they can control their destiny. Taylor Swift certainly does. Taylor Swift: so obvious that nobody even notices. Except for millions of fans who religiously buy entire albums for decades. Except for fans wealthy enough to fork over obscene amounts of money for tickets to a single concert. Except for me.

I noticed. How exactly I'm not even sure.

Am I willing to do what Taylor Swift does? To go to those lengths day after day, year after year, to perfect my craft? Can I use ingenuity, cunning, and long-term planning to build an audience, a career? Am I willing to build layers of complexity and content and remain dedicated until success is not just a possibility, but a guarantee?

Suddenly my spirits are lifted, unburdened from Taylor Swift's greatness by Taylor Swift's greatness. Myself is in flux, mood heightened by an infinite optimism about my creative future while being slightly melancholy that this brief Era is over. I have crossed the Rubicon, broken through some sort of metaphysical barrier. My appreciation for an artist's mastery has never been greater and I am more prepared to meet my own artistic challenges, to fulfill my own potential. This revelation, this sense of meaning and a path forward that Taylor Swift's musical journey now illuminates, outweighs any embarrassment or vanity about writing this. It leaves me with a final, more ominous question:

Does this make me a Swiftie?