February has always been my favorite month of the year. It’s my birthday month, the shortest month and (coming as a surprise to absolutely nobody who has been on the internet at all in the last few weeks) is Valentine’s Day. If you’re anything like me, it has probably just started to leave your TikTok For You Page after the weeks-long onslaughts of post after post appearing in the feed.
I’ll hold for the collective sigh of relief.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Valentine’s Day — the aesthetics, the colors and the celebrations are all right up my alley when it comes to celebrating love. The various spin-offs of Galentine’s and other seasonal events just like it are just as fun. But unlike the years in the past, this year was one of my first times spending Valentine’s Day single and seeing everything in full swing felt almost emotionally exhausting.
So, in turn, I turned to an unlikely source: Taylor Swift.
I’m pretty predictable when it comes to my music tastes, so it comes as no surprise that Taylor Swift is my top artist on Spotify Rewind practically every year. On the same trend, it comes as no surprise that my favorite album is Lover. Released in 2019, the pop album centers around different forms of love and learning within relationships in Swift’s life. Unlike the generic Target aisles full of stuffed animals and seas of greeting cards, Lover feels far more real and tangible.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s tracks about romantic love on the album, but it’s more than that. For me, Lover represents acceptance, the utter romanticization of one’s own life for the better. It’s looking on the brighter side, understanding that there’s capability in everything we put ourselves to. It’s self-love and acceptance and with this in mind, I set out on my journey: to enter my Lover Era.
The beauty of the Lover Era is that there’s far more that it is than it isn’t. 2023 called and said maximalism is in. The soft, sunny pastel colors and the bright hopeful aesthetics of the album is exactly what I needed in 2023. Stress, heavy workloads and not enough sleep made me feel tired and burnt out last semester. Coming into this semester, I kept the Lover concept in mind. Amongst other mantras, Swift preaches to control what you can, to do your best and understand that it’s okay if that means different things. Lover isn’t about romantic love — it’s about self-love and that’s why it’s one of my favorite albums to live by.
It’s the friend that calls just because they’re thinking about you that makes you want to do the same thing to somebody else. It’s doubling it for the next person. It’s the feeling when the person in front of you pays for your Starbucks. The album isn’t just one token big romantic gesture, it’s all of the little moments and scraps of love in our lives that we overlook, and personally?
I’ll definitely take that going into 2023.
Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Pinterest!