Every year Spotify releases a summary of each person’s music-listening history and statistics of the past year. Last year when the Spotify Wrapped was released, I found myself disappointed and confused when Taylor Swift was my #1 artist of the year. I grew up screaming along to all of Taylor’s anthems and recreating her music videos with my best friends. However, nowadays, I pride myself in listening to underground, indie artists—not Taylor Swift.
So when I found out that I and just about every single one of my close friends had Ms. Swift as our top artist in our Spotify Wrapped’s, I felt a sense of shame and inner turmoil. Is my music taste really just like every other girl’s music? Am I just another one of the millions of women with her as my #1 when I always thought I had a unique music taste? Am I… basic?
I felt so distraught over this statistic that I decided to prove the Spotify algorithm wrong in 2022 and go a year without listening to Taylor Swift. Yes, that’s right, I was so upset that I chose to strip myself of all Taylor Swift—even her album “folklore,” which was almost a religion for me in the summer of 2021 and her album “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” which can make me scream, cry and scream-cry at any time of day.
It is worth noting, though, that I wasn’t completely deprived. Listening to Taylor on my friends’ phones or going once or twice through new albums during the year was allowed according to my self-imposed rules. I would even occasionally “cheat” by putting my Spotify account on private mode to listen to Taylor without it being tracked. This year-long fast was an almost embarrassing testament to my stubbornness and deep desire to have a “unique” music taste.
I am sitting here now at the end of 2022. I have decided that my music-listening Spotify statistics have probably already been determined, so I might as well indulge in my sweet Taylor. I have been listening to Swift’s live version of “Dear John” on the 20-hour “Taylor Swift Complete Collection.” In this song rendition, you can hear a chorus of thousands of women singing, cheering and screaming in and out of harmony with Taylor. Pain, connection, passion and understanding elevate their voices and express their shared story. I can’t help but think that being a part of this community is something more important than just a Spotify statistic.
Every song in this playlist of 303 Taylor Swift songs strikes some type of chord in my heart. From memories of listening to these songs as a child to the lyrics about relationships that cut scary close to my current feelings, Taylor’s music rings in my heart and radiates through my body. I wonder if my decision to cut her out of my life to prove a point was both depriving and petty.
Taylor Swift always has and will be the first sought-out artist for women grieving the end of a relationship, fluttering with the excitement of a new relationship or stuck somewhere in the middle. So as someone who often finds herself sitting in bed with a cup of tea recharging after a long shower screaming and sobbing to her ballad “Death By a Thousand Cuts,” I wonder how I got here.
I feel like an addict in relapse. I did something bad, and I feel guilty. I let a self-imposed desire to be different lead to the loss of something that I once held so close to my heart. This hiatus also has deprived me of the emotional support and woman-to-woman comfort that Taylor’s songs provide and make her so special and internationally-adored.
Allowing myself to revisit Taylor recently felt like the transition from a long-distance relationship back into an in-person relationship. I feel subtly yet unequivocally whole. I find myself back with an essential support system and outlet. Taylor Swift’s music might not define me, but she does define many of the feelings I have felt so strongly throughout the course of my life in her songs. I can rest to “folklore” again, skip around and wear a beaming smile to “Lover” and fall stupidly in love with the ideas of past crushes through “Fearless (Taylor’s Version).”
Cutting out an artist, a genre or any form of music or art in hopes of choosing how you are seen by others is silly and self-deprecating. We are what we consume, but we also are so much more. Sure, I’m a Swiftie. I admit it! Yes, I will always know every single word to Taylor’s song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” but I am so much more. Taylor Swift doesn’t define me. She does magically put to words the most specific emotions that I have felt and been unable to express. It is the ability to share those feelings that makes her so special and makes her fan-base so strong, and that’s something I want to be a part of.