The vast majority of my tween years I had been surrounded by Taylor Swift, thanks to my older sister. Oh, how I dreaded listening to Taylor with her in the car or while she got ready, and even when she was just lounging in her own room, there was just a high rate of indifference or lack of preference towards Taylor Swift on my end. As I grew, I still found myself being surrounded by the “Swiftie agenda” because of my newfound friends so I thought I might give the whole “Swiftie” thing a try. I gave myself 7 days to see if I could be immersed in the era’s phenomenon. So this one goes out to my beautiful and tenacious sister, Wireliz, and my friends, Andrea, Ky, and José, who were there for it all.
First part of this experiment was trying to understand if it was easier to hate on Taylor Swift and her entire campaign and system than accept she was a very smart and capable young woman victim of her circumstances from a very early point.
Let’s start from the beginning of how this experience came to be.
There were many times during my life span where I tried to get into the Swiftie mood.
For this moment, a final test for myself and where I stood with Taylor, was to eliminate any and all types of misconceptions of the “over-done,” “over-dramatic” pop star and develop my own opinion. Pure objectivity was set into action.
And so the process of grouping my friends and designated Swifties that had been motioning for my initiation for years commenced and they gave me tips and tricks around the ropes of blondie’s universe.
I even went through a stage of denial during hardships saying “it,” it being the thrashing throes of yearning and heartache to put it simply, didn’t break me enough to become a Swiftie. Who’s laughing now, huh?
The testing began with listening to the good old classics like “You Belong With Me,” “White Horse,” and “Love Story,” and watching her documentaries, still not fully convinced on the whole starstruck phenomenon of the Miss Americana Teenage Dream everyone was talking about. Through this stage, I was slightly uncomfortable with some of her moments but then I saw beyond the veil and tried to understand what world she was coming from and that’s where things sort of clicked for me. Going so far as trying to listen to an album per day for the first 3 days but that didn’t fully work with my tastes. Some tried to get me straight into the lore and vaults and even channeling her eras into my style or energy during the week.
It wasn’t until the magic of listening to the sister albums of Folklore and Evermore that my ears perked up. I actually sat there and decided to pay attention to her storytelling and, boy, oh, boy, does blondie have smoke coming out of her quill with such burning and inquisitive lyrics. She painted stories and emotions through her songs and visualizers, of which I had never paid attention to before. They opened me up to also perceiving how much time and effort she put into her foreshadowing and small easter eggs, it’s admirable. Also that “not alot going on at the moment” bit kills me.
I lurked deep enough to see the chaos and power that entailed the Taylor’s Version situation, which I found so interesting I even began to explain it to my dad in the middle of the Ponce Burger King at 8am during a road trip.
Two days left of the experiment and the knowledge of someone I barely knew, but knew so much about, overwhelmed me, which is still very bizarre to me and made me switch to an even more empathetic lens of how I could take on this project piece. So, as the days rolled by and it was 1989 TV release date, I questioned, am I just ok with listening to her songs now or am I fully committed to the era’s extravaganza?
Committed doesn’t begin to cover it for me by this point. I indeed listened to all her albums, I read the articles, even went Pepe Silvia on my friends to see if I was on the right track with my opinions and finally came to the conclusion of the experiment on Friday night whilst I looked at the timer marking down 10 seconds so I could hear the intro beat of “Welcome to New York,” excited and whimsy may I add, and although all together I’m not over the moon with all of the re-recordings I found myself actually loving it and the experience of giddily texting my friends about every minor detail, I felt like a teenager again. It kinda just clicked. That’s the purpose of this and that’s the magic of being a Swiftie, feeling like a teenage girl with no shame or judgment.
There is certainly appreciation for her lyricism within me but I have to say she is definitely not an everyday cup of tea for me… I don’t even think she’s there for more than an hour… My brain clogs up with too many “what ifs” that makes my heart skip a few beats. Did the conversion to the Swiftie side happen in a week? The essence of it can definitely be found within me after these past few days, not entirely but a good amount.
