2024: My Year of Studying Taylor Swift

This past weekend and the family and I went camping in our pop up camper at one of our favorite parks. It was great. We did all the classic camping stuff. We fished, hiked, slept in our camper, had a campfire, made smores, played at the playground with the other campground people, climbed on rocks, and indulged in our hobbies. Mr. Man created scenarios with his Lego mini figs (little Lego people) . H. Nugget kicked around a soccer ball. Mr. Katie worked hard to create a respectable fire. I spent some time with my Kindle reading my new advanced reader’s copy of Heartbreak is the National Anthem: how Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music by Rob Sheffield.

I don’t know if I told you this readers, but one of my 2024 New Year’s resolutions was to learn more about Taylor Swift music.

I spent way too much time yesterday, while working on this blog post, trying to find evidence that this was in fact one of my New Year’s resolutions this year. I know that I told myself that 2024 would be a year of Taylor Swift study but I thought that maybe I wrote it down somewhere.

I looked in my journal, but there was a big empty space between mid December last year that lasted until late February of this year. It wasn’t super suprising that I have some big holes in my daily pages this year. Then I used the Control F key combination to try and search my blog entries for an evidence of this resolution and I couldn’t find any. My Taylor Swift searches were coming up 0/0.

I hope that you will take my word for it, a full on Taylor Swift academic study was on my list of things to do for 2024. I think my study was prompted by the popularity of the Eras tour last year. I didn’t see it or anything, but the fact that it is a world wide phenomenon makes it come up a lot in news articles.

I am not a stranger to Taylor Swift. In fact, as a country music listener who lived in the Delaware Valley (Taylor’s home turf) in late 2006, I was probably listening to Taylor on the radio before most of the rest of the country. One of the first radio stations that played Taylor’s music was Philadelphia’s country music station 92.5 WXTU. This is a station that I listened to every workday while I drove around in my work van at my itinerant librarian job. I remember that during the fall of 2006 the WXTU played her song Tim McGraw and Taylor had some sort radio intro that went something like, “When you hear Tim McGraw on WXTU I hope you think of me.”

A few years later, I remember how she had more country hits on the radio. During the summer of 2008 I remember seeing her perform Picture to Burn on NBC show Nashville Star as an example of how to put on a good performance. Then I remember seeing her be musical performer then the host of SNL. I continued to hear her have hit after hit on the radio.

However, I never owned any of her albums or even borrowed any of her CDs from the libraries that I worked at. I believe after the song “Love Story” became stratospherically famous that I regarded her as a musician for young teenagers and tweens. I think what I thought was that I was getting enough of a Taylor Swift fix by listening to the radio. I didn’t think that I needed more.

Then life changed. It seemed like her evolved as she got older. I was never a huge of her 2014 song “Shake It Off”, but it does seem like she became a musician that grownups could also enjoy after that song became a radio staple.

I did however love her 10 minute long live version of “All Too Well” (with background short film) that aired on SNL on November 13, 2021. Since I saw this performance, something clicked in me. I have watched it numerous times since then.

Still, I don’t subscribe to the label of Swiftie. I consider myself more Taylor-curious. That’s why I decided that I would learn more about Taylor Swift’s music in 2024.

The way I have pursued it so far is that I have been borrowing Taylor Swift albums from my library’s Hoopla service. (Maybe your library has Hoopla too?) So far, I have borrowed the album “Red Taylor’s Version” at least four times. (The borrowing period for music CD’s from Hoopla at my library is 7 days per borrow.)

I have also borrowed “1989 Taylor’s Version Deluxe” three times. I’ve listened to them both multiple times per borrow. However, during these listening sessions, I skip songs if I don’t like them, so I haven’t listened to every song multiple times.

I also am learning to play “Our Song” and “You Belong With Me” on my guitar. I still haven’t listened to all her albums but I know some of the songs from radio play. I am a big fan of “Champaign Problems”.

I got really excited a few weeks ago, when I was browsing on Netgalley and I saw that Rob Sheffield, an music journalist, whose work I have previously enjoyed a lot, wrote a book about Taylor Swift. I was super excited when I found out last Thursday that I had been approved by Netgalley to get a digital Advanced Reader’s Copy of said book.

I am a Rob Sheffield fan, so this was super exciting for me. His book Love is a Mixed Tape is a book that I read about 10 years ago and still think about sometimes. He is a music journalist for Rolling Stone who sometimes writes books about how music has affected him personally.

His Taylor Swift book is coming out on November 12th, but I got to start reading this past weekend while we were camping.

I am 34% of the way finished reading this book and here is what I like about it so far:

1. Rob Sheffield is a 58 year old man yet is still a super fan of Taylor Swift. He is the person who maintains the ranked, comprehensive list of Taylor Swift’s songs for Rolling Stone. Here is a link to that list. I like how unabashedly he appreciates Taylor’s music. I don’t think that I unabashedly appreciate music anymore. I used to become fanatical in my devotion to various bands. I loved the Counting Crows when was 15. Sometimes, I long to be a person who fully gives my attention over to bands the way I did when I would read liner notes of every CD that I owned. I guess that I appreciate his enthusiasm.

2) I appreciate that he does not seem to be a fair-weather fan or a fan who has only recently started liking her. He has been a Taylor Swift fan since her first album. He has been to many show over many different tours. He has talked to her before but doesn’t know her well. They have spoken about the Beetles before and she told him things about the Beatles that even he didn’t know and he is a person who wrote a book about the Beetles. He has been at her apartment for album listening sessions (but never when she was home).

As I said, I am only 34% of the way through this book. I can’t wait to learn more. Usually, since I am in a book club, at any one time, I am reading at least two books. I might be reading something serious for my book club, since the members seem to like serious books, and something fun. This Taylor Swift book is my fun book right now.

I will have to tell you how it goes as I progress. I will also have to let you know how my study of Taylor Swift during the later half of 2024 is going.

Are you learning about anything in particular in 2024?

Thank you to Dey Street Books and Netgalley for the advanced reader’s copy of this book.

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