Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Found Myself
Reflecting on Taylor Swift and the years I lost myself
Two weeks ago, Beth and I went to see Taylor Swift. It was seriously the most amazing concert I’ve ever been to. Taylor is a master performer, and her show was flawlessly executed. The attention to detail is immaculate. There was not one thing that wasn’t meticulously planned, unless you count the audience’s reactions and the minutes-long ovations.
I was supposed to go to see Lover Fest with my bestie in Boston in the summer of 2020, but we all know what happened. When the initial codes went out for the Eras Tour, I didn’t get one. I didn’t even get waitlisted. I was DEVASTATED. But then I got a random text from Ticketmaster at the end of June that she had added another night with the link to buy tix. I have never moved that fast in my life.
This may sound unbelievable given the fact that I am obsessed with her, but I’ve never seen Taylor live before. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it just never happened. I was going to try and get a cheap resell ticket for the Reputation tour when she played at the Rose Bowl but before I could buy the ticket, my son broke my glasses and I needed to use that money to get new ones. Opportunities never really presented themselves to see her, and I’m so glad they finally did.
I’ve been a fan of Taylor Swift since the first time I heard her song “Tim McGraw” back in 2006. I remember listening to her self-titled album obsessively in my studio apartment in the fall of 2006, my junior year of college. From the very beginning I connected with her brand of songwriting; it deeply resonated with the most tender parts of my heart and brain.
While I have always been a fan of Taylor’s music, I wasn’t an active part of the fandom until a couple of years ago. I’m still not deep deep in it, but I enjoy engaging with some of the conspiracy theories and watching everyone lose their minds over all the cryptic stuff Taylor does. It’s fun, even if some of the fandom is a little enthusiastic in their investment in it all.
I was making friendship bracelets for the show and thinking about a lot of things, as I do. Mainly that I couldn’t believe it took me so long to fully go off the deep end into my full-fledged fangirl era. I mean that figuratively — I 100% know why I wasn’t a crazy Taylor fangirl from the beginning. Fearless came out a few months after I graduated college and embarked on my journey of “adulthood.” I had recently reconnected with my high school best friend, and she hated Taylor and her music. I distinctly remember her mocking the lyrics to “Love Story”. It didn’t discourage me from listening to Taylor’s music, but I didn’t have anyone to fangirl over it with, and for me the joy in fandom comes from having close friends to share it with.
2008 - 2015 are what I call my lost fangirl years. There were things I loved and enjoyed like Harry Potter and Twilight, but my music fandom really fell off. And it’s because I wasn’t around people who supported it or liked the same stuff I liked. Like I said, I really need to have a friend (preferably a close friend) who will indulge in fangirl shit with me for me to really enjoy it. My best friend since my tween years was knee deep in raising a small human, or else I probably would have convinced her down the Taylor rabbit hole with me. And at the time, my very best friend and I weren’t very best friends yet or else she would have dragged me into the rabbit hole with her.
That time was so weird for me, looking back. I was trying so hard to be the version of an adult I had created in my mind, the one who didn’t indulge in music obsession, who was super serious and took everything seriously. I even stopped reading and writing fan fiction during that time, even though it had always been such a great inspiration for my own writing. I worked my shitty customer service jobs and hung out with my best friend and my boyfriend. I read “serious” adult books and lost touch with all of the people who had always brought out the fun, fangirly side of me. It wasn’t conscious, but now I can see that’s exactly what it was.
As a result, I definitely didn’t appreciate Taylor Swift or her music much during this time, which is a shame because it is some of her best work. I enjoyed Speak Now, but I didn’t appreciate those songs at first. “Enchanted” is one of the best love songs I’ve ever heard; it captures the spirit of meeting someone for the first time perfectly. It’s swoony and romantic and perfect.
I remember the Red era, but again, I was too busy pretending to be someone I wasn’t after I had moved from NYC to LA the first time. I secretly listened to it in my bathroom while I would do my hair to look cute at the blowout salon where I worked at the time. It wasn’t until 2020 that I truly and fully understood how fucking incredible that album is. Like, it’s really really good. You can hear the way Taylor cleverly started to plant the seeds of becoming a fully pop artist, but she still maintains those underpinnings of country and folk music. Absolutely flipping brilliant!
Getting to see all these songs live for the first time as a real “adult” was really special. I got to go back to the person I was when I first heard them and finally marry her to the person I am now. I wonder if that’s how she felt when she was rerecording them.
Even though I wasn’t in the audience for that show, I did predict that Taylor was going to release “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” this October. Only like a week and a half before the announcement I was talking with my friend about it while sitting on my couch. I told her they were going to do it then to maximize the amount of merch they can sell. I knew they would do it close enough to the holiday season that theoretically people will be able to order it as holiday gifts with no guarantee that the merch will arrive in time for the holidays. But I had no idea at the time that it would be released nine years to the day of the original.
I missed Taylor’s first 1989 era because I was knee deep in having a small human. In October of 2014, my son was 13 months and I was in the midst of some of the deepest depression I had ever been in. Even though music had always been my refuge, I wasn’t really listening to anything because my whole world was consumed with early motherhood and keeping my head just above water. Plus, I was unemployed and couldn’t justify the cost of buying the album, and she had notoriously pulled all of her music from Spotify due to their payment practices.
Of course I heard some of the songs over time. I remember posting on Facebook that “Welcome to New York” was clearly written by someone who isn’t a native New Yorker because we’re not welcoming transplants with open arms. I also have a video somewhere of my son dancing to “Blank Space” as a baby when Taylor performed at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show that year. (It’s very cute!) But I think it was at least six months before I actually heard the album.
I was very into Reputation when it finally got to Spotify. I’m an outlier who genuinely loves that album. It’s dark and sexy, yes, but some of Taylor’s most romantic songs are on that album. If you disagree, I dare you to listen to “New Years Day” on repeat until you get it. Rep came out in 2017 after I had made significant changes to my own life. I had moved across the country away from my family, and friends, and had broken up with my boyfriend the year before. The people I was close to were shifting to people who saw me for who I was and loved me anyway. They didn’t mock the things I loved or me for loving them. If I wanted to fangirl, they were down to listen and give me the space to do it.
In the privacy of my own home, I got to be the person I wanted to be. No one was going to judge me for spending hours going down pop culture rabbit holes on Wikipedia into the wee hours when I should have been sleeping. If I wanted to listen to the same song on repeat for an hour, who was going to stop me? My preschooler could care less.
The thing that really kicked my hardcore Taylor fangirl era was when I first heard that she’s queer in the spring of 2018. I have never read so many pages of theory in my life, and I spent hours on the phone with my best friend dissecting every single thing I read. It is truly a coincidence that my finding this out coincided with my own coming out journey, I swear. (Maybe that’s something I’ll write about…) I’m not going to bore any of you with all of my Gaylor shit, but if you ever want to talk about it, you know where to find me.
I could keep going, but I think I’ve made my point. (At least I hope I have!) Being at the Taylor show, getting excited when the countdown clock started, seeing my bracelet light up in coordinated colors with everyone else’s, sitting in front of a girl who was probably around the same age as my own kid who screamed every lyric, making and trading friendship bracelets and stickers, it all made me realize how lucky I am that I found myself again.
It took time, but I am more authentically Sa’iyda than I ever have been. And Taylor does play a huge part in that. I’m really lucky, not only to have an artist who has brought me so closely back to myself.
I loved reading this. I’m still way behind on the whole Taylor thing - I have a few songs I love and they’re the only ones I listen to - but this is how I feel about Harry.