I am Boston’s biggest Taylor Swift fan
She made me the man I am today.
Taylor Swift followed me on Tumblr a year ago, last week (November 23rd). My then-roommate video taped me as I screamed into my pillow because, after almost a decade, it was finally for sure she saw my face and the most handsome wiener dog in the whole wide world (my baby Simon) in my Tumblr photo.
As a country lover prior to Taylor, I first listened to her self-titled debut album when I heard she was a 16-year-old on country radio.
Since then, I have learned quite a few things that people might not know.
She wrote a song after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she scrapped most of her fourth album after a year of composing songs because she wanted to go in a new direction, she said: “Fuck sewing machines” on a MySpace post back in the mid-2000s (no one is quite sure why), and of course, if you actually took time to read her last album booklet, in 2014 she “lost him, but found herself and somehow that was everything.”
But beyond random Taylor facts, I look up to Taylor for her artistry.
I realize everyone’s disdain for pop music nowadays, but I admire her because she is a writer. And in turn, because I love her words more than anything, most of her lyrics have shaped the way I view the world. A few of them are “People throw rocks at things that shine and life makes love look hard” (Ours, Speak Now), “Just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it” (Clean, 1989) and “You come away with a great little story of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you” (Cold as You, Taylor Swift).
And if this isn’t enough enough proof I love her words, look at my tour shirts.
For every tour, I make a shirt with a lyric from every single song she has released up until that point. I don’t want to sound cocky, but I am pretty damn proud of these shirts, even if she’s yet to sign one.
When I say her name, my friends don’t question which one I am speaking of, they just roll their eyes because it’s probably the fortieth time that day I talked about her.
A lot of people like her now because she’s friendly (which doesn’t hurt the situation), but that’s not why I really like her. I like her because when I was 12 and didn’t know anything about myself, she made me feel like I would find someone to love one day.
I like her because at 15 she helped me cry over some dude who never noticed me.
I like her because at 17 when I lost one of the two most important women in my life, she helped me understand why death needs to happen sometimes.
After 10 years, seven Grammys, and five albums, Taylor has become an official pop star, if not the pop star, but I still look at her like the curly haired 16-year-old who made 11-year-old me feel like he didn’t have to be sad sitting alone in the library when everyone else was having their first loves and passing their first joints.
Taylor probably isn’t gonna read this and I don’t know if she even remembers my Tumblr.
She’s quite the busy woman now, what with all her baking and such.
In every dream I have of meeting Taylor, I cry too much to make coherent sense and that’s probably what will happen in real life.
I say when because, after this many years, Taylor isn’t the biggest pop star in the world, she’s a best friend who I one day need to thank for helping make me the man I am today.