Swifties for a day

It was not our usual curator-led museum tour. After basking in the arts of the quintessential American painter Georgia O’Keeffe at the MoMA a few weeks earlier, on a sweltering morning, we raved at Taylor Swift: Storyteller at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design.

Taylor Swift was not around but the well-curated exhibition of delightful costumes, props, jewelry and iconic outfits from her very first concert to the collection of her re-recorded songs, concert footages and music videos transformed us into Swifties (as fans identify themselves) for a day.  Imagine a group of giggling, phone snapping middle-aged ladies swooning over what I may call a taste of the ongoing Eras tour of the most phenomenal pop artist to date. In true Swiftie fashion, we took turns in having our pictures taken beside the life-size picture of the star as we explored and immersed into her world.

Andie, the curator, entertained us with a fascinating lecture on how the gifted artist uses her “imaginative storytelling” to convey the wide-ranging characters she portrays through her concerts and music videos. A certified Swiftie, Andie narrated how a business-savvy Taylor invested time and effort to re-record some of her earlier hit songs to protect both her royalties and original compositions. While I constantly listen to her songs, such that “All Too Well” had been humming on my head days after it was launched during the pandemic, there is something beyond the lyrics and melody of any Taylor Swift song that leave a marvelous impression to the spirit. The museum tour only validated what I had positively read about the artist, her songs, her life and inspiring influence to her millions of fans, all across the globe, my teenage daughter being one of them. As my daughter aptly puts it: listening to her is like talking to a friend.

To paraphrase some of my daughter’s views as I did an encore of the exhibition with her and as we, along with my sister and her husband, caringly drove her on the road chasing her idol, Taylor is not just an artist. She is a feminist who is not shy to channel her own experience of love and heartbreak through her music. She is a loving daughter who penned the assuring prayer-song “Soon You’ll Be Better,” to her cancer-stricken mother. She is a loyal friend who dedicated “Fifteen” to her best friend Abigail to remind her of the joys and pains of that stage in a teenager’s life by imparting this line in the song: “I’ve found time can heal most anything.” In her songwriting she honestly discusses and boldly deconstructs societal expectations on women like her.

Taylor is brave enough to express her political views, her support to the pride movement or environmental concerns through her songs. Listening to her music or watching her music videos is like penetrating deeply into the soul of a reachable star and sharing the same advocacies with her. She has the power to bring people, young and old, regardless of orientation, race and religion to connect their lives with her own through her music. The hubby thinks that Taylor mania is a generational phenomenon yet the mixed crowd I witnessed of girls, teenagers, mothers, families, seemingly cool grandmas at the museum in New York and the throng of fans (mostly dressed a la Taylor) walking toward SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles under an intense 2 p.m. heat (for a 6:30 p.m. concert) tell the fever is intergenerational.

In the days following the unprecedented success of her Eras tour here in the US, opinion writers penned varying commentaries on how the massive events have absolutely contributed to the US economy, how they reawakened a post-pandemic cultural scene and how they simply elicited a distinct kind of joy to her multitude of fans. A New York Times economic columnist mentioned that a large audience of 80,000 can actually hear Taylor’s good quality music. He explained that “on the supply side, live music can be delivered to a much larger crowd compared to many years ago” because of state-of-the-art sound system. A psychologist interviewed on TV remarked that after years of lockdown, Taylor is a rousing spirit whose role goes beyond entertainment. She ignites hope among her followers and people in general.

Unlike most philanthropists who earmark a good amount of their fortune to causes related to education, health or space travel, I admire how Taylor stuck to the cardinal rule of charity by beginning at home. The media had gone agog reporting how she gave away a total of  $55 million in bonuses to her truck drivers, crew and staff with an unparalleled gesture that went with the checks: a handwritten thank you note from her. The hubby opined that the $100,000 bonus to truck drivers could be used to buy a house and that the precious note must be kept for who knows how much that would cost if auctioned off many years from now.

Just as melancholic or electrifying her songs are, Taylor’s concerts had literally jolted the world in unimaginable ways, like the report of how her performance of “Shake It Up” in Seattle created a 2.3 seismic activity on the Richter scale. If she is that ultra popular voice that everyone listens to, it is heartwarming to realize how she also listens to the pulse of the people, like when she responded to the clamor for a concert in Canada and Asia. I gathered from some Swiftie sound bytes that her Singapore leg is being promoted by the City State’s Tourism Board. Perhaps the strategy was done swiftly to efficiently meet the demands of Asia’s Swifties. And after having been infected by this contagion, particularly the astonishing ways that make her a superstar beyond her music, I guess I am no longer a Swiftie for a day or a Swiftie mom, but a certified Swiftie.