At 79, I get a lot of weird looks when I say I’m a Taylor Swift fan. At the Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium last night, I didn’t see many people older than me – most of the people there were young teenage girls, some of them with their parents, who seemed to know every single lyric. And there were some men, but it was overwhelmingly tilted towards women. I felt positively antediluvian – but my admiration for her is genuine. I just think she’s fantastic.
I went last night with my wife, my son and my daughter-in-law. It was a very joyful occasion, and everyone was on their best behaviour. The show lived up to my expectations and more. It was an extraordinary spectacle which sparkled and dazzled throughout the evening. I am not generally one for dressing up but I found it somewhat endearing to see how many people came decked in typical Taylor Swift costumes, creating a sense of belonging to their idol, unlike any other pop concert I have ever been to. My wife and I almost wished we had come dressed in something a little more glitzy to show our allegiances, but for me with my nonconformist views, this proved one step too far.
She’s probably the most complete genius in the pop music world that we’ve ever had. I was a big fan of Bob Dylan – but it’s the completeness of what Taylor Swift is that sets her apart. She’s a songwriter, a poet, and weaves stories. She’s also highly bright, and an extremely adept and skilled businesswoman who owns most of her own records. She has a portfolio of more than 250 songs. She’s never indulged in drugs or alcohol and is still very clean-cut. As a single performing artist, without a band, at the age of 34, what she’s achieved in combining all of those things is extraordinary.
I hadn’t really listened to her, except the odd track, until evermore came out in 2020 – that was the first album I really took note of. The song that really hooked me was “champagne problems”. It’s slightly bitchy in a sense – it tells the story of how she decides she can’t go through with a relationship when her boyfriend wants to announce their engagement. There are some lovely lines, like “Left you there standing crestfallen on the landing” – I just think the way she describes it is sensationally brilliant.
Last night at Wembley, that song had a standing ovation that went on for about 10 minutes – it was the biggest standing ovation of all her tracks. That’s my all-time favourite, but I loved all the songs from evermore – “marjorie”, “willow”, and plenty of others, like the break-up song “All Too Well”, “betty”, and “Blank Space”.
I’m usually a big jazz fan, so in some ways this is slightly unnatural territory for me. At the weekend I had a discussion with a friend who said he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, and that he found her songs banal. But I told him to try listening more to the lyrics – that’s what I do. I’m always trying to interpret what the lyrics mean, and that’s how I started getting into her in a big way. When evermore came out I started listening to all the tracks with the lyrics in front of me and admiring how she’s written them.
I like her voice, but it isn’t exactly Dolly Parton – it’s her ability to tell stories that’s special. I’m a journalist and author, so I’m interested in words – and although she writes great melodies, her lyrics are extraordinarily profound. For example, “marjorie” – she wrote that to her grandmother, who obviously she was very fond of, and who had died. She was trying to capture what her grandmother had said to her. The opening lines of that song are: “Never be so kind you forget to be clever / Never be so clever you forget to be kind”. What a brilliant opening sentence.
There’s a snide, sardonic side to her songwriting, too, which I think is great – like on “The Tortured Poets Department”, the title song from her new album, she’s got someone who fancies themselves as an artist or poet, and the whole track starts: “You left your typewriter at my apartment / Straight from the tortured poets department”. Then she goes on to say – “I think of things I’ll never say/ Like who uses typewriters anyway?” What a berk, having a typewriter when he could be using a computer! You’ve got this image of a rather tortured, fragile soul, slightly pretentious, probably smoking a Gauloises or something – it just makes me laugh.
Even though some of her stories might seem a bit trite – boyfriends, and being jilted, and all that stuff – those are exactly the emotions we all grow up with, and she interprets them really well. People can identify with them – that’s why she’s such an enormous hit. Obviously I’m quite curious about the specific things she’s talking about – sometimes I try to look it up, is this Harry Styles, or whoever – but really I’m interested in the universality and her perceptions of what’s going wrong. Even though I’m a man, so it’s slightly different, you can relate to the feelings. Being a teenager is very difficult – am I in, am I out, am I popular, am I not, I’m dancing one night in my Levi’s and the next I’m crying on the sofa. It’s a bit indulgent – but it’s also exceptionally honest.
I suspect her current boyfriend isn’t going to be her last one. I don’t know much about him – but she’s had quite a few relationships already, and maybe that’s her personality. She might find it quite hard to settle down with one particular person. She’s going to have very intense feelings and then move on. She’s got a real poetic sensitivity – is it going to be enough to be in a relationship with an all-American footballer? I don’t know.
She’s a great role model for young people. I grew up in a generation of pop and jazz musicians who were way into serious drugs like heroin. The Rolling Stones et al have all had their problems with drugs and alcohol. That brought out the rebellious streak in us. Maybe Taylor Swift is a bit saintly, but a lot of young people can identify with her because they’re going through similar issues. It’s part of their growing up. I think that’s really healthy – being young can be incredibly lonely, and I think they listen to her and think, maybe there are solutions out there.
British people are always going to be cynical about her because she’s so successful. There’s a famous quote by Oscar Wilde: “A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. I would have paid any amount of money to see the show last night. I know a lot of people will criticise the expense of the tickets, but the whole tour is far bigger and better than anyone could have imagined.
I remember when Abba first came out, everyone said it was junk music – and then by the end everyone was heralding them. I think Taylor Swift has got everlasting appeal. She’s not going to die down for a long time – and she deserves to be celebrated.
As told to Emily Bootle
