Hayleigh ColomboIndianapolis Star
Taylor Swift and I were both born in December 1989.
Her “Fearless” album was released in 2008 when I was a freshman at Butler University, and I remember singing along to “Love Story” and “Hey Stephen” as I rounded the bend on campus from West 49th Street onto Sunset Avenue while driving to my dorm room in my old Saab convertible.
In 2011, the song “Ours” was released, and the lyrics “elevator buttons and morning air” quickly became enmeshed with the memories of my college newspaper internships.
I knew all the words to so many of her songs, and yet, I didn’t identify as a Swiftie back then.
There’s no way I would have thought that more than a decade later, I’d be spending hours trying to (unsuccessfully!) score tickets to The Eras Tour. Or that I’d be excitedly serving on IndyStar’s Taylor Swift coverage committee as we prepare to report on the singer’s performances here in November and their impact on Indianapolis, both economically and culturally.
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Swifties were even more misunderstood then, including by me.
That was before the days of icons like Paul McCartney praising her artistry and lyricism. People often falsely accused Swift of not writing her own songs.
Eventually, I grew up.
I started seeing the criticisms of Swift for what they really were: insecurity, jealousy and the casual undercutting of female talent that is unfortunately commonplace in every industry.
Ironically, Swift’s own music helped me along that journey.
“They wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve” if she were the opposite sex, she wrote in 2019’s “The Man.”
I stopped caring about great music as defined by the so-called “art bros” of the day – yes, that’s also a reference to Swift's "Anti-Hero" – and started embracing what I thought was great.
Simply put, I became a Swiftie. That's the colloquial term for the megastar's fandom.
Many of us have gone on a similar journey. I talked to Natalia Almanza, a Swiftie who works for Indiana University’s Arts & Humanities Council, who planned a Swift-themed academic conference on IU’s campus last year.
Almanza, 26, remembers wearing a cowboy hat and boots and performing Swift’s “Our Song” in her elementary school talent show, but said she took a break from pop artists like Swift in high school.
“I think it’s maybe coupled with the height of what the media was saying about her in 2014 where people were actively putting her down,” Almanza said.
But, in college, Almanza had an awakening when she took a class on minimalism and its impact on pop.
“I had a moment where I was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m fighting this pop love,’” Almanza said. “I don’t know why I’m on a high horse about this. Slowly but surely, I felt like folks around me were also starting to emerge from that.”
Almanza ended up doing a class project centered on Swift’s 2018 album “Reputation.”
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There’s a lot to dissect in Swift’s music. At IU’s conference last year, an international group of scholars opined about concepts like the “deconstruction of time and memory” and “queer temporality and the politics of longing” in Swift’s music.
I didn’t learn the story of the ancient Greek mythic Cassandra in high school English class. I learned about her by listening to “The Tortured Poets Department,” where Swift sings about a woman who was granted the power of prophecy but was fated to a world where no one believed her predictions.
There’s a myth, I think, that being a Swiftie is limited to those who are truly obsessed, hunting for every hint or “Easter egg” about when she’s releasing “Reputation: Taylor’s Version” or spending thousands of dollars on Eras Tour concert tickets. On Reddit, under the question "What makes a Swiftie a Swiftie?" some joke that it requires having a tattoo of Taylor's favorite number (13) or having a minimum of 350 friendship bracelets.
I don't meet any of those qualifications.
Another Reddit user defined it quite differently: "Do you like Taylor Swift’s music? If so, congrats! You’re a Swiftie!"
Most of us are just people who deeply identify with her music.
“She really has this way of making music feel like it’s written about you,” Almanza said. “There are so many things separating a 26-year-old Mexican woman from Chicago versus a 34-year-old blonde bombshell popstar. It shouldn’t work but it does. This is someone who has been creating music since I was aware of what music is. Every one of these albums, I can go back to a certain place and remember what was going on in my life.”
It's the same for me. Swift’s “Lover” album came out the year I got engaged; "Paper Rings" was on my wedding reception soundtrack.
And yet I’m continually finding new meaning in her expansive catalog.
Swift released the song “The Best Day” in 2008. It was on the same album as all those songs that remind me now of college, youth, and ill-fated first loves. I knew the song, but I had never truly heard it.
It hit me like a ton of bricks in 2022 when I listened to it again, this time as a new mom. The song is about Swift’s relationship with her own mom, Andrea.
“And now I know why the all the trees change in the fall,” Swift sings. “I know you were on my side even when I was wrong. And I love you for giving me your eyes, staying back and watching me shine.”
It never fails to make me cry now, thinking of the relationship I’m building with my son.
As I rocked my son in his nursery during those sleep-deprived first months as a mom, the dulcet and delicate melodies of “majorie” and “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” were part of my Spotify playlist of lullabies.
No other musician I can recall has had such a sustained, ongoing, comforting presence in my life. And I have no doubt that will continue as Swift herself keeps growing, changing and evolving, and pouring that into her music.
Swift wrote these songs to tell her own story, but Swifties like me are grateful for the poignant soundtrack she’s given for our own.
Hayleigh Colombo is the senior government accountability reporter at IndyStar who is happily writing about Taylor Swift in her spare time. She can be reached at hcolombo@indystar.com.
