I am way late to this party, but better late than never. Before you stop reading because you’re not interested in Taylor Swift, her music, her engagement, her friendship bracelets, hear me out. I wasn’t either. But there’s a reason to tune in to her now. In an era when despair, distrust and disgust are the primary emotions animating many people’s days, she offers this: Agency, optimism and resilience.
No one is more surprised than me to find her the subject of this column.
In 2022, when I had friends and relatives almost weeping in frustration at the Taylor Ticketmaster ticket sales fiasco, I wasn’t too far from responding, “Taylor who?” And when I had friends buying tickets to her tour in other countries in 2024 lest they miss out, and one relative suggest seeing her was akin to seeing the Beatles in their prime, I thought, if I did not say aloud, “Are you on drugs?” (Not yet knowing drugs are decidedly not in the Swiftie vibe.)
As one decidedly unexposed to a ton of popular culture (never seen “Mad Men,” never seen “The Office,” never seen “The Godfather”) this is what I thought I knew of Swift: She was in her 20s, had a lot of breakups and liked sparkly dresses. I was correct on two of the three.
When I learned last year that she was in her mid-30s, my first reaction was an eye-rolling “and she’s still singing about romantic heartbreak?” Heartbreak is the stuff of teenagers and 20-somethings, I thought, rather cynically. When is she going to write songs about career debacles and parent losses and sickness and, I don’t know, home ownership?
Clearly, I’m not a lyricist.
But as coverage of the Eras tour engulfed the media and the reels on my Instagram feed, I couldn’t help but start paying attention. It was two of her older songs written in her late teens and 20s which drew me like a magnet. “Love story” about a happy-ever-after ending to the Romeo and Juliet tragedy, and “All too well,” turning a relationship’s end on its head as a torn-up masterpiece drew me in, I realized, because of the reframing of well-known emotional journeys. Reframing is the number one tool in the resilience toolbox. It’s what we try to teach our kids and ourselves, when life doesn’t go the way we hoped.
Then, her latest, “Life of a Showgirl” was released. It’s getting dissed in some quarters but not this one. Whether you’ve dealt with a bad boss and had to stand up for yourself or better, turn the tables (“Father Figure”); were undermined but pursued your dreams relentlessly nonetheless (title track, “Life of a Showgirl”); or held on by your fingertips until a better day came (“Opalite”), these lyrics speak to so much of what we each need to assert for a happy life regardless of the lightning strikes around us. Tenacity, hope, self-determination. What qualities could better serve her young girl fanbase as well?
Like many recording artists, Swift writes and sings about the circumstances she is personally faced with. I hope I’m still with it decades from now when she writes of middle-aged sorrows and joys, empty nests and later-in-life pursuits of purpose. I even have an idea for the album title: “Swift at 60, I’ve only just begun.”
Virginia Buckingham
Virginia Buckingham is a former president of the Marblehead Current board of directors, a frequent commentator on WCVB’s On the Record and author of “On My Watch A Memoir.” She is working on a second memoir, “As This Mountain” in her newly empty nest and writes a biweekly column for the Current.
