How Growing Up With Taylor Swift Inspired Me to Become A Writer

I still remember the first time I heard Teardrops On My Guitar on a boombox in my childhood best friend’s kitchen when I was in 6th grade. It was my first introdcution to country music, as I had been very enveloped in the pop music scene with the hits of my generation: NSYNC, Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, and Michelle Branch being the biggest artists on loop on my cd player.

My friend Zoe said that it was this new artist, Taylor Swift. She was only 15— not much older than me at the time, and she was making a name for herself in the country music scene as a singer-songwriter. I was skeptical at first, country music wasn’t that ‘cool’ in very liberal Seattle, and so I wasn’t sure if it was okay to admit that I liked her sound. But the thing that captured me about her was that she billed herself first and foremost as a writer, someone who told stories through her music. And that’s what I had always wanted to be— filling journals with pages and pages of writing my entire childhood, the only thing I knew I was good at.

When I got her debut album from a friend of mine, we blasted it all night, jumping up and down on my bed to ‘Our Song’ and belting out ‘Fifteen’ like they were written about us and our pre-teen crushes. I couldn’t believe someone was wriring songs that resonated with me, and it was the first time I really felt like I had found music that made me feel understood.

From then on I was hooked, and I watched her every move. I gobbled up all her albums voraciously when they came out, playing them on repeat for days and weeks on end, burning copies for all my friends. That’s also when my best friend and neighbor, Lydia, and I started bonding over our love for Taylor Swift. Fearless was released in 2008, and I fondly remember doing homework together in my bedroom, eating snacks and listening to the cd on repeat. Love story was a staple of my early high school and teen years, and I distinctly remember when the music video came out, it felt like it was the perfect mixture of my other obsession— Pride and Prejudice— teen romance and ball gowns all in one. It was everything a 15 going on 16-year-old could want.

Then came Speak Now, which came out towards the end of my high school career as I was entering into my freshman year of college. The album (and its extra tracks) were on repeat on my purple ipod nano (wow, what a marking of a passage of time through technology). My freshman year I was oscilating between ‘The Story of Us’ and ‘Dear John’ as it seemed like I fell into crush after crush and then heartbreak after heartbreak. Taylor Swift was my constant throughout— and it seemed like her heartbreaks were mine, and her lyrics made me feel like someone understood what it felt like to find first love and to lose it. It was also something that kept me connected to my best friend who was going to school across the country in the midwest, which I am forever grateful for. We’d have phone calls just to discuss the album and what songs were resonating most with us.

And then came Red in 2012, around the end of my sophomore / beginning of junior year of college. Red shook me to my core, and made me feel more than ever that if someone like her could become so wildly popular because of her songwriting skills, that my love of writing was important to follow. This was the year that I declared my major in Journalism, cementing that writing would be a central part of my life. I remember screaming the lyrics and sobbing to ‘All too well’ after one of my most crushing heartbreaks, and feeling like the intro song ‘Red’ was specifically written about an on-again-off-again relationship I was in for years. The cd was one of the most impactful ones of my college experience, and to this day it has a special place in my heart because of how it got me through some tough times.

1989 came out when I was a fresh college graduate, working in the big city, commuting into downtown Seattle every day and feeling both lost and found all at once. I remember confidently strutting to my internships with blank space in my ears, and watching the music video with her killer outfits and red lips. I woud blast wildest dreams and out of the woods, thinking of lost summer love. But to this day, clean will always be one of the songs with the strongest imagery for me, about breaking through a window after a storm, finding yourself washed clean and ready to start anew. I cherish this album, and I cherished growing up alongside Taylor, feeling like even though she was a massive pop sensation by this point, that we she was a creative spirit I looked up to, and it was cool to feel like we were going through the same things around the same time. It made me feel seen in a way that even sometimes nobody else could. No matter what, I had her lyrics to come back to.

The year that Reputation came out was a pretty chaotic year of my early 20s— all my friends and I were in semi-bad jobs, barely making rent, and going out to bars in Capitol Hill on the weekends to cope with the stress of it all. It was also one of the years that my best friend Lydia was finally settled back in Seattle, and we started our album listening parties again in person. I remember listening to Rep in my bedroom in our townhouse in Crown Hill, being absolutely floored by the different sound and all of the snake imagery weaved throughout. I loved how she took what other people said about her, trying to tear her down, and used it to create a brilliant creative work of art. Reputation was one of my favorite newer albums, and it felt like once again, she and I were on parallel tracks, reinventing ourselves in tandem. Lydia and I were able to see her on her Reuptation tour and I will never forget that night, with our seats in literally the last row of the nosebleeds. I remember tearing up when she came onstage, awed by her presence and just delighted to be in the same space as her, screaming her lyrics along with thousands and thousands of other people.

Lover was another instant classic for me— I was in another stage of growth, falling out of love at the time and doing a lot of travleling that became the backdrop of this album. I Forgot That You Existed became a classic breakup anthem for me, and I remember blasting Cruel Summer on repeat walking along the canals of London on one of my first out of the country work trips. The album will always remind me of traveling to Montreal in the fall and London in the summer, bopping along to my girl while regaining my own self worth and self confidence with some solo-travel.

Then came Folklore and Evermore— my spirit albums. I had always hoped Taylor would go more of an acoustic moody direction, and set to the backdrop of me falling in love with my now-husband, these albums hold such a special place in my heart. I remember playing them through the first time with a foggy forest backdrop of his bedroom in the background. These sister albums feel like fall to me, and I fell in love with both of them so instantly and deeply, a lot like my love story with my husband.

Midnights was and has been an album on-repeat for me since it came out, when I did a solo listen with a glass of wine, surrounded by candles, when it came out. I loved it instantly even though it wasn’t as much of a fan-favorite. I still listen to the extended editions, and Hits Different was one of my all-time most played songs of 2023 without a doubt. But the song that really got me was ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid.’ The line, ‘Something different bloomed // writing in my room’ is something that hit me to the core, like she was speaking directly to me. I have consistently turned to writing throughout my life as a safe haven— a way to process, to help make sense of things, and to gain perspective. It also made me realize that because writing had become such a big part of my job, I had let it slip away as a hobby, and I was tired of that. It was calling to me again, and it’s what made me start this blog— that urge, that itch to create, and in my most-known medium. lt finally felt right.

But the moment that ‘Youre On Your Own, Kid’ really cemented itself as a song that will be etched in my veins with importance, is the moment that my 10-year old brother, who also loved Midnights, turned to me and said that it was his favorite song on the album. It cracked me in half, that a 10-year-old would have seen enough in his life to feel this sentiment so deeply. I could see mirrored in his eyes what I had also seen and felt in my childhood that spoke to me about this song and something that will bond us forever. It broke me open and made me realize that to me, Taylor Swift is more than just a pop star. She’s someone who, like me, needs writing like she needs to breathe. That she uses it as a way to connect with people, and if this is the string that connects me to my sweet, blonde haired little brother, then thank god for Taylor Swift.