One minute I found myself downloading Folklore to have something new to listen to during my lonely commute to work (because it was 2020 and literally no one else had to actually go to their office anymore). Then it was four years later and I inexplicably found myself sobbing over an NFL player’s retirement speech, and now my proverbial Roman Empire is falling down the rabbit hole of Taylor and Travis. Also, am I going to be able to watch the Super Bowl tonight?! THIS is what the internet was invented for!

I am 53 and parenting three young children, so I’m hardly the right demographic for all this. I have many better, more important things to do, is what I’m saying. And I wasn’t really a fan until Folklore. I knew the song “White Horse” because I’d fallen off mine, so to speak. (Thrown off is probably a better term for it.) It wasn’t until I read reviews of Folklore that I decided to give it a listen. I loved it immediately, and it was quickly followed by Evermore. Since then I have added the “Taylor’s Version” of her albums as they were released, along with Midnights and now the Tortured Poet’s Department (the Anthology version, because why buy 16 songs when you can have 31 for $1 more). The whole lot is on my phone, set to shuffle, and she’s basically been my soundtrack for the past 4 years. I can re-enact the 10 minute version of All Too Well in my car with the best of them and carry an outrageous amount of contempt for Jake Gyllenhaal. AND MAYBE WE GOT LOST IN TRANSLATION!

I downloaded the newest album (TTPD) shortly after it came out, at about 2:15 am. I was in a hotel in Massachusetts, lying in a queen-sized bed that I was being crowded out of by my girls (which is why I was awake at such an ungodly hour). I later managed to listen to it twice while driving back to Maine, while the girls slept in the car, and I hated it. HATED IT. I thought, good lord, what a vanity project, she needs an editor, what on earth were Jack and Aaron thinking letting her put all this stuff out??? (I later read the NYTimes review of the album which heartily agreed with me.)

But. But! Much like the New Heights podcast, this new album has grown on me. Let me digress here just to say that despite listening to this podcast I still do not know what a “down” is; like several men before them the Kelce Brothers failed to make me understand it during one of their “Ask a Dumb Question” segments. I have never actually sat through an entire NFL game, even though I am from New England. Once I got a text from my sister saying that my niece was bowling with Vince Wilfork and I had no idea who he was. I have no business listening to a podcast about any sport, let alone football, but Taylor Swift’s love life has led me here and who am I to fight the alchemy? The world is literally falling apart and I’m parsing song lyrics like I’m back in high school (which, in fact, is another track on the album and let me just say Taylor and I clearly had VERY different experiences in high school). Every few weeks I get hyper-focused on a song from TTPD, right now it’s Peter (my lost fearless leader, in closets of cedar preserved from when we were just kids, was it something I did?) but give it another few days and I’ll be onto another track.

At any rate, I much prefer the football player over the whole lot of the exes. I’d never even heard of The 1975, let alone Matty Healy. Strange, since pretty much every guy I ever dated had more in common with Matt than Travis. Dark, weird, musical, probably mentally ill – sign me up! (I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can). Happily I (eventually) learned my lesson, and while my husband is not an NFL player he also has crinkly, twinkly eyes and an inordinate amount of patience for my whims. But there is more than just the boyfriend situation to keep my interest in Taylor. Did you know there is a whole gaggle of moms on the internet who insist that playing Taylor Swift puts babies to sleep? I have tried this with mixed results, partly because “Stay Stay Stay” and “Shake It Off” are popular living room dance party choices for the girls, run through the karaoke machine my sister bought them last Christmas as they shout-sing along. NO ONE can sleep through that. (Fort the record, baby likes the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac, as well as a classical playlist on Spotify that almost always puts him to sleep.)

I don’t know where this goes or how it ends. I know entirely too much about these strangers, I even know that at least half of what I “know” probably isn’t true. It’s embarrassing, really. I blame menopause; I knew I’d lost my mind even before all this Taylor drama but now it’s like an ADHD hyper-fixation, without any productivity. My brain completely rewired itself while I was pregnant, and then over the past couple of years it’s gone and done it again. It’s been 2 years since I asked for a referral to be tested for ADHD. I had the consult and was given some questionnaires to fill out. I have lost those questionnaires three times, which as far as I’m concerned should tell the doctor everything she needs to know. My husband is half-amused and half-worried that my sports-loathing self now sits on the living room floor playing with the baby while cheering for the Chiefs, and then immediately demanding to know what just happened because honestly, I have no idea. The baby thinks it’s funny and yells YAAAAAAAY along with me and just laughs, and I just pray his bio family (staunch Patriots fans) doesn’t find out I’m encouraging him to root for another team. In the meantime, GO CHIEFS!