On why I owe Taylor Swift a personal apology
My life at the time when I met her was, in some ways, a bit like a country music song, but after I went to interview her I did something I still feel ashamed of.
Every Thursday I pick up Evangeline from school and drive half way to Baltimore, where she has a riding lesson. DC traffic changes dramatically after 3.15pm, and sometimes we’ll spend too much time sitting in stationery traffic on the beltway. There are riding schools closer to us in the city, but I love the dusty, scruffy atmosphere of this one, where Evangeline’s riding instructor is a man called Greg who plays in a rock band and looks a bit like a cheerful version of Nick Cave. And anyway, I don’t mind time in the car with Evangeline, as it’s our time together, chatting while listening to the Modern Love podcast and Taylor Swift songs.
That woman is so brilliant. Evangeline hadn’t absorbed her music until we moved here, when she was, ahem, swiftly invited to an Eras Tour party with her middle school friends; they wore a Swiftie uniform of home-made Junior Jewels t-shirt’s and baggy pyjama pants, exchanging wristfuls of friendship bracelets while singing in unison to her insanely catchy tunes. And every Thursday afternoon, driving down a wide American freeway, with massive trucks beside us and the sky cobalt blue ahead, it’s impossible not to fall radically, heavily in love with Taylor Swift.
Whether watching her singing, an absolute powerhouse, in front of 80,000 Swifties in a sequinned corset on stage in Sydney, or looking cute stepping onto the Superbowl pitch in a Chiefs bomber jacket and white bobble hat to support boyfriend Travis Kelce, who looks, confusingly, much more like a Canadian lumberjack than any footballer I can remember, I’m in compete awe of this woman.
But with each song Evangeline and I belt out together, each Time magazine article I watch my daughter poring over, each new friendship bracelet I see her threading together in homage to Taylor, I feel a stab of bright red guilt. Because in 2010, I was flown to LA by a Sunday newspaper to interview Taylor Swift, and I did something I’m ashamed of. Even then, a whole a decade and a half ago Taylor was huge. The night before our interview, I was invited to see her singing at a charity fundraiser in Beverley Hills where, I wrote the “hot scent of lilies fills the room, which is heaving with diamonds, tumbling blonde curls, facelifts and fur.” I was on a table between Reese Witherspoon and Britney Speaks then boyfriend, Jason Trawick. Tom Hanks was hosting, and someone payed $50,000 for a signed guitar. It was about as cosy as Hollywood gets. We met that night, when she jumped up from her place beside Steven Spielberg to hug me. ("Oh, hi! I love your dress! You look so cute! What perfume are you wearing? I love it!"). In a room full of facial reconstruction, she was warm and very, very real.
Now worth 34 and worth $1.1 billion, and half way through her 60-stop Eras Tour (the stamina of that woman!), she still pulls off that very real charm, from her hair, which sometimes frizzes a bit too much, just like yours or mine does, to the way she dresses, off stage, in very slightly unflattering little vests or dresses which look like they might have been grabbed from a sale rail at Miss Selfridge. After chatting at the party, I went to interview her the next day, where she generously gave me a couple of hours alone, free from her publicist. And while she was utterly charming, I did something I still feel a hot sense of shame about.