What We Talk About When We Talk About Taylor Swift...

Exactly one month ago today was Friday, October 3. I was fortunate enough to be in Destin, FL, with my wife, Amy, celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. I woke up at dawn to take a walk along the white sand beach beside the Gulf of Mexico and listened to Taylor Swift's new album, "The Life of a Showgirl."

Now at this point, if you don't like her music or if you are turned off by all the attention she garners as a celebrity, you're not going to like this new blog series. That's fine with me. Feel free to navigate away and ignore this blog for the next couple of weeks.

But before you go, remember this: there's no such thing as bad music. Before you respond, just know this—Nickleback, the butt of so many "bad music" jokes, has sold 50 million albums worldwide. Somebody really likes their music.

Two of my best friends, Steve Lewis and Mike Tucker, have wildly divergent tastes in music from me. We often converse about new songs and older artists, but despite our friendship, we don't have much in common musically, and that's totally okay. Music is subjective, and it's okay to dislike someone else's taste in music without making it a character flaw in the other person.

I haven't posted here at Blogger in a long time. The last series I posted here was in 2019 about "No-Skip Albums." (If you don't like Taylor Swift, maybe browse through those posts before you go.) That series is appropriate, because "The Life of a Showgirl" is a total no-skip for me. In fact, I can't create a ranked list of songs because they are all individually so amazing.

That's what I'm going to be writing about for at least the next 12 posts. I'm going to do a deep dive into each of the tracks from her new album. I'll talk about the musical influences, the literary allusions, the pop culture connections, and my own thoughts about each song.

My daughter Tori introduced me to Taylor way back in her career with the "Fearless" album, which will be an important touchstone for her new work. I was a casual fan of 1989, and incidentally, so was Steve at the time. I did not pay attention to her again until FB friend Shenandoah Lynd (another friend with divergent musical tastes) recruited me into the Swiftie life.

At this point, I went back and consumed "Midnights," which is one of my favorite Taylor albums (more of that one later as well). Following that, I encountered "Folklore" through the Long Pond Sessions documentary on Disney Plus. Shortly after that, she released "The Tortured Poets Department," and I've been a full-blown Swiftie ever since.

That morning one month ago on the Destin beach was a revelation for me, an experience with an artist I already loved unlike many others. Probably the one that comes closest is with my favorite band, Tears for Fears, and their 2022 release "The Tipping Point."

However, it took me several listens to TFF's most recent album to really fall in love with the songs, and at this point, at least two of them are regular skips. Each song on Taylor's new album was amazing to my ears on the first listen, and each subsequent hearing only deepens my love for the album. I would have to think for a long time whether any album comes close to that. 

Maybe "Wish" by The Cure or Kate Bush's "The Sensual World" are candidates for first-listen love, but those came out more than 30 years ago. This is new and fresh pop music, something that hasn't resonated with me for more than 20 years.

Final word: I like pop music, and I like popular pop music. I like hit singles. I like catchy melodies and infectious rhythms. MTV was always on when they only played music. I listened to Kasey Casem's "American Top 40" every week. This is my taste in music—it's very "vanilla old white dude," and I'm totally okay with that. I don't do edgy or avant-garde; I like what I like. 

If you're still with me at this point, here's what's next. We'll go through the tracks, one by one, in album order. First up tomorrow is her first single, "The Fate of Ophelia." I hope that some of you will come along for the ride. 

Photo credit: By Swift, Taylor (October 3, 2025). "The Life of a Showgirl". United States: Apple Music. Archived from the original on August 19, 2025. Retrieved August 19, 2025., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80734644