Who Is This Taylor Swift Person?

If I’ve ever heard a Taylor Swift song, I wasn’t aware of it.

I’m just too old. And, happily, out of touch with the pop music scene today. I’m not embarrassed to admit that. I mean, by the time she hit the charts, I was in my sixties.

When you get to a certain age, the brain is tired of doing the thousands of things you made it do for so many years. Like remembering why you ended up here, in the hardware store. Or why you interrupted such a nice dinner party to blurt out what you just said.

It’s time, you think, to air out the knowledge warehouse and reduce the number of memories that have, over the years, cluttered up every nook and cranny. By having fewer memories, you reason, your brain will have more time and energy to do what it still must do. Like find the car keys. Or remind you to put on your shoes.

Purging the brain is the order of your age. So, you do that, even if you would prefer to hoard it all. But even if you have that mentality, it still makes zero sense to take in more memories. Especially with music. In your adolescence and young adulthood, you collected more music memories than you will ever need.

Which is why, despite her rising fame, I never gave Tayler Swift any of my attention. Furthermore, her clean-cut, wholesome, “pretty” look suggested to me that she would be a quickly passing fad.

I was wrong. Swift signed her first record contract in 2005, at the fragile age of 14. Teenage stars – TV stars, movie stars, and music stars – generally have a short arc of fame. Two or three years. Five years, at best. But here we are, 18 years later, and Taylor Swift is more famous and more popular than ever. In fact, there is an argument to be made that she is the most successful rock/pop star of all time.

Here’s a good example: Take a look at this amazing list of the amazing number of music industry records broken by Taylor Swift.