Look, I will happily throw my hand up and admit that I have been - and am - as cynical as anyone about just about anything. It's the ugly side of growing up in the generation that lived with the internet in our pocket; for better or worse (worse), the social language of the internet is sarcasm and snark and, in a culture where there is never a clear and simple answer to anything - and being unabashedly "pro-stuff" isn't as cool as being "anti-stuff" - cynicism never leaves you as easily as it arrives.
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I'm ashamed to say that cynicism has, at times, extended even to the monolithic and broad appeal of Taylor Swift. But - and I know that this is a rare thing to admit on the internet - I was wrong. Taylor Swift is awesome, and here's why ...
The second tranche of the Eras tour pre-sale opened on Wednesday morning to epic levels of hype. More than 800,000 fans joined the online queue and waited, in some cases for hours, refreshing multiple devices, trying to secure tickets after a limited pre-sale of the artist's most expensive tickets (ranging from a couple of hundred to over $1000) sold in a blink on Monday.
Ticketek Australia has reassured fans online, releasing a statement confirming tickets are still available for a range of seats and categories as the second pre-sale of the day opened at 2pm, even as some reports imply as many as three in four were missing out.
Swift has committed to playing a handful of shows in Sydney and Melbourne as part of her first tour since 2019, an event that has her Swifties in equal parts elated to see the return of the star, while also contemplating her legacy.
The Eras tour will fold in multiple albums Swift has released during the years of COVID-induced lockdowns in a three-hour show including hits from Folklore and Evermore in 2020 and her most recent Midnights released in 2022.
All the while, Swift has spent years painstakingly re-recording her back catalogue of six albums dating to 2006 in her "Taylor's Version" project to take back ownership of her masters. Her Speak Now re-release is expected to add to Red and Fearless in the next few weeks.
"We have had tonnes of people coming through the store in the last week and they are all online trying to get tickets," Cardiff record store owner Kellie Jackson said on Wednesday. "We have a list as long as our arm for the pre-sale of Speak Now.
"I just love it," The Mosh Pit owner, who has never downloaded music for streaming, said. "It reminds me what it was like to be young and lining up for tickets.
"I had a kid come in the other day and ask how we used to get tickets before the internet," she added laughing.
"The first 10 people in line for Record Store Day waited for hours and they all bought Taylor Swift."
In the age of edge-lord cynicism, it is easy to look at so much hype and declare ourselves against it. But that cynicism forgets (or, at worst, ignores) a simple truth of music; when you walk into a record store, you are surrounded by hundreds of albums laboriously produced to appeal to us personally. There is literally something for everyone. And, in 2023, there is perhaps no other artists that embodies that ethos of appeal more than Taylor Swift - it just happens that she is also the biggest act on earth at the same time.
Time and again, Swift has shown a remarkable receptiveness to the whims of her fans and curated an astonishing para-social relationship with her listeners. Whether that is a calculated business strategy or not, it's significant - and her fans have responded.
"Look at the Lana Del Ray song (Snow on the Beach, Midnights)," local fan Kahli Rain told me on Wednesday morning, "What other artist would re-record a duet just because her fans wanted it?"
Rain was reluctantly inducted into the fandom after Swift released her lockdown albums Folklore and Evermore. She attributed the mania, reminiscent of the Beatles' heyday, to the breadth of the Eras catalogue and the generation of fans who came of concert age during the pandemic and are now eager to get out and see their favourite artist.
"She's playing for three hours - and she could play for another three hours," she said, "It's the kind of thing that artists do when they are at the end of their touring career.
"It's not just potentially not being able to see her again, her discography is so big even if she does tour again, she is probably only going to tour one album. This is the chance for her fans to see most of her music. It's like a greatest hits tour."
That hype hasn't come from a vacuum either.
On Record Store Day on April 22, when artists of all ilk make parts of their work available for an in-store-only sale day, Hiss and Crackle owner Mitchel Eaton said his Wallsend shop sold out of his Taylor Swift stock in as little as eight minutes.
"I think she has transcended genres," he said, adding of the artist's ability to reach her fans on such a personal level "I think she is part of that generation that is not afraid of oversharing."
Ms Jackson at The Mosh Pit, meanwhile, said there had been a regular stream of Swifties coming through and, in her words, "you can't pick them".
"I don't think you need to be a fan to know why people love her," she said, "We all have our bands.
"I had some young guys in last week buying Lover and Fearless and they were a bit embarrassed about buying it. But don't be embarrassed!
"I can't stand it when people put other people down for their music. It's just music, dude. I won't judge you - I won't allow it.
"Just play it loud."
Ms Jackson added that an oft-overlooked effect of Swift's massively broad appeal was the impact she has had on physical record sales as fans flocked to local store in hopes of picking up their favourite album on vinyl.
"It's tactile," she said, "and the cover art is beautiful and you don't get that in a thumbnail."
She added that the resurgence of physical album sales has also contributed to a new respect for the album as a medium for music; it's not just endless playlists anymore.
"There's more to an album than just the one song you're streaming - there are so many concept albums that you have to listen to from beginning to end."
Whether you're a Swiftie hitting refresh in another window, hanging on the bell for tickets, a causal fan watching the hype unfold on Wednesday, or - like me - a misguided cynic trying desperately to maintain a crumbling veneer of cool detachment in the face of the increasingly overwhelming gravitational pull of the Swifties' orbit, you have to admit - Taylor Swift is an artist for the age.
She's one who has done more for the music scene as a whole than most other artists can claim; and she absolutely deserves her place at the top of your Spotify Wrapped this year.
Simon McCarthy
Simon McCarthy is a journalist working at the Newcastle Herald in NSW. He writes news and features, and produces video and multimedia, for the Herald and Herald Weekender magazine. He contributes regularly to the Newcastle Herald’s daily Topics column, and is the co-creator and producer of the Toohey’s News podcast. McCarthy has worked as a journalist in regional NSW since 2013. He joined the newsroom of the Newcastle Herald in 2017 from the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he worked from 2015 to 2016.
Simon McCarthy is a journalist working at the Newcastle Herald in NSW. He writes news and features, and produces video and multimedia, for the Herald and Herald Weekender magazine. He contributes regularly to the Newcastle Herald’s daily Topics column, and is the co-creator and producer of the Toohey’s News podcast. McCarthy has worked as a journalist in regional NSW since 2013. He joined the newsroom of the Newcastle Herald in 2017 from the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he worked from 2015 to 2016.
