As Indy's Eras Tour moment approaches, this is what being a Swiftie means

Taylor Swift and I were both born in December 1989.

Her album “Fearless” was released in 2008 when I was a freshman at Butler University, and I remember singing along to “Love Story” and “Hey Stephen” as I drove around the bend on campus from West 49th Street to Sunset Avenue while I go to my dormitory in my old Saab convertible.

In 2011 the song ‘Ours’ was released, and the lyrics ‘Elevator Buttons and Morning Air’ quickly became entangled in the memories of my internships at the university newspaper.

I knew all the words to so many of her songs, and yet I didn’t identify as a Swiftie at the time.

I certainly didn’t think that more than ten years later I would spend hours trying (unsuccessfully!) to get tickets for The Eras Tour. Or that I would be excited to join IndyStar’s Taylor Swift coverage committee as we prepare to report on the singer’s performances here in November and their impact on Indianapolis, both economically and culturally.

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Swifties were then even more misunderstood, including by me.

That was before icons like Paul McCartney praised her artistry and lyricism. People often falsely accused Swift of not writing her own songs.

Ultimately, I grew up.

I started to see the criticisms of Swift for what they really were: insecurity, jealousy, and the casual undermining of female talent, which is unfortunately common in any industry.

Ironically, Swift’s own music helped me on that journey.

“They wouldn’t shake their heads and wonder how much I deserve from this” if she were the opposite sex, she wrote in 2019 in “The Man.”

I stopped caring about great music as defined by the so-called ‘art bros’ of the time – yes, that’s also a reference to Swift‘‘s “Anti-Hero” — and started to embrace what I loved.

Simply put, I became a Swiftie. That’s the colloquial term for the megastar’s fandom.

Many of us have been on a similar journey. I spoke with Natalia Almanza, a Swiftie who works for Indiana University’s Arts & Humanities Council, which planned a Swift-themed academic conference on IU’s campus last year.

Almanza, 26, remembers wearing a cowboy hat and boots and performing Swift’s “Our Song” at her elementary school talent show, but said she took a break from pop artists like Swift in high school.

“I think it might have something to do with the level of what the media was saying about her in 2014, when people were actively abandoning her,” Almanza said.

But in college, Almanza had a wake-up call when she took a class on minimalism and its impact on pop.

“I had a moment where I was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m fighting this pop love,’” Almanza said. “I don’t know why I’m on a high horse about this. Slowly but surely I got the feeling that people around me were starting to figure that out too.”

Almanza ended up doing a class project around Swift’s 2018 album “Reputation.”

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There is a lot to parse in Swift’s music. At last year’s IU conference, an international group of scholars weighed in on concepts like the “deconstruction of time and memory” and “queer temporality and the politics of desire” in Swift’s music.

I didn’t learn the story of the ancient Greek mythical Cassandra in high school English class. I came to know her by listening to “The Tortured Poets Department,” where Swift sings about a woman who was granted the power of prophecy, but who was destined for a world where no one believed her predictions.

There’s a myth, I guess, that being a Swiftie is limited to those who are truly obsessed, hunting for every hint or “Easter egg” as to when she’ll release “Reputation: Taylor’s Version” or spend thousands of dollars on concert tickets for the Eras Tour. On Reddit, under the question “What makes a Swiftie a Swiftie?” Some joke that it requires a tattoo of Taylor’s favorite number (13) or having at least 350 friendship bracelets.

I don’t meet any of these qualifications.

Another Reddit user defined it very differently: “Do you like Taylor Swift’s music? If so, congratulations! You’re a Swiftie!”

Most of us are just people who deeply identify with her music.

“She really has a way of making music feel like it’s written about you,” Almanza said. “There are so many things that separate a 26-year-old Mexican woman from Chicago from a 34-year-old blonde pop star. It shouldn’t work, but it does. This is someone who has been making music since I knew what music is. Each of these albums allows me to go back to a certain place and remember what was happening in my life.

For me it’s the same. Swift’s album “Lover” came out the year I was engaged; “Paper Rings” was on the soundtrack of my wedding reception.

And yet I continually find new meaning in her extensive catalogue.

Swift released the song ‘The Best Day’ in 2008. It was on the same album as all those songs that now remind me of college, youth and ill-fated first loves. I knew the song, but had never really heard it.

It hit me like a ton of bricks in 2022 when I listened to it again, this time as a new mom. The song is about Swift’s relationship with her own mother, Andrea.

“And now I know why all the trees change in the fall,” Swift sings. “I know you were on my side even when I was wrong. And I love you because you give me your eyes, stay behind and watch me shine.

It always makes me cry now when I think about the relationship I’m building with my son.

As I rocked my son in his nursery during those first months as a sleep-deprived mother, the soft and delicate melodies of “majorie” and “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” were part of my Spotify playlist of lullabies.

No other musician I can remember has had such a persistent, constant, reassuring presence in my life. And I have no doubt that it will continue to be so, as Swift herself continues to grow, change and evolve, and pour that into her music.

Swift wrote these songs to tell her own story, but Swifties like me are grateful for the moving soundtrack she provided for our own story.

Hayleigh Colombo is the senior government accountability reporter at IndyStar who enjoys writing about Taylor Swift in her spare time. She can be reached at [email protected].