A senior swiftie story:
I’m not one to really talk about myself, this is especially true because I’m not your typical senior swiftie.
I turn 61 this year and I’m one of those rare swifties a guy, there’s just not that many of us out there (well those at least willing to admit to being Taylor Swift fans).
I am very lucky in a couple of respects, I see a lot of posts on here saying my friends don’t understand my Taylor Swift obsession well I don’t have to worry about that.
I married my best friend 37 years ago and she introduced me to Taylor Swift’s music. I was never a country music fan until Kat (my better half) got me to listen to Love Story.
Since returning to Canada in 1992 (Kat’s Canadian) I’m English, we have only attended two concerts Shania Twain’s Up tour in 2002 and 1989 in 2015.
Prior to that we had seen Queen, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Tina Turner in concert the only one that comes close to 1989 and even that was a distant second was Up. We really wanted to see the Reputation tour but it did not come to Vancouver this time around, and we simply could not afford to travel to any show that was remotely close.
We are both sad that we will miss the Reputation tour because it looks even better than 1989 and I did not think was possible.
These are my top three all time favorite songs from Taylor’s entire discography.
#1 Wildest Dreams
#2 CIWYW
#3 Love Story
So I lucked out and married a swiftie, so not only do I get to share my life with her, but we also share the same passion for Taylor’s music.
I also got lucky just over two months after starting my Tumblr blog, when @taylorswift started following my blog. To be honest I never even noticed her in my notes a mutual had to point it out to me (I nearly died dead)four years later and I still have to go and check just to make sure It is not a dream.
Tumblr was not my first SM adventure when 1989 came out, I tried out Twitter first because it was a platform that I was at least familiar with. That did not last very long as I simply could not stand the drama, it’s not that Tumblr is drama free but in comparison to Twitter it may as well be.
1989 means a lot to my wife and I for reasons that are hard to explain, not only is it fantastic music. It’s one of those rare albums that come along from time to time that does not have a bad track on it at all, and every song on the album could be a single in it’s own right.
Where it gets difficult to put into words requires a lot of explaining. I joined the British military in 1980 and was posted to Germany. Soon after getting to Germany my unit asked for a volunteer to go to Canada on a six month deployment.
Well I was all over that opportunities to travel was part of my reason for enlisting in the first place. So anyway I get myself squared away and off to Canada I fly.
A little trick I learned growing up (I was an army brat for my first nine years on earth) when you get to a new posting there are three people you make nice with the paymaster the quartermaster and the head cook.
So I did this, and boy did I get lucky the head cook in this case was a civilian Leo a great guy, and within weeks of getting to know him I received an invite to dinner with his family and friends.
One of those friends was the wonderful lady pictured above, do any of you guys believe in love at first sight (I never did until that night) I grew up in a house with a drunken abusive father and this made me very cynical about love.
So here was this twice divorced woman with three children who was a little older than I was (don’t ask I won’t tell) with a girl of 5 two boys 9 and 11 and she was and still is wonderful.
Let’s just say the lyric it hit you like a shotgun shot to the heart, have a special meaning when I look back on it now.
Well anyway it turned out that love at first sight was mutual, yeah I know hard to believe but it was true go figure.
We had an amazing but far too short six months together before I had to head back to Germany late November of 1980.
Now all you youngsters on here won’t know this but the early 80’s was way before SM even email was nonexistent back then. The only way to stay in touch was international phone calls ( very expensive back then) or by writing letters.
I had volunteered to go back to Canada as soon as I returned to Germany, my unit always sent one person every six months unfortunately for me someone else had already been chosen.
So back to writing letters we did a lot of that, but we also used to include messages on on cassette tape (another thing you youngsters are probably not familiar with) on those tapes we would include our favorite songs of the time.
Mine were from the European music charts (England’s Top of the pops mostly) Kat’s were North American hits. We kept that up for a few months, then I got lucky again the guy my unit was sending to Canada went out drinking the night before his early morning flight was due to depart and got drunk and missed his flight (I had nothing to do with that’s my story I’m sticking to it).
So I got a call from my Sargent major asking how soon I could be ready to leave, you better believe I was packed and ready in less than 4 hours.
Being that I am such an ahole I did not even tell Kat I was coming, I called her from the bus station when I got to town and asked her to come pick me up. You ever see someone so happy to see you but wanting to strangle you at the same time (I did that night).
I realize this is a rather long and long winded explanation of why 1989 is so important to both of us, it goes back to the music on those tapes.
1989 has that same sound and vibe of that very same music that we used to send to each other way back when. Listening to to 1989 brings memories flooding back to those early days in our relationship.
We got married in May of 1982 and moved to London in the UK for ten years all throughout the 80’s music was very important to us both and still is to this day.
So @taylorswift has always and will probably always (at least for a long time to come) write Taymazing music, but for my wife and I writing anything better than 1989 is probably an impossibility.
