This hasn't changed, but this post is meant to explain why you should never make a person feel ashamed or go out of your way to slam someone just because you don't like them. Here is my story.
My dad and I used to listen to a lot of country music, it was kind of our thing. We could name any artist of any song at the time. (This was before Luke Bryan and Kip Moore and FGL., so way back.)
I remember when we heard Tim McGraw for the first time, I was in 5th grade and dad picked me up from school. (He did that a lot because of bus bullies) Dad had it turned up really loud and he told me, "this girl is only SIXTEEN. Can you believe that? Her name is Taylor Swift." I nodded and sang along because it was a sweet song, but an even sweeter moment.
Not long after this I came home to a cd with a girl with crazy hair on it. Dad had bought Taylor Swift's first album because that moment in the car meant a lot to him too and he wanted more.
Flash forward to 8th grade. Eighth grade was terrible. No longer did I have the safety net of childhood friends and I was plagued with hormones and crushes. Crushes that never seemed to reciprocate. I was awkward and outspoken and those two things aren't cool in junior high. I did have Taryn, though and Taryn and I had Taylor Swift.
We would blast You Belong With me about the crushes who "dated" the wrong girls, we would cry to White Horse and the fact that maybe after all we wouldn't be princesses and we became overwhelmed with hope for our future screaming along to Fearless and Change.
That was the year we went to our first concert alone. That was the year that Taylor Swift greeted us by name backstage. That was the year we were made felt like we mattered to someone's accomplishments.
Speak Now came out when I was 16. I was finally comfortable in my skin. I felt the magic in the world and I had friends that had become sisters. I fell in love with a "band of thieves in ripped up jeans that got to rule the world" when the San Francisco Giants won the 2010 World Series and sparks flew every time I saw him smile. I would scream each one of those 14 songs every time I got in my new car with my new license.
Suddenly everything changed. I lived by myself in a city where I knew no one but somehow fell in love anyway. It was truly miserable and magical at the same time. I had my heart shattered and torn and shipped away and I would lie on the floor listening to the echoes of my pain in All Too Well and Sad, Beautiful Tragic. I would cry in the shower trying to sing Red. Then suddenly I was okay and it all begun again with a blue eyed boy in the back yard of a corner house and I saw the starlight.
It's hard to say what an moment means to you until you are looking back at it. I can't tell you what 1989 has done for me because it's not done doing it yet. Yeah, I know every word and every chord but still every time I listen through, I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time. Like I'm experiencing something new and wonderful and fantastic every single time. It's still telling my I'm healing, it's still telling me to try new things and it's still telling my to stop taking everything so damn personally.
They say you remember the song that's playing in truly important moments. For me, the majority of these moments are instrumented by songs written and sung by a girl who went through similar things. A girl who was brave enough to share them to the world, despite how critical it is back to her, a girl who was courageous enough to grow and evolve and risk losing it all.
I don't respond to Swift critics often but here is what I have to say: If you think that Taylor writes only about love listen to Tied Together With a Smile, if you think Taylor is selfish, check out Swiftmas and the SU2C song Ronan, if you think Taylor is greedy, read the Apple letter.
You don't have to like people, you don't even have to have a reason. However, you do owe people who are trying, who are working hard, who are giving everything they have the respect they deserve.
Music saves people's lives. The idea that someone understands, saves. people's. lives.
Taylor Swift called 1989 a rebirth. I call it growing up. I call it impressive as hell. I call it fearless.
