Tom Dunne: The moment I realised Taylor Swift is this generation’s Bowie

I am still not over it. It was only eight hours of my life – door to door – but I’ve needed to lie down ever since. It was exhausting, demanding, draining. I feel like I did the Camino. My ears were still ringing on… no wait, they are still ringing.

The journey started in earnest the night before. A playlist was put together over dinner, and we were soon jockeying for song choices. This scene, reproduced in homes around Ireland, was called Swiftmas Eve.

I felt we were at the gig the moment we left the house. At our front gate we met a mum and daughter in silver glitter cowboy hats and matching boots, faced painted and friendship braceleted to high heaven. “Taylor?” we asked. “Taylor,” they said.

The train was no different. It felt like a fancy dress party from an American Halloween movie. “We could have tried harder on the dressing up front,” my daughter whispered. “Or even a bit,” I answered.

We bought matching hats at the stadium. Everywhere I looked, T-shirts proclaimed messages of inner anguish and self-affirmation. ‘A Lot Going on at the Moment’ and ‘It’s Me, I’m the Problem’, they declared. Where was my ‘Frankie Says Relax’ shirt when I needed it?

After the gentlest security I have ever experienced we found ourselves on the pitch, stage right. We were about as close as I’d been to Bruce during that earlier pilgrimage in May. The scene was set. It was time for the magician.

You’ve probably read the reviews by now. Everything they said was true. What is there not to like about someone with talent, looks, a voice, piano and guitar skills, a way with words, drive, ambition, dance moves, youth, and $1.3 billion on her Revolut card?

‘The key moment for me was when she sat at the piano and sang ‘Betty’ and ‘Champagne Problems’. It reminded me of that moment in the Get Back documentary where McCartney sits at his piano and play bits of ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, ‘Let it Be’, and ‘The Long and Winding Road’.

That stuff deeply impresses me. That is having all the chops. That is raw talent. That’s not really needing anyone else. That’s what you build shows like the Eras tour around. That is the kernel. Depending on the quality of the songs, that is genius.

It was also the moment that was greeted by four minutes of wild, Beatlemania-like screaming that rose to a fever pitch which almost deafened me, and almost floored Taylor. She was visibly overcome. I only ever saw such a moment once before: Bowie at the Point, 2003.

I realised that Taylor is their Bowie. I’ve always thought that Bowie’s genius is one that any generation can get – it’s really about feeling like an alien amongst your peers and family but having belief in yourself and knowing that “Oh no, you’re not alone” – and maybe, probably, Taylor’s carries a similar message.

But as I looked around at the mostly young female audience, I realised that theirs is a much more internal world than mine, and one I am very much outside of through both age and gender.

But Taylor isn’t. She lives and breathes that world and populates it with characters that truths that mean the world to this audience. At times a girl beside me lost it completely to scream at the top of her lungs any line that had a “F**k you” in it, and there were many.

This might explain why I am more engaged by songs the Folklore album onwards. She’s an older writer on those songs. There’s a bit more I can relate to. They are great, great songs.

But what next for Taylor? She is the Alexander the Great of music. The world is at her feet, conquered and subdued. I know what her parents will be suggesting! It’s what we do.