Tom Dunne: I have never seen anything like Taylor Swift

Yep, the Taylor Swift Eras invasion is about to make landfall.

I could have sat this one out. My children, teenage girls and therefore technically her prime audience, are non-plussed. They don’t want to go. But curiosity got the better of me. I raised my hand to the press office in Ireland, expecting, to be honest, just pitying laughter.

I did so because I have never seen anything like Taylor. The sheer scale, the numbers, the output, the fandom, is unprecedented. I say ‘unprecedented’ because the Beatles existed in a world before the social media maelstrom that has made Taylor an actual “multiverse.” 

Never before has an artist existed so perfectly placed to meet fan expectation. She is beautiful, young and clever. She is self-aware, a writer of the first order, keenly observant of the world and the people around her. She mines her daily existence for content, as all good writers do, and plays the game.

She can tour it seems endlessly, perform three nights in a row for three hours at a time, and still release new albums chock-a-block with hits. She does this while simultaneously re-recording her back catalogue to teach some business heads a few harsh lessons in Swiftonomics.

It’s hard not to be impressed, even for me, a lifelong punk suspicious of anyone who sells records in anything more than double figures. Pure punks didn’t want to know anything about money, and money felt likewise about them. It was the perfect relationship.

But deep down I really did want my heroes to sell records. I wanted the world to know all about Microdisney and The Blades. So, when The Boomtown Rats got to number one with ‘Rat Trap’ it felt like a victory for every band I’d ever loved who didn’t quite make that jump.

I’ve long since squared that circle. REM and U2 make brilliantly authentic music that sells millions. You can get it right, even in this modern age, artistically and commercially. They are not mutually exclusive.

I only really discovered Taylor, when Ryan Adams, then unblemished and flying high himself, recorded her entire 1989 album. I loved it. It had a directness that had been missing from his albums for quite a while. It was, oddly, the album I’d always wanted him to make.

It was all killer, no filler. ‘All You Had to Do Was Stay’ was standout. It had shades of ‘To Be Young’ and ‘Come Pick Me Up’ – the beat, the guitar, his voice straining with emotion – but it had something else too. It was succinct and the hooks – the repetition of the word “stay” – were just class.

“Written by who again?” I asked people. I didn’t buy the back catalogue and get a Taylor tattoo, but my interest was piqued and has been ever since. Often when she guests on others’ tracks, like The National’s ‘The Alcott’, where she is incandescent.

When The Tortured Poets Department arrived on my birthday in April – honestly Taylor you shouldn’t have – I was called upon to be the convenient ‘Gen X man just doesn’t get millennial icon’ on a radio show. I couldn’t do it. The songs were too good.

One song from it, ‘So Long London’, is a masterclass in storytelling and songwriting. Her lyrical dexterity, the insightfulness, the killer lines, the hooks, literally floor me.

So, I raised my hand to hopefully attend a Taylor gig in a press capacity. I was informed I was being “passed onto Taylor’s people.” I felt nervous. A nice man contacted me later.

So that’s it: I’m going in. Worst case scenario I enjoy a great gig. Best case scenario I get backstage, that old Irish magic works its charm and in a year’s time Taylor’s new single is searing put down of someone oddly familiar to you called Mr. Parachute Man.

The cards are in the air. Hasta la vista, baby.