How My Dad’s Death Made Me a Swiftie

So, on the eve of my birthday, which is destined to be eclipsed by the newest Taylor Swift album release, I thought now is as good a time as ever to finally put this story into words.

This is the story of how Taylor Swift saved me from grief and how my dad’s death made me a Swiftie. I’ve thought about this a lot. There are moments in life that inspire art, but there is also art that becomes the soundtrack to our life.

My dad loved music. He’s the one who suggested the name Melody for his first child, a daughter: me.

My dad loved cool music—not just Neil Young and Joni Mitchell of his youth, but Bon Iver, Band of Horses, and The National. He was seeking out new music and allowing his taste and breadth to expand until his death.

Some of my best memories with him were the concerts we went to together. While he was dying of cancer, he started playing guitar more and singing every night after a couple of beers. He played with his massive collection of guitar pedals and amps. Sometimes he’d let my 1-year-old play producer and smash buttons while he played.

I listened. I cried. And I tried to take it all in. To be present as he was processing his life and death through music. Probably wishing that he had done it sooner or more seriously, but at the same time making peace with the fact that he hadn’t and he was doing it now. I really cherish that time with him.

My dad passed in December of 2019, months before the world shut down for a global pandemic. I was wrecked. I had never processed such intense grief, and then to be living in this absolute uncertainty—I was extremely depressed.

I cried myself to sleep every night for months. I started doom-scrolling, listening to podcasts, or staying up until I was completely exhausted. Anything to limit the time in my own head.

I got better at pushing these feelings of overwhelming grief down deep. I was medicated to function on the day-to-day, and that’s just how I lived for a period of time.

During that time, I didn’t listen to music. None. I couldn’t. There wasn’t a single genre or style of music that I could listen to and maintain my survival façade.

Music is a catalyst—a conduit—for emotion, and mine were too big to let out a little at a time. Better to do none at all.

Then, in late July of 2020, nearly eight months after my dad’s passing, Taylor Swift released folklore. Something about the way it was described as a “collection of stories and songs that flowed like a stream of consciousness during isolation, allowing her imagination to run wild into fantasy, history, and memory. She called the album “wistful and full of escapism.” OK, Interested….But more than that, I learned that she had collaborated with Aaron Dessner of The National and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver)—two artists that my dad and I both loved. My curiosity was piqued. So I put it on.

I remember where I was when I listened to the first song on the album: in my car, waiting to cross the highway at Cultus Bay Road. It was nothing like the Taylor Swift I knew. It was ethereal and complex.

I was immediately taken into the world she had built. As the songs unfolded and the lyrics lured me deeper, I capitulated. I just kept driving.

I drove to the beach near my childhood home and just sat and listened. There, in a place where I felt close to my youth and so many memories of my Dad, I felt things I’d been holding down in the depths of myself. There were tears, but there was also laughter.

I felt like she had perfectly encapsulated the meandering, forbidden thoughts and the otherworldly emotions that the strangeness of the time demanded. I was so grateful to her and to Aaron and to these songs for bringing music back into my life. It felt like such a gift.

I listened to that album on repeat every day for months. Then five months later, she surprised the world with evermore, a sort of sister album to folklore. She had similar collaborators and a similar style, but it felt sadder somehow—with songs like “marjorie,” that perfectly depicted the grief of losing her grandmother and the gentle attempts to keep her memory alive; the self-destruction in “ivy”; and the most melancholy song called “happiness.”

These songs are some of my favorites. I fell in love with the way Aaron Dessner’s melodies drew out her deeply honest and visceral lyricism, and vice versa. They were exploring the breadth of sadness, loss, and grief even more than the escapist folklore.

But the last song on the album, the title track, “evermore,” unmoored me from the grief that had become most of my personality. She essentially tells us that although none of the things we love or want to keep will remain with us forever, neither will the pain of loss. Even this all-consuming pain that feels so permanent will pass.

And in time it has. I don’t cry myself to sleep anymore. I still miss my dad in the depths of my bones, but that deepest, most desperate sense of grief has softened.

Whenever I’m back home, I drive to the beach and sit, and I feel close to him and to the child I was. When I take a long drive alone, I put on these songs and I sing loudly and let myself feel.

I’ve since researched and explored a bit about the Swiftie lore, and I just have a lot of respect for her as an artist. Imagine being 15 or 16 and being able to put into words the feeling of young love the way she does in “Our Song.”

Now before you cast judgement- or try to make a point about her hype etc. just know that I don’t subscribe to that and also, I don’t care. There was an article in Rolling Stone that I think about a lot over the years. It’s stayed with me as I’ve worked to unravel my own sexist and misogynist thinking. It blew apart this idea that “girl things” are somehow less impactful or relevant than the artists and art favored by men.

Despite women and girls being a huge economic driver and a loyal, dedicated fan base, the things they like and value are somehow not “real” art or “serious enough” to be considered virtuosic. And yet Taylor’s prolific songwriting has reshaped the industry as we know it. Even Paul McCartney has praised her as a “brilliant and inspiring songwriter.”

What Taylor does that is different from many of her male counterparts is that she believes her job is to entertain and delight her fans—and she delivers on that promise.

So yes, I’m rooting for Taylor Swift, and I’m sure her new album will be a record-shattering success, but no other album will ever hold the title of saving me from my grief. She didn’t just entertain me; she saved me in many ways—making me feel less alone, bringing music back into my life, intersecting my father’s music tastes with mine. And for that, I’ll be a Swiftie, baby!