Monday June 19, 2006. A mundane Monday in many ways, though history would later argue otherwise. On that day, a then 16-year-old Taylor Alison Swift released her debut single, Tim McGraw, and the rest is record-breaking, culture-making, industry-reshaping history.
Twenty years ago today, I was halfway through the second year of my International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme when Taylor the-music-industry Swift pressed play on a career that would quietly, then loudly, become the soundtrack to millions of lives, mine included.
Given the time difference between Kenya and America, I was probably at home when the single was released, but it is a much better story to imagine me staring out the window of my Higher Level Physics class while the rest of the world, or at least Nashville, was hearing “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night. I said, ‘That’s a lie’” for the first time. So that is the (Lwile’s) version we shall go with, cool? Cool!
In June 2006, I was an 18-year-old discovering new adulthood in an era where Pop, R&B and Hip-hop were the defining sounds of the year. Country music, let alone Taylor Swift, could not be more foreign to me. Twenty years later, all I have to say is 🫶 my name is Taylor TAYlerie and I was born in 1989 1987 🫶
On October 21, 2022, at midnight sharp EST, Taylor Swift released her 10th studio album titled Midnights. At 13:31 EAT, I released Happy Midnights Day, a blog post that set out to answer a question I had been asked many, many, many times before: Why do you love Taylor so damn much? My answer was always something along the lines of, “gosh! Where do I even start?” The emotional and mental chokehold Taylor has on me made it damn near impossible to use the same words she wields so masterfully and effortlessly to articulate my love for her, but I gave it my best shot on Midnights Day. So before getting into today’s post, you might want to (re)read Happy Midnights Day, as there is quite a bit in it that would otherwise have been included here, and I would rather not repeat myself.
Now that you are all caught up 😅 one thing I have consistently written about is how my mum died on December 13, 2017 at 1:10 a.m. after a 5 ½ year battle with stage IV breast cancer. Which, in a casually cruel coincidence, was 1 hour and 10 minutes (Kenyan time) into Taylor’s 28th birthday.
My mum was the absolute love of my life, and her death was absofuckinglutely the loss of my life. Every Swiftie has their own connection to Taylor, and loml is mine.
While many people have a date they associate with a public figure, far fewer have that date become intertwined with the loss of a parent. And that is why I feel deep in my heart that my mum dying on Taylor’s birthday means something. There are numerous ways means something could unfold, but I believe it means we will get to interact in some capacity in my lifetime. And I will get to tell whoever said “never meet your heroes” that they only said that because they never got to interact with Tay in any capacity. Of course I could be wrong and it means nothing – after all, many people dream of meeting their idols, only a tiny fraction ever do – but I am choosing to continue speaking one of my biggest wishes into existence, and hopefully the Universe will grant it in its own time.
My mum’s death day falling on Taylor’s birthday means, in a dark, twisted take of the popular Christmas song, she died 12 days before Christmas. Aka my favourite time and day of the year. Even more of a favourite than my birthday, which I learned to love from my mother, so that should tell you everything. Every year since 1989 (coincidence? I think not!) my family celebrated Christmas at Carnivore, until my mum just up and died 12 days before Christmas.
The biggest challenge stemming from the mother of all losses was learning to live in a world where the love of my life no longer exists, but reputation was my lifeline in the first few months after the loss of my life. The album was released 33 days before my mum died but I only got around to listening to it after her death.
We buried my mum on the 23rd, travelled back to Nairobi on Christmas Eve, and I first listened to reputation when the clock struck midnight on the 25th. For 55:38 minutes, the first Christmas without my mum was bearable. For 3,338 seconds, I thought about something other than the fact that my mum was dead.
reputation saved my life. That might sound hyperbolic, but on its first anniversary I got a tattoo of the album title on my ribcage, so believe me when I say I would not have survived December 2017 were it not for rep.
My morbidly cosmic connection with Taylor is the invisible black string that ties me to her. It was also the turning point in our Love Story. Since then, I have claimed the number 13 as Mine and it has claimed me right back. It shows up everywhere in my life, sometimes by choice but most times by chance. In fact, add my triskaidekaphilia to being born in (19)87 and you have me keeping it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky, just like Taylor and her fiancé Travis Kelce.
Flashforward to 2019 when Taylor released an album that was very much a celebration of love, in all its complexity, coziness, and chaos. If reputation was my winter, Lover was my spring. Because in less than 2 months’ time songs from the album would serve as the soundtrack to the magic of my incredible boyfriend fiancé husband and I falling in love 💓❣️💘💞 My husband was not a Swiftie when we met, but now he can name all 12 albums chronologically, identify deep cuts after listening to a few seconds of a song, is well-versed in all the Swiftverse lore etc etc. I mean, just look at his ‘fit for The Eras Tour that he surprised me with on the day🤩😍
From falling in love to Lover, to wandering the folklorian woods during lockdown, to meeting at midnight the year we got engaged, Taylor’s music has been the common thread in our love story.
Which is why it was the centrepiece of our wedding. As I walked down the aisle to Mine (Taylor’s Version), I loudly sang along to “you made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter, you are the best thing that’s ever been mine.” I even included the lyric in my vows because of how deeply I resonate with it as an Eldest Daughter in an African household whose father was, to put it verrrrrryyyyy lightly, a careless man.
Delicate was our marriage certificate signing song because my husband quoted the lyric “you must like me for me” in the letter he wrote to me when he proposed. Playing it when we signed the document that officially made us Mr. and Mrs. Masiga was a wonderfully full circle moment.
For the music during our photo session at the altar, I curated an Eras Tour Wedding Playlist of 10 songs – one from each of Taylor’s pre-TTPD albums, arranged in chronological order – to tell The Story of Us. Selecting the ten songs was a fun challenge, seeing as I could not choose any songs that were not safe for work church. And while Taylor is hardly a scandalous artist, there are songs in her discography that would have scandalised my aunts and in-laws had they made the playlist. False God, anyone?
Our cake-cutting songs were invisible string and Call It What You Want, and our first dance was to Lover. My husband proposed to me on our second anniversary and we got married on our fourth one, so it was a fever dream high to sing “I’ve loved you three four summers now, honey, but I want ’em all” during our first dance as husband and wife.
One of my favourite things to come out of my wedding was my aunt, who had never heard of Taylor Swift before, texting me to say she had seen on the news that Taylor was in Australia. I thought that was hella cool, especially considering she is a 60-something Kenyan woman with hardly any exposure to pop culture.
But before my Taylor-centric wedding there was my birthday and my bachelorette party. For my birthday, I wore a thrifted Eras Tour–esque dress that featured seven of the ten colours representing Taylor’s first ten albums (only 1989, folklore and evermore were missing).
My bachelorette party was Eras Tour–inspired, from the invite (which featured standout songs from each era), to the décor (done by the talented The Nonnie Experience), to the dress code (where I had my girls come dressed in the era they most identified with). Since my girls are not Swifties I broke down each era’s colour, emoji, fun fact, vibe, key pieces & descriptors, and signature looks in the invite to help them choose their era. Mine was Bride who fell in love during the Lover era, naturally.
And after the wedding there was The Eras Tour, but that is a whole other post. It was meant to go up on June 3rd to coincide with my show date two years ago, but I was lost in the sauce after Arsenal won the Premier League for the first time in 22 years and never got around to editing the final draft. Worry not though, I have every intention of sharing my Eras Tour experience in full technicolour.
For today, just know that I married the love of my life on January 4, 2024, and four months and thirty days later, on June 3rd (not like I was counting 😅), I got to see the other love of my life live for the first time on an epic, career-retrospective tour recounting all her artistic eras. I went to the concert with my husband and bestie, and it is still so soo sooo surreal that mon husbebé and I got to dance to our first dance as it was being sung by Taylor motherfucking Swift!
But while my husband is the current love of my life, he was neither the first nor the second. He is the third. The first is obviously my mum and the second will Forever & Always be Taylor. I have a deep, abounding, unconditional love for Taylor Alison Swift that started when I heard Love Story on Rick Dees circa 2008, grew with Mine released on my birthday in 2010, was solidified with Red in 2012, and by the time 1989 came out in 2014 I was a bona fide Swiftie.
But it was 2017 that changed everything. My mum dying on Taylor’s birthday cleaved my life in two, and in the months that followed I found myself cleaving ever more tightly to Taylor through reputation. Now Tay and I are bonded for life. She’ll be eighty-seven; I’ll be eighty-nine, and I’ll still look at her like the stars that shine in the sky, oh my my my.
Lwile the Leo 