How a Grunge Gen X Dad Learned to Love Taylor Swift

Last year, I realized I had opinions about Taylor Swift.

And not just “she sucks,” which would have been my go-to before having a daughter.

But over the years of driving to and from daycare, swimming lessons, school, volleyball practices, basketball games, playdates, doctor visits, dental checkups, vacations, road trips, birthday parties, and sleepovers, I have listened to a lot of Taylor Swift. Like, a lot a lot.

Kids change you. Kids change everything about you. The years of sleepless nights, the grind of meals and bedtimes, the gross bodily fluids, the hugs around your neck, all of it. I’m more emotional now. I cry more. (And it doesn’t even involve sports movies!)

Anyway, at some point I realized … I kinda liked Taylor Swift.

If you’re a human being on planet Earth in 2024, she’s inescapable. Her Eras Tour was so big that it boosted the entire U.S. economy by more than $4.6 billion. (And she’s not even done yet.)

Last year, it was estimated that one in every 78 songs streamed in the U.S. was a Taylor Swift song. Her boyfriend won the Super Bowl.

So maybe this was inevitable. What I’m going to type next makes me cringe a little, knowing that you’ll read it. But here goes:

I have a favorite Taylor Swift album (“1989,” or wait, is it actually “Lover”?), and I think that while “The Tortured Poets Department” is fine, it doesn’t quite live up to “Midnights,” which is my second favorite (or third?). She’s matured as an artist, going from a country singer-songwriter who occasionally sang in front of a microphone to a seasoned true professional who performs live music and complex dance routines in a more than three-hour show, three nights per week for 19 months. But most of all, her shit is so damn catchy.

Again, this took a lot of growth for me to admit.

As a kid growing up in Wichita Falls, Texas, openly liking pop music as a teen dude would have been the equivalent of being an active member of Al-Qaeda. I proudly liked metal and grunge bands and no girls allowed (ok, White Zombie’s bassist got a pass).

One of my first concerts was Lollapalooza 1994, where the Beastie Boys (RIP MCA) and Smashing Pumpkins tore up the stage. It defined my Gen X brain and nothing, to this day, has surpassed it.

Otherwise, my only live music exposure growing up came from a small club in town called The Refuge. On weekend nights, it featured local grunge and metal bands performing for long-haired moshing kids who sometimes swung their fists instead. I saw members of Bowling for Soup in earlier, much heavier, incarnations (shoutout to Slaw and Coolfork).

And, sure, by myself I may have listened to Top 40 radio mainstays like George Michael and Toto and The Pointer Sisters but officially, I liked cool stuff. I’ve seen Soundgarden twice.

Nowadays, I don’t care. All my teen bravado has long faded away. There’s no image to protect when you’re in your late 40s and worried about your 401(k) balance and your cholesterol.

Some things stay ingrained. I have a natural aversion to the fakeries of pop music — its sugary beats and lovestruck lyrics and beautiful performers (but let’s be honest, Kurt Cobain was good looking). Eventually, though, grudging respect — or Stockholm syndrome — took over, and I started to give pop a break.

Sure, Taylor Swift started her career with a thick Southern accent (didn’t she grow up in Pennsylvania on a Christmas tree farm? Come on.) whereas now she sometimes sounds like Eminem — or Bon Iver. But ultimately, who gives a shit?

Is her music industrialized mass entertainment, perfectly engineered toward a specific demographic? Of course. But that doesn’t mean it’s not good.

I did have one complaint, which I realized one afternoon while driving my daughter home: Taylor is always the victim in every song.

I wondered aloud: “Has she ever blamed herself for the breakup of a relationship?”

We both thought about it. Finally my daughter came up with a song: “Back to December.”

We listened to it. She was right:

So this is me swallowin’ my pride

Standin’ in front of you sayin’ I'm sorry for that night

And I go back to December all the time

All of this culminated last year at Christmas, when I spent more money than I’d ever spent on a gift and bought us concert tickets. Not for Taylor Swift — the Eras Tour had already come and gone from Texas, and we weren’t about to splurge on a trip to Paris —  but for another pop icon: Olivia Rodrigo. Overjoyed, my daughter hugged me. Actually, she jumped into my arms, in a way she hadn’t in years. Worth it even with the bullshit loan-sharky Ticketmaster surcharge.

A few months later, we went to the show at Austin’s Moody Center. The opener was someone we hadn’t heard of — a bedazzled red-head named Chappell Roan.

It was insane.

I was not prepared for the spectacle that is a big pop show, or for the swarms of young girls fully decked out while screaming lyrics. Every purple-and-black dressed tween was having the time of their little lives. It blew away my usual diet of live shows featuring dudes staring at their shoes while they hammered through their catalog (sorry Weezer, just saying).

This was more like a two-hour Super Bowl halftime show: lights, dancers, outfit changes, incredible backing bands, tons of crowd banter, you name it.

I was floored. We both were.

During the show, Olivia Rodrigo occasionally looked up to the cheap seats, sometimes in our direction. We shrieked. I was only being half ironic.

At one point, she launched into another song and my daughter jumped up and down, screaming “THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BRINGING ME!” You can’t buy moments like that (actually you can, and I did, but you know what I mean).

I hugged her. My feet hurt. My conversion was complete.