Lessons Learned From Taylor Swift

Alternative Title: A Love Letter to Taylor Swift

Last Wednesday night (read: Thursday morning for many of us) Taylor Swift announced her next re-release would be 1989 (Taylor’s Version). Here is a great summary if you’re unfamiliar with why Taylor is re-releasing her albums. Along with the announcement, Taylor shared the cover of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and I was immediately struck by how it compared to the original version. I was immediately struck by how the covers perfectly compare womanhood in your 20s versus in your 30s.

Taylor shared in her Lover journals that she had taken a Polaroid of her smiling for the original cover art and chose not to use it because it wasn’t “intriguing” enough. And so she and her team revisited the photos and selected the cover we’ve known and loved for almost nine years. I wasn’t aware of this piece of Swift History. But it’s certainly relatable.

I know I spent a lot of time in my 20s wondering if I was intriguing enough, smart enough, pretty enough, fun enough, worthy enough… or just enough. It resonates hard. A lot of it was that I was looking for validation from others that eventually came and that I hadn’t fully gotten my legs underneath me yet. I was a new professional in my field and everyone seemed to be doing all these great things. Everyone I was in rooms with always seemed smarter than me. They knew so much, they had impressive experiences, and they knew how to network way better than I did. And in love, I was really just trying to figure it out. I’d had serious relationships before, but they left me feeling confused and anxious for the future. I spent a lot of my 20s looking for validation in almost every area of my life. And ironically, 1989 was the soundtrack to a lot of this time in my life.

And towards the end of my 20s, I found love and got married, made a huge move in my career and to where I now call home and started to feel more settled. Obviously, no big switch was flipped on my 30th birthday, but my 30s have been much calmer. I made a lot of mistakes that I learned from. I’m halfway through the decade now and realize that everyone is just trying to figure it out. I’m much more willing now to admit what I don’t know now than I was in my 20s when I suffered immense imposter syndrome. I faked it until I made it, to a degree. And I’m still faking it most days.

When I look at the original album cover for 1989, I see Taylor contained and faking it. She’s only showing us precisely what she wants us to see. Her body is stiff and angled directly at the camera in almost a defensive stance. The lighting is harsh. Whereas the new album cover for 1989 (Taylor’s Version), she looks happy and confident. The seagulls originally contained on her shirt have been set free. Her hair is blowing in the wind. Her pose is relaxed. The blue background and lighting are fresh. We get a clearer look at Taylor, not a filtered one.

As we’ve now finished the first leg of the Eras Tour, I’ve learned one major lesson from Taylor Swift and that is that you can make yourself into whoever you want to be. She has gone from someone who was constantly mocked in the media for almost everything to someone who is so wildly successful that it would be almost dumb for someone to mock her. She has built her own success and elevated it so much over the past five years, pretty much by her own doing. And I can’t help but notice that she has done this almost entirely while being in her 30s.

There is no reason to think that can only be achieved by Taylor. Anyone can do it. I used to think that to be successful we had to do everything in our 20s to set ourselves up for success whereas now I understand that in our 20s we’re just getting started and our 30s are for prioritizing and building what matters to us. And I’ve heard our 40s are even more fun! So I don’t know… let’s enjoy and embrace aging and the wisdom that comes with it and the “pages turned with the bridges burned”.

---