Julia Maria Keers

I grew up with Taylor Swift and I don’t think I can ever thank her (or Jack Antonoff and Aaron Desnner) enough for making the music she has made. Apart from the fact that she is the most incredible, witty and lucid writer, painting vivid pictures, I genuinely love her voice because it’s so soothing. I can listen to her songs every single day (and on repeat, as my husband is very aware: The Tortured Poets Department and Midnights became the albums we played non-stop in the car). Because her music has been such a constant companion for me while growing up, all I have to do when I feel sad, tired or down is put her music on and I’ll instantly feel better. You can read a review by me of the 1989 album Taylor’s version where I was very calm and collected. I also love the creativity that her music inspires in people. I have collected a repertoire of the most beautiful mash-ups and remixes and they’re just a fraction of everything that’s out there. When she releases a new song, the song will always get a life of its own.

For the few paternalistic grumps who still fill the need to be dismissive of Taylor or who think I have a shallow soul without a proper or sophisticated taste in music, I can assure you that there was a lot of musical experimentation in our household. My parents raised me with Massive Attack, Yes, Prince, Todd Rundgren, George Michael, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Earth, Wind and Fire, Tears For Fears,  The Beatles, The Stones, Faithless, Everything But The Girl, Björk, Leonard Cohen, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, The White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers and John Lennon’s therapeutic scream albums, so I had my fair share of psychedelic, progressive and experimental rock at a young age, since I was forever forced to listen to it in the back of our car. I remember literally being afraid of Dido’s ethereal voice and my parents weren’t having it, they kept blasting Dido through the speakers. I also dove into my mothers arms when I was four in The Amsterdam Arena because there was a werewolf in an orange suit on stage howling and my mum happily kept pointing and saying it was Michael Jackson (when the werewolf started showing impressive dance moves I realized it was indeed Michael Jackson). So I can assure you I have been properly marinated in music. When it comes to female artists, my father found Lady Gaga, my mum found Kate Bush and I found Taylor Swift. I recently read that some random dude called her an overpaid muppet so here’s what’s been produced by my overpaid muppet and for what it’s worth, I think she’s a total force of nature 🔥🔥🔥

(ps: some incredible songs like Carolina aren’t included in this list because Carolina was very much my 2023 long covid summer song and Out Of The Woods belongs to my mum and the whippets because she’s born today on New Year’s Eve on the 31st of december 💗💗💗).

1. Snow on The Beach (feat more Lana Del Rey)
This song perfectly captures what it’s like for me to suffer from a chronic illness and feeling lost but loved. My husband and I visited the beach and the dunes during the winter, in the first months of 2024. We came across a beautiful deer with big antlers who kept staring at us like he couldn’t figure out what moved us to visit the beach during such ice cold and freezing weather. We saw a woman who took an actual dive into the freezing sea. Someone had painted ‘Lover’ in golden letters on an old wooden bench. After our walk we sat down for hot chocolate at the local beach café/restaurant which was filled with shells and Christmas expositions. I loved going to the beach as a child (swimming, sunbathing, reading) but there’s something about taking a walk on the beach during the winter season that’s magical. I know Lana Del Rey is actually all over the first version of Snow on The Beach but I’m so in love with Lana’s voice that I’m mostly listening to the more Lana version.

2. Evermore
This is the perfect winter song! It’s really beautiful. Again, this is a song that is dedicated to my chronic illness and our ten-year-anniversary, learning to live with the grief, loss and the new reality of a chronic illness was a big process. Ten years ago, it definitely felt like I was tossed out and walking barefoot in the wildest winter. But what I find beautiful and reassuring is the end of the song: “Floor of a cabin creaking under my step”. In Game of Thrones terminology, the narrator has been North of the Wall but she has made it back and now she’s somewhere safe. She has found shelter, a place of her own. For me this translates to finding my yoga school, a big cabin in the woods, where nature truly soothed me and where my husband and I later listened to sound bowl meditations. My yoga school was a beautiful place that filled me with clarity and serenity during the time where I felt pretty much lost at sea.

3. It’s Nice To Have A Friend
This song sounds the way true friendship feels like to me. When you’re with the people you grew up with and that you’ve known for years, there’s a true tranquility and trust, a relaxed atmosphere, that you will never have or feel with fair-weather friends or friendly situationships. The song is also a humble one, it reminds you that it doesn’t matter if you don’t fit in with that clique or that group, this bunch or that pack, as long as you have at least one good friend that you can talk to and hang out with. It’s Nice To Have A Friend sounds crystal clear. It reminds me of spending time in the tea garden near my parents’ house with a friend who lives close to my parents. We simply love sitting by the fire together, having high teas and drinking lattes talking about our families, boyfriends, pets and the stuff that we’ve been up to lately. Friendships that feel safe and sound are the best and most healing thing, and this song is a sweet tribute to friendship.

4. Cornelia Street
Cornelia Street reminds me so much of my family. It brings back memories of my grandpa, my mother and my aunt when I was young. How I loved walking through Amsterdam with grandpa (who was very proud of his city, knew every café, started bantering with everyone and who could happily walk and sing for miles). My grandpa or grandma would often place me on the kitchen counter their apartment (which had a view on a field with cows) while washing lettuce or trying new cheese. I slept in the bedroom that belonged to my mum and my aunt, and as my grandma had barely changed anything in the room since they both moved out, it was pretty much a seventies and eighties capsule, including the ribbed walls. Everything from their eighties make-up, hairbrushes, jewelry, clothes, games and U2 posters were still present and intact. As these were the nineties, my grandpa and grandma had neighbours downstairs who had a very friendly Flemish giant and a turtle. I fed the turtle meat and he started swimming when you held him up in the air.  When my parents would come to pick me up after I stayed with my grandpa and grandma for the weekend, they often sat down to drink coffee and catch up. Sunday evening was often the time when I had my whole family together. My grandma was a true card shark, she loved card games, she was so sharp and competitive that every once in a while she got thrown out of a card group for being too fanatic, but this never stopped her from joining new groups and traveling with them. The happiness, lightness and joy of being together, hoping it will never end, is captured so well in Cornelia Street. This summer my aunt, my husband and me went for beautiful walks in the parks of Amsterdam. This one truly tugs at your heartstrings.

5. All Too Well (10 minute version)
The Red Album holds a special place in my heart because it came out when I was in my early twenties, when most of us were hipsters, carrying flip phones, dating and falling in love. I started drinking coffee and wine and watched the first season of Vampire Diaries. The whole Red album feels like vintage and very dear time in my life where everything was slightly more relaxed. I was studying at university but still able to meet my friends in bars and pubs, the boys I hung out with were wearing leather jackets and autumn was my favourite season. I had a lot of fun as a university student but I was miserable at the same time. It seemed like Taylor understood this complicated mixture of curiosity and fragility really well. My favourite songs were Treacherous, State of Grace and All Too Well This list wouldn’t be complete without the Swiftie anthem of All Too Well 10 minute version. In the Dutch yearly top2000 (people are allowed to vote on their favorite songs, the list starts at Christmas and ends at 12:00 on 31 December, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is always number one) Taylor’s highest song is All Too Well 10 minute version, and I remember instantly sending this to a friend who is also a big music lover (who loves Bon Iver, Ben Howard, The National) and he really loved it.

This song is the one song where no one can deny that Taylor Alison Swift is officially the queen of percussion. I know y’all probably thought I was going to compliment her writing but, as beautifully and heart-wrenching as it is written (my favorite part: cause in this city’s barren cold, I still remember the first fall of snow and how it glistened as it fell), All Too Well 10 minute version is the one song where you can hear the influence that David Bowie, George Michael, Prince and all those musical experimentalists and icons have had on her. People don’t get that even though she sounds sonically cohesive, she’s often creating a patchwork of genres and gave us different genres. Progressing into pop from country was a bold move, she surprised everyone by casually dropping two Indie albums and at this point I’m not surprised if she decides to step into the footsteps of Faithless, The Beach Boys, Kate Bush or Pink Floyd (the Top2000 is playing Time by Pink Floyd and my husband’s now going Maaaxxxx because the intro sounds so Vecna-ish). If Taylor and Selena ever want to join up to make an experimental progressive rock in the spirit of Pink Floyd between Todd Rundgren’s flamingos on Hawaii, I’m down!

6. King of My Heart
Ssssssssooooooo I think Reputation is one of Taylor’s most fiercesome, badass and energetic albums and I loved it. I loved the powerplay, her collab with Ed Sheeran on Endgame, the Take Me To Church associations in Don’t Blame Me, the George Michael vibe on Dancing With My Hands Tied. I loved the bold and brass So It Goes. And I loved the Spice Girls nineties throwback feels when I heard Ready For It. Some Swifties claim that you’re not a Swiftie if you don’t consider Reputation as a weaker album and that it doesn’t really count in the rest of the catalogue, but I absolutely loved the sped-up energy on King Of My Heart and I loved the glossed over production that kept it all together. REPUTATION IS THE MOST AMAZING ALBUM FULL OF SUBVERSIVE BANGERS AND THIS IS A HILL I AM PREPARED TO DIE ON.

Taylor owned that alter ego and held up a mirror to society that I personally found inspiring, reminding us of Madonna’s transformations, because this transformation was driven by her desire to fight the discourse of the sweet American girl that smiles, waves and nods. She had worked so hard, had been so social and open and generous and had probably done everything in her power not to mess her reputation up and then she got canceled anyway, because at a certain point the tide for female pop stars always turns – the tide for women generally turns as we get older. Reputation felt like a true rite of passage. After the character assassination it was all or nothing. She was either going to give up or she was going to fight all the conservative ideas about what a woman could or couldn’t be and she chose to fight it. Taylor embracing female rage felt liberating. The album felt was like a breath of fresh air. My mum and I watched The Reputation Tour at New Year’s Eve wit the whippet on the couch. Taylor was done being straight-laced. She returned with her curls. She danced. She sweated. She had thies. Her legs weren’t just beautiful but strong, as a woman’s legs should always be. It was like Hermione joined Slytherin 🐍

When I started working in bookshops in Amsterdam I had a pretty tough time because my days were long and I spoke to so many people in a single day. I was an analytical introvert who suddenly had to multitask, immediately respond and be social all the time. My chronic illness meant my muscle tissue was flaming up and I was in pain by the end of the day. But Taylor dropped Reputation and it fitted this time where I was working in a luxurious, posh, slightly crazy, pretty botoxed, big-SUV part of Amsterdam really well. I shaped up, met several writers, went out for drinks with my friends and I started having some fun. Reputation was my work floor album that encouraged me to be more bold and badass. I was watching a lot of Game of Thrones at the time and I loved all of the subtle references to the characters.

On this album I particularly loved King of My Heart because it’s such an upbeat and happy song. It’s fast-paced, energetic and it’s romantic because it’s not necessarily trying to be romantic in a flowery-embroidered-way, but it’s romantic in a crowded, buzzing, busy city-nightscape way where people can be absolutely determined to prove themselves, can be incredibly energized and fit and have strong and magnetic energy fields. The horse-gallopy beat of King of my Heart is pretty much the way everybody moves through Amsterdam on a daily basis, doesn’t matter if people are walking, fat/(e)biking, driving. I love the bridge: Is this the end of all the endings? My broken bones are mending, with all these nights we’re spending. Upon the roof with a schoolgirl crush, drinking beer out of plastic cups, you say you fancy me not fancy stuff and all at once this is enough.

7. Dear Reader
I absolutely love the nocturnal, vintage, desolate and industrial atmosphere of Dear Reader, the way it can feel when you’re a dedicated writer who tries to give something to their readers while you’re not an omniscient narrator because you’re going through the motions of your own life. I loved the Stranger Things reference, when you aim at the devil make sure you don’t miss. That’s literally season six when they’re going into the upside-down to find and kill Vecna and they’re asking for some last advice and Max (a bit introverted and thunderstruck because she’s under Vecna’s curse) tells Nancy to not miss. So beautiful. When my husband and I picked up our new curtains late in the evening in my old hometown we happily listened to it in the car. It’s a very good song when you’re on the highway, especially late in the evening when it’s relatively quiet. Dear Reader is reflective and introspective, it’s Taylor writing on a meta-level, but at the same time she creates an atmosphere where it’s like you’re just out and about with her in London. But it’s not Notting Hill (I love that film) for her, it’s clear that she’s hiding in plain sight and feels lonely, but she’s hiding her loneliness, which makes her situation even lonelier. This resonated with me because as a twentysomething you’re very used to hanging out and regularly talking to your friends. There used to be long nights with dinners and wine, lots of conversations, but thirtysomethings are working and starting their families, so you can’t always expect your best friends to pick up their phones or respond instantly to something that’s going on in your life. Taylor ends the song by concluding we should all find another guiding light, but she shines so bright, which encapsulates her awareness that she has a voice that’s listened to (she can put a fragment of white noise or Meredith sneezing and it will go straight up in the charts), but she doesn’t have all the answers. She warns us to not take her advice because she has fallen apart and is wandering through her nights. But at the same time, she does actually possess wisdom and life lessons obtained from her experience; dear reader when it feels like a trap you’re already in one and dear reader, you don’t have to answer just cause they asked you.  I think it’s a really cool song that’s both sad and soothing.

8. Anti-Hero (feat bleachers)
Anti-Hero is just very articulate and funny. I love how Jack and Taylor get together in studios, both looking street and seventies like they’re living in the North of Amsterdam and are simply jamming somewhere in a garage,  meanwhile producing hits like Anti-Hero. This song was very much embraced by Dutch grocery stores so we’ve heard it all the time and in the Top2000 it scored a high position, even though it’s relatively new. I remember my mother coming home and beaming she really loved Anti-Hero. “She’s laughing up at us from hell” simply cracked us up. This is where the tongue-in-cheek lyrics become melodramatic like Absolutely Fabulous. I think this song is one of the examples that perfectly illustrates Taylor’s bite, which often consists of her being very sharp, precise and witty at the same time, and the videoclip was light-hearted and funny, but I also loved this element of people having different sides to their personalities and those inner dialogues that we’re all having. In the video there’s rockstar Taylor whose fierce and smashing guitars, there’s geeky vanilla Taylor and there’s the larger-than-life Taylor, lonely because she’s intimidating everyone. There’s friction between them but in the end they get together. It’s very Alice-in-Wonderlandish.

Anti-Hero resonated with me personally because my mother-in-law has always treated me like the Anti-Hero, as the uninvited and unwelcome guest and a potentially dangerous stranger, who has stolen her son away from her. She has behaved as dramatic as this sounds. From her perspective, I’m not the woman who her son has chased and chosen of his own accord, but I snatched him away from her. I’m the main problem/anti-hero because she now has to share him with me. The first few years of our relationship I experienced this behaviour as incredibly hurtful. It was clear that she didn’t like me and just wanted our relationship to end. Her insinuations and assumptions about me gave me some sleepless nights. From the moment Anti-Hero dropped I was able to make more light of the situation. Sometimes it’s probably better to own something than to constantly keep arguing, debating, showing or trying to change people’s minds (I’m actually a good person?) when they are just determined to view you in a negative light. I love all the versions of Anti-Hero, the remixes and the acoustic version, but the Bleachers version is my favourite because it’s warm and funny. Sort of reminds me of the cozy clusterfuck feeling I get when I’m going for dinner with friends from high school (we’ve watched each other grow up and when people still love you even though they know what you were like at fifteen, that’s definitely a compliment).

     9. Champagne Problems
This beautiful piano ballad – the first time I heard it I thought it was so devastating and heart-wrenching that it was absolutely mental, the vision of a guy alone in the night train and Taylor reflecting on his rejected proposal and canceled wedding plans – if Taylor Swift and her now ex-boyfriend had become a writing duo and published the deepest darkest novels pretending to be a very estranged and divorced middle aged man slightly alienated from the world, I would have bought it. If Adele covers this song I will not recover. But it’s also very atmospheric and truly cinematic. I studied in Belgium where I partied with international students and had the best time, but when me and my husband returned during the Christmas days a few years ago, the city was almost deserted and we stayed in the lounge near the fire in an old monastery without seeing a single soul in the hotel except the bar guy. As the key to our hotel door didn’t work and the night receptionist was tired we simply got a bigger suite with a bathtub and we drank champagne in the bubble-bath. During the evenings we sat outside the monastery smoking (my husband liked the occasional cigarette at the time) but they had recently turned some of the old nun’s rooms into student rooms and one evening as we returned to the hotel we saw a party in a bigger room with a red carpet opposite the church but it was a very deserted failed end-of-the-party sort of party, so now when I return to my student city during the holidays I always hear Champagne Problems, because it will forever be my student city and I love it very much but every time I return there I’m also confronted with the fact that all the people I once knew have now grown up and left the city. Moreover, my own group of friends that used to be evergreen has fallen slightly apart because everyone has settled down with children. I’m really happy for them but I loved: : And soon they’ll have the nerve to deck the walls that we once walked through.

There were times in my roaring twenties I truly longed for my stable thirties, but now I’m in my thirties it feels like the show was somehow over sooner than I thought it would be. Another line I loved is: you’ll find the real thing instead, she’ll patch up the tapestry that I’ve shred because of the Jane Eyre reference. In Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason faces Jane, who is unsure of whether she was awake or asleep, but the next morning it turns out Bertha shredded the tapestry of Mr. Rochester at night. This has led literary scholars to the interpretation of Bertha Mason as Jane’s dark double, since she hasn’t harmed or attacked Jane during the only direct confrontation they’ve had. Taylor implies being The Madwoman in The Attic for rejecting the proposal of the dude and refusing to settle down with him, so everyone thinks she’s mental, but she mentions that there will be a Jane to take care of this protagonist. It’s just not her, she’s not the one for him. That’s a beautiful cathartic perspective and reference for every girl who has ever walked out on a guy who really wanted to settle down with her. It’s not just when we break a guy’s heart that we’re heartbreakers, but settling down is also still supposed to be our main desire, and if we value our autonomy and independence or we’re happy being on our own, that often automatically makes us crazy. I know Taylor longed to sing what a shame she’s fucked in the head they said with an entire angelic sounding audience.

10. You’re on Your Own Kid (strings remix)
This song absolutely resonated with me as I transitioned from my twenties into my thirties. Growing up is such a journey, it’s such an adventure. You go to new places, meet new people, write new chapters. You’re on Your Own Kid is definitely a song of a childhood that is gone.  It has this beautiful mixture of subtle optimism, hope and longing, but it’s also blended with this disappointment, loneliness and hurt, and this is all glossed over with melancholy. But in the strings remix we also get the violins and the multiple Taylor chorus which gave me the chills, because she starved her body, the jokes weren’t funny, her friends from home didn’t know what to say and she wasn’t saved by a perfect kiss, in other words; some of the romantic tales that she grew up with a as a girl turned out to be false and I can imagine there were times where her journey felt tough, as people constantly tried to diminish and belittle her voice and her musical talent. She was treated like another girl with a guitar and the media did not write about her like they expected her to be the absolute iconic powerhouse she is today, but Taylor turned out to have perseverance and backbone so she continued the bumpy road anyway. 

I love You’re on Your Own, Kid as this is song is very encouraging to girls because it tells them that they might not get their perfect fairytale ending, but that it’s the/her journey itself that’s worth it. I looked around in a blood-soaked gown and I saw something they can’t take away is such beautiful Brontë imagery where she’s obviously been in a battle (She had to make her hands dirty? Someone tried to come between her and her talent? Someone tried to steal her work and to lock her up?) but she has won and stepped out of the attic. Now looking around and soaking it all in in, she saw something (my mum: well in every city she visited all the young women living there went) that nobody is able to take away from her.  Being in your twenties can feel like everything is still really new, fresh, challenging and like everything’s full of promise, but people around you are also annoying, self-absorbed and slightly mean, so you’re quite insecure and lonely at the same time (22). With something different bloomed, writing in my room – Taylor references that she expected to be a classic and typical Daisy Mae, but being let down and writing in her room something different bloomed instead: her career 🎆 

The first thing this song reminded me of – and this is a hill I’m prepared to die on – is the singular episode in Stranger Things where Eleven ventures out and meets her half-sister. Hopper is worried about her special talents and has to hide her after she has escaped from the lab, but she’s a teenager and has difficulty being in lockdown. Eleven meets her half-sister with her streetwise gang but they’re dipshits (forever stuck in their special snowflake state they just end up being a bunch of criminals), they’re not the same as her friends with their hearts in the right place. When Hopper eventually picks her up he says “Good to have you back kid” and Eleven says her adventure was Bitchin’. There’s more love and understanding between them as Eleven now understands how much Hopper has tried to protect her and Hopper understands that El has to make her own decisions. When I heard You’re on your own, kid  I instantly saw this scene. And also: make the friendship bracelets, the fact that everyone did this!! The violin at the end of the strings remix ends the song on a more romantic note than the classic version, but I interpret the violin as the romance of her musical talent, that has flourished and given her this epic and magical journey 🌎

Every step on your way is an important step, it’s a cliché but walking leads to creating paths. Everything is so universal: being good friends with a guy who is out smoking with his guys, dreaming of getting out your hometown and exploring the world, the joy of running through sprinklers splashes and the sadness after a fireplace is done crackling. After everything is said and done, she’s still assuring young boys and girls: You’ve got no reason to be afraid and You can face this is really beautiful. This one also really pulls at my heartstrings.

11. I Look in People’s Windows
What I loved about TTPD is that during a time that’s pretty loud and noisy and where everyone is competing for attention(spans) on TikTok, Taylor released an album that’s introspective and introverted. It’s an incredibly sad and relatively calm album (there are better terms for this but I’m not a music critic), and I think it took some nerve to drop an album that doesn’t necessarily have hooks, bops or bangers. This song reminded me of the housing market and particularly the situation for half of the millennials and Gen-Z’s stuck with/in that housing market. I work in real estate business so I’m often hearing personal stories of old and big houses and how they are always on the verge of collapse under construction. My husband and I have moved to different appartments and during our evening walks we’ve discovered old and abandoned houses in the cities and towns we lived in. There was a very literary witchy house (there was always a single light burning in the attic), a lonely and scary house on the hill we called Vecna’s house, a completely rotting dark house in the midst of a beautiful neighbourhood that scared the life out of me, and somehow it became a bit of a hobby to study mansions (for instance, there was one mysterious organically shaped Rivendell sort of mansion where I never saw anyone and my hairdresser told me that the owner went to an elderly home but he hadn’t sold it as his cat still lived there). My husband often talks happily and full of melancholy about the house he grew up in which had big hallways, loads of rooms, a conservatory with a garden sight, and several balconies (his parents divorced when he was sixteen, his father kept the house and the cat, his mother left with him, his brother and his sister) and because I’m only getting to know it through his memories, it sounds like a mystical place.

Whenever my husband and I are in the car I’m always peeking in people’s windows in the streets we’re passing. My father visited lots of houses in the Netherlands because he sold Persian rugs and has a lot of experience with interior design. I Look in People’s Windows is calm and soothing but also Ebenezer Scrooge sad, about someone who is abandoned and alone, out on her own in the dark and the cold, staring at the warmth radiating from people’s houses when they’re having dinner.  The number of homeless people in The Netherlands has dramatically increased and the same goes for the number of homeless people in The United States (I saw a good documentary this year called Social, which I can recommend). I really don’t like the misconception/idea that homeless people have fucked up their own lives and are homeless for that singular reason. There are many reasons why people can lose their house, due to a divorce, losing their job, a threatening illness. Not everyone has a safety net of friends and family members they can (temporarily) stay with. I love different initiatives like people building communities of tiny houses or students breaking into old and abandoned houses that are someone’s property but have been empty for years. I work for real estate owners and I’m not necessarily against the idea of a house as an investment, but a roof over your head is a basic human right.

12. So Long, London
What an absolute gem of a song! I find this the most beautiful songs on The Tortured Poets Department and one of the most beautiful songs Taylor has ever written. She Is So Articulate 🤍 When it comes to Taylor as a writer, it feels to me like she out-taylored herself on this song. She does the same in Loss of My Life. I feel like both songs are incredible tributes to London and a boy from London who turned out to be a letdown. There’s an incredible amount imagery, of love and sadness. People who complain Taylor only writes from a Gremlin mode about her ex-boyfriends have clearly not listened to So Long, London. London is one of the best cities. When me and my husband visited London a few years ago we discovered a Willow street in Hampstead Heath and the cutest Daunt Books, we had a great dinner in the midst of a festive and colorful Soho, drank hot chocolate in Hyde Park when I had a long covid meltdown, walked through rainy streets, got really good hot coffee in the midst of the streets in Primrose Hill, visited Amy’s statue in Camden and eventually sat down in Freud’s garden which was full of blooming roses and a heavy cigar scent, where a black cat drank the milk of my coffee and I discovered a shiny and small piece of mirror ball that someone put on the branch of a tree. Freud and his family really had the best house in London. It was full of Persian rugs and oriental art and big plants and there’s this big hallway with a small balcony inside the house and chairs where his daughters often sat together. But back to So Long London, when you have like a soul it’s absolutely impossible to dislike London. The song could be interpreted as the opposite of London Boy but it feels like the opposite of Daylight. What I gathered from So Long London was that she tried very hard to make it work but that her six-year long relationship pretty much slowly but surely started sinking like Titanic. For me London feels pretty close, but an American girl is far from home when she’s living in London (I know she owns private jets, but being homesick and missing your family is still a universal feeling) and Taylor was always meant to Taylor. I tried to sing the song but it’s actually quite challenging to sing, she’s in a very low register. It’s a beautiful goodbye song.

13. Sweet Nothing (piano remix)
I recently discovered The Sweet Nothing piano remix which was even prettier than the classic version. I loved “you’re in the kitchen humming”. This song really reminds me of being at home and relaxing with your family, which in my case is always ends up being  chaotic and cozy. But it’s this idea of not having to be fully present or the best version of yourself, just being able to lean back and be yourself. It often happens that my aunt, my husband and I have conversations and my mum starts adding her thoughts while she’s rummaging in the kitchen, so she’s echoing through the conversation. For instance, when my aunt said my new bangs looked good and I explained to her why I finally opted for a new look , my mum chirped with a presenter voice: Taylor Swift. When I was helping the Christmas dinner preparations and my husband and my aunt were talking in exceedingly high (my husband) and low (my aunt) muppet voices to see how high and low their registers could go, I heard my mum over her potato gratin mumble herself: ‘I’m also neurodivergent’. Sometimes she picks up these new phrases and terms at work and she starts mentally chewing on everything when she’s in the kitchen. I love how Taylor has always known and acknowledged the importance of kitchens. Some of my friends have cooking islands and I love hanging at cooking islands with tea because for some reason it’s way easier to discuss everything that’s going on in life, than when you’re seated at an official dinner table, there’s still an element of playfulness in the kitchen when you’re both talking, cooking, baking and rummaging.

My mother and aunt both have a way of making fun of everything new that’s going on at their workplaces. For instance, my aunt thought it was incredibly funny to say I work with Agíle, It’s Agíle, you know Agíle, it’s Agílleeee like twenty times. Or someone said to my mother she had to work on her soft skills (she worked at EY and she’s quite a direct, businesslike, no-nonsense person) and every conversation since then that has been about human beings relating to each other, she found the opportunity to drop soft skills, which she kept up for over a month. Or she impersonates her coach from dialogue class (she has a new and woke director so after this year’s tensions in Amsterdam all the officials at the municipality were send to dialogue class) that: I have to sit down (sits down) and listen to you (makes hand gesture towards me) and then you sit down (I have to sit down) and listen to me (makes hand gesture towards herself). This Christmas dinner my husband couldn’t remember Simply Red (I started singing that III wanna falll from the sky straight into your arms because he knows that one) but of course my aunt and my mother turned this into a whole thing, through other conversations they kept asking him if he had heard of The Beatles? The Stones? Bob Dylan? Cat Stevens? They can get really giddy and my dad sometimes simply sighs. There’s a sweet whippet pup called Lennox who has serious FOMO and always wants to sit on everyone’s lap.

14. Seven (long pond studio sessions)
The long pond studio sessions are probably my favourite thing Taylor has ever done. They were absolutely perfect. I’m secretly still longing for the long pond sessions with Evermore, the long pond sessions with Midnights and the long pond sessions with The Tortured Poets Department. The long pond sessions were absolutely perfect. I loved the interviews in between where Taylor was incredibly articulate (maybe she was so resilient during the lockdowns because of her life in general but my husband and I watched the long pond sessions and she really made my last two neurons work again by diving into deep existential human psychology, can someone give this girl a degree for being the main psychologist for millennials all over the globe?) and the intermezzos with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff on the porch. They were musicians making beautiful music and friends laughing with big glasses of wine. This was my husband’s main introduction to Taylor and he said Taylor really likes talking about being Taylor. I will never forget her hair during the lockdowns. It looked like she went from being a smooth short-haired guinea pig to a wild and free peruvian guinea pig (I love guinea pigs). The Folklore album gave us Literary Taylor (I graduated in Comparative Literary Studies so this hit home). The week Taylor dropped Folklore one of my best friends happily wrote she heard my whole personality in that album – which felt like a confronting compliment, but Seven has become one my most cherished songs. It so perfectly captures my childhood with playing outside, making new friends, pretending to have high teas, but also learning that some incredibly sweet people came from troubled and difficult families. I made friends in primary school, at horseback riding, at ballet class, at painting class, in our neighbourhood, and every holiday I came home and wrote letters to my new pen friends (there was this one girl called Anouk who I met during a holiday at the Veluwe and I considered her the best thing that happened to me that year so I wrote her long letters with lots of stickers) and I can’t remember half of their names but I do remember the feeling of making new friends and being absolutely over the moon. It’s a very beautiful, calming and loving song. I love the line: Passed down like folk songs, our love lasts so long 💛

15. Dorothea
Hey Dorothea, are you getting married? 💐 A song from Evermore that I sort of liked during the lockdowns but that has really stuck with me over these past years is Dorothea. It’s a song that generally reminds me of my ambitious girlfriends or past-girlfriends, who are basically juggling careers, writing novels and are having one, two or three babies (no one has had twins so far). A reality of hanging out with girls who are also writing novels, featured in magazines, publishing articles or making television appearances, combined with everyone spending a lot of time online, is that you’re sometimes just watching your (past)girlfriends from a distance. One of my friends who I met in Amsterdam is from Afghanistan, lives in Rotterdam and she absolutely loves to travel, so she’ll send me pictures from Tokyo or the jungle in Kuala Lumpur (free picture of a massive Tarantula and her tiny spider babies) , from the mountains in Kyrgyzstan or from a donkey in the desert cause she joined a native tribe there (I’m not kidding she does these things and then I get videos of a train of camels while I’m making a report as a minute secretary in the office). She also really has this very light-hearted, incredibly funny, trickster-figure side and she loves to prank people. She loves to photograph cats all around the planet. Sometimes it feels like I’ve lost her while at the same time I haven’t lost her. Sometimes I miss her but I’m very happy when she’s living her best life.

16. Love Story (pop remix)
I love how sparkly and happy Fearless is and I was hesitating between It’s Fearless and Love Story but decided to choose Love Story because I love the tributes people have made to Stefan and Caroline in the Vampire Diaries with Love Story and look at this beautiful rendition of State of Grace (acoustic version). There’s Taylor Swift and there’s Vampire Diaries and then there are people who make tributes to The Vampire Diaries with Taylor Swift’s music which is just the best combined with big mugs of black tea and dark chocolate. Also this was the first time I heard Taylor’s voice, in the film Letters to Juliet with Vanessa Redgrave and Amanda Bynes. It’s a heartwarming and beautiful romantic road trip film which I saw together with my mum in 2011 in Amsterdam as none of the girls I invited from literary studies showed up. It turned out to be really nice to watch a film with my mum, she always gives a lot of background on the actors. I also really love the 1989 tour version of Love Story.

17. State of Grace (acoustic)
I love State of Grace, both the acoustic and the standard version (everything’s Taylor’s version except Rep) because there’s a beautiful optimism in the song. State of Grace has such a good spirit. I made a playlist for Taylor’s birthday through The Eras Tour website and offered State of Grace back to her, because with Taylor you never know what she might see, as she keeps an eye on her Swifties (there’s a lot of us though) (I also wanted to bring a gift for her to the Eras Tour in Amsterdam but my husband reminded me I bought a €375,- ticket and she just needed the audience to dance, he reassured me she would become a billionaire this year, which she did hehe) because it’s a song about experiencing happiness while you’re on both your feet. It’s about the adventure of being alive and being in love, about a forever developing and changing human being in a fast-paced society, and about finding someone who gives you an actual lust for life in a healthy way. The acoustic version is very sweet and soothing. It reminds me of the first year of mornings in the weekends with my husband, where I made us (brewing) coffee with a percolator and tapped with barefeet on the wooden floor of the cold rooms, while my husband was this big sleepy, hot and warm teddy bear in our bed. The knowledge of bringing us coffee and being able to get back in bed with him, discussing what we were going to do that day, always felt like a state of grace. During the holiday season when we’re able to sleep in State of Grace feels very accurate again. The acoustic version is great for pyjama days and the standard version is great for going out.

18.  Lover (Shawn Mendes remix)
Since many people who didn’t get tickets visited The Eras Tour anyway and fans literally filled the hilltops in Munich, I now have this future vision of Travis and Taylor’s wedding, how the location somehow still gets leaked after months of top secrecy and because Swifties are whippets they will still arrive within the 48 hours right in time for her wedding even if they have to jump on several planes from the other side of the globe and long story short everyone’s going. I don’t know why but this idea keeps cracking me up. Taylor building her empire with songs on fuckboy behavior, overwhelming heartbreak and an underwhelming reality, somehow the idea of everyone who she has healed with her songs gathering and filling hilltops for her Wedding, making it the biggest wedding ever, really cracks me up. I know some Swifties are longing for wedding bells and I know some Swifties are annoyed with those Swifties for being traditional and conservative. But it’s all up to her. My husband and I danced to Lover (Shawn Mendez remix) on our wedding and my husband was very grateful for this heartwarming but relaxed song, as he was a bit nervous about his dance moves.

This year we were married for a year and we visited Leuven (Belgium) to celebrate our one-year-anniversary. Lover isn’t filled with the little gift of percussion Taylor usually puts in her songs, but it perfectly captures the soothing and reassuring feeling of being at home and at ease with each other. My husband and I very much love doing the same stuff and we really enjoy spending our days together and the atmosphere that we’re in together. We love walking in the golden hour at the end of the day, hanging in our favourite restaurants and browsing bookstores, but we equally love sleeping in and rummaging at home (we hung up new curtains and he’s currently installing his new laptop stand while I’m being called by our guinea pig Dolly who wants more lettuce). Considering Taylors general writing, this is a relatively simple but elegant song. I loved the soulful piano version she performed, The Saturday Night Live version really gave her a Dolly Parton and Dusty Springfield aura.

19. Fortnight
I found Fortnight a very fascinating song because it’s really Taylor but it’s also very Lana, like a cross-over Taylor/Lana song. It’s like Taylor looking at the world with Lana’s gaze. We listened a lot to it this 2024 as we visited the beach. Fortnight is about a stifled life compared to actually feeling alive. My husband said he now completely associates this slightly gothic song with the beach (babies with sunglasses and hats, dogs swimming, burned feet and ice cream), sunburns and seeing the wide and open purple dunes. The contrast of Fortnight’s very detached and down Frankenstein groove whilst driving through a small path in the dunes with a glorious crimson sunset and big wildflowers was something we really loved. The small towns near the beach were calm and peaceful and the combination of a light blue night sky at 10pm and Taylor’s gentle whateverishi’mjuststumblingthroughlife Lana attitude, are now forever together living rent-free in my mind. The dark undertones in Fortnight reminded me of the film Mother’s Instinct with Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain (I thought Anne Hathaway couldn’t scare me boy was I wrong). The film received mixed reviews because it takes a very Hitchcock turn. My husband and I came slightly thunderstruck out of the cinema and needed a drink. Fortnight ends on a more positive note. Songs about being down and detached aren’t usually this accepting, mellow or chill, but that’s why Fortnight is beautiful. And then there’s the acoustic version which is mesmerizing. The Tortured Poets Department was The Fuck It All album of 2024.

20. Peace
I love listening to Peace when I’m not in peaceful situations with my family or my husband’s family, because it reflects on the complexity of having family members with strong ideas, opinions and thoughts, the family quirks you have to face from each other’s family members, when you’ve found the person with whom you want to start your own. The song sounds like the day passing and clouds drifting by in all shapes and sizes, the mixture of very peaceful undertones contrasting the ominous lyrics of danger being near. The acknowledgement of not just bringing your lover peace, serenity and harmony all the time, but also bringing your own whole set of baggage into the relationship, being unsure of if what you’re able to give someone is enough, but knowing that your lover has found a friend in you that will sit in the trenches with him/her and weather the storms, makes it such a true love song. Families are fascinating but aren’t perfect and people aren’t perfect. The song ends with a question: would it be enough if I can never give you peace?  Philosopher Alain de Botton often mentions that everyone’s a little nutty, you just have to pick the sort of nutty you can roll with. When my husband chose me, he knew he didn’t just choose a girl who looked good in a black dress in Paris, he also chose guineapigs, because I love guinea pigs. If you choose Taylor Alison Swift, she’ll come along with about a gazillion possums known as Swifties and everything that comes along with being a famous person. You choose someone, you get the whole package.

21. Clara Bow (The Eras Tour in Amsterdam)
I experienced slight panic in July as Taylor arrived with her crew in Amsterdam so I kept changing my outfits – it felt  like a supertalented big overseas sister flew in and had arrived in my (small) country. It gave me a big glow but it also made me flustered and restless. When Juliette (who got us tickets while we were in het garden with her cats Fonzy, Quinty and Jason) picked me up she was nervous too, but because we were too early and it started raining Juliette (we’ve known each other since we were twelve) decided to stop at the nearest Mac Drive which was as random as it was fun because we snacked in her car in our sparkly Reputation/Midnight outfits and chatted for a bit which calmed us both down. Right before we went into the concert it felt BIG but once I was at the venue I realised it was a concert and all we had to do was dance and stay hydrated.

My mother told me she had read an interview where Taylor reflected on the fact that Swifties could be quite fanatical and though I always witnessed the mania from a safe overseas distance, I now truly know what she means. For instance, as Juliette and I entered the J section queue some Spanish Swifties instantly ran up to us asking how we got our tote bags and where they could pick up their merch. When we were allowed into the arena it basically felt like “Happy Hunger Games and may the odds be ever in your favour!” as a lot of (young) people stormed into the Arena.

Juliette and I sat down between everybody at four o’clock and during the time we waited, there was a young Chinese girl with her mum covered in friendship bracelets with silver bejewel stones, there was  a group of girls in complete glitter looking like death warmed up (they had been waiting there for hours), there were two Red-era girls with heart-shaped sunglasses next to us (still in fairly good shape), there was a pretty bejeweled Chinese girl on the floor who didn’t make a move or a sound, another Chinese guy with a thirteen on his cheek who stood solemnly still for four hours, a girl from Norway who ran up to us to exchange friendship bracelets and ran off, an English girl and her mom with matching cowboy hats  and after a while Juliette mentioned the Ethiopian girl with beautiful curls looking like a casual business lady and who hadn’t moved the entire hour we were there. We were later joined by a boy and girl in similar grey sweatsuits from another city in The Netherlands who were sweet and talkative, but overall the other Swifties felt like a pack of very well-trained race coursing whippets. It was like they were all completely mesmerized and bound by invisible strings. Everyone seemed nervous and possessive like: my soulmate is here, my soulmate is here, my soulmate is here. Some girls were simply beside themselves. The security guards were super friendly but tired and I remember thinking: Taylor Alison Swift what did your writing do to us? 😱

When the show started everything became a beautiful blur for me. The first thing that struck me about seeing Taylor in real life was how beautiful she is. The heart-wrenching music she has written throughout the years was suddenly beyond me. She portrays herself as a bit of a dork but she’s strong, slender, lean, tall, fierce and elegant at the same time, the kind of girl who lights up the whole room when she walks in. The second thing that struck me was that she genuinely seemed like a very sweet person. The media has gone on and on about how she’s a mastermind with a cold heart behind that friendly mask, but seeing her on stage for a while it suddenly hit me: Oh my goodness, she really ís this way. The girl I saw in the documentary wearing her cat on her back, that really ís her. She really seems like the kind of person you can easily hug and who gives hugs without much further ado. You could tell that she’s genuinely a sweetheart.

22. Shake It Off (The Eras Tour in Amsterdam)
Once the show had started Juliette walked around like a small fox looking for the best view and eventually forced me to settle for the left at the back because she was on sneakers and the closer we moved to the stage, the more tall people were in our way. I was dancing in the back and once we got to The Reputation Era I thought to myself: I can dance as wildly and enthusiastically as I want because I’m in the biggest crowd ever and I’m hidden in the left of the back. People who are important to her will be much closer to the stage. That was until Taylor started glancing in our direction and fans started looking over their shoulders and a murmur went through the crowd, so eventually I looked over my shoulder at the box as well and after peeking I saw a big dude dressed in white smiling lovingly at Taylor 🐻

The American box with her family, friends and loved ones had been right behind me and Juliette all along and I was completely mortified and reassured at the same time. When I looked back at Travis he smiled happily and waved at us. The American Box felt like a very loving and relaxed box. Once Taylor had revealed Travis, we all turned into a group of curious possums struggling with our own curiousity, every once in a while someone in my area would “just casually look around” and “accidentally happen to peek at him” or “smile and film him for a few seconds” and then quickly Turn Back To Mom. Juliette made a film of him where Travis is smiling and bouncing to Taylor’s music like a happy budgie. The sense of relaxed pride and love that radiated through the box felt very soothing so I continued dancing my feet off.

The magical moment of the show truly happened during the 1989 Era. For Dutch people, the 1989 album is an important one, because that album made us discover her music. My favourite songs of the 1989 album were always Out Of The Woods , Clean and I Know Places. I consider Taylor to be the queen of subtle percussion and this has always set her apart from other pop artists for me. But have you ever been dancing with 60,000 people? I will never ever forget what happened during Shake It Off, because literally everyone was dancing. Everyone. I don’t think I’ve even seen so many girls dancing and singing together 💖

23. Holy Ground (The Eras Tour in Amsterdam)
“I was drinking coffee just the other day and lord it took me away” such a beautiful start of song. Holy Ground is my first Amsterdam song, as Amsterdam is my birthplace and my Holy Ground, and I absolutely loved how Taylor performed it on the sixth of July during The Eras Tour. I was so over the moon with Holy Ground in Amsterdam as a surprise song that I filled my lungs like I never filled them and sounded like an off key screeching parrot in the back 🦜 and accidentally almost cracked Taylor up (I’m not going to add the videos but they are out there) but she handled it so sweetly!! My mum thought it was hilarious but I’ve been hiding under the table even though there was nothing I could do. I always loved the acoustic version of Holy Ground Taylor performed in the live lounge. It reminds me of the time I put on red lipstick and went dancing with my Jewish girlfriends. We have family members in Israel or family members who visited Israel, or who have spent their holidays there, but personally I don’t feel connected to Israel and after everything that has happened last year and I don’t want to. So when it comes to a sacred place, it’s the chaotic and forever under construction Atlantic water city called Amsterdam for me. I’m aware a lot of tourists go to Amsterdam to get completely stoned or wasted, but Amsterdam has beautiful canals, carefully curated museums and very peaceful parks. We have a big coffee culture as well, we love our parks, the goose are fearless and people put flickering lights on their dogs during the evenings.

24. Bejeweled (The Eras Tour in Amsterdam)
Due to the lockdowns and my long covid, which lasted for two years, my sparkle was gone. No rosy cheeks but a pale complexion. I was in pain all the time and I Felt Very Old. But during the Eras Tour, when she was at the very front on the stage, Taylor – out of nowhere – pointed straight at my heart 😱 Me and Juliette were wearing matching Reputation suits and I think she liked them and likes working on Taylor’s version of Reputation because I saw a gleam in her eye (though I’m not entirely sure of course if she really saw us). My heart literally skipped a beat. It just stopped. I couldn’t believe what just happened. A few days after the concert, my long covid therapist/rheumatologist said she had never seen me so sparkly and shiny and there was this whole new glow she had never seen before. She asked me what I had been up to and I told her I had been to The Eras Tour and how Taylor suddenly pointed straight at my heart and that this exchange had made me shine. My rheumatologist was happy to hear this, she said it was almost like the concert had dusted me of. I gave off a lot of old lady vibes in my early thirties, but I came back refreshed. My eyes, my hair, my skin, everything is simply looking better again and my new shine came to stay, for which I’m grateful to Taylor 💘 I kept following The Eras Tour and she composed the most beautiful mash-ups 💗💗💗🧡🧡🧡

25. Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?
This song is absolutely mental but it’s also a beautiful and classic return-of-the-repressed. Where Castles Crumbling is Sansa GOT season 1 Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me is Sansa GOT season 7. The first time I heard Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me it scared the life out of me. I feel like this is Taylor’s Nirvana song, it’s her version of Teen Spirit. Has someone already made a mash-up of Teen Spirit and Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? It’s also her version of Michael Jackson’s Leave Me Alone. Castles Crumbling is Taylor budgie version and Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me is Taylor pterodactyl version (this tends to happen as women age because we get tired of everyone’s bullshit).

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me reminded me of so many things, of the medieval witch trial that Claire and Geillis face in Outlander for instance, which is the best scene ever as Claire is actually a time traveler and doctor from the future and she discovers Geillis has a particular scar (from being vaccinated) and is also from the future (long story please watch Outlander). They had already bonded for a few episodes and Geillis was very witchy, smart and intriguing, a bit of a trickster figure, so I knew something was going on but I never expected her to be from the future. It reminded me of Keira Knightley fighting off the cursed pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean (you like pain? Try wearing a corset), it reminded me of The Ring where Naomi Watts goes into the well where they threw Samara in. It reminded me of the storyline of Rosalie in Twilight who is raped by her future husband and his friends and left in the streets to die, but returns as a vampire bride and tears them to shreds one by one with glowing red eyes. It also reminds me of Britney being locked up in an Asylum by her own family.

There’s a lot to unpack. I love how Taylor has integrated these particular sounds that sound what it’s like if someone has repeatedly knowingly and willingly crossed your boundaries, the way hackers, stalkers, narcissists, sociopaths and disturbed minds do. You can ask them over, over, over, over and over (squared) to stop doing something that worries or scares you and they simply won’t, because they’re sick people. I have met some very conflicted people who scared me, because I might as well have shared all my concerns about their toxic and destructive behaviour towards me to a brick wall. The song is about dealing with people who are absolutely relentless and I can imagine that the scrutiny she has been under and the way the people and public preyed on everything that has been going on in her life, must have confronted her with the disaster-touristy, malicious, disturbed and sadistic tendencies in (some) human beings. Also “Let’s hear one more joke, then we can all just laugh until I cry” is the essence of what bullying is. Blegh. But the chorus: “So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street” gives this trickster figure twist, where she sounds lenient, skilled and predatory like a black fox. There’s the Bertha Mason-Jane Eyre and Velociraptor-Jurassic Park subversive element of hunting the hunters, stabbing the stabbers and killing the killers.

When people wrong us or hurt us, breach our boundaries, we’re not supposed to stand up for ourselves. We’re not allowed to get angry or furious with mean or manipulative people, we’re always supposed and expected to remain sane in insane situations. We have to do everything in our power to de-escalate other people’s bad behaviour. This is definitely a song reminiscent of Rep but the fury is accompanied by a certain level of exhaustion. The witch hunt on Taylor’s rep is as old as witch hunts themselves. Many innocent women were thrown into rivers tied to rocks or burned at the stake just because they were old and a nearby cow sneezed. This song is definitely about resilience. I loved the whole Tortured Poets Department Set and it’s choreography on The Eras Tour, Taylor looked stunning and the visuals for TTPD were incredible! 🤍

26. The Man
I wrote a review on It Ends With Us and I thought this story about domestic violence and emotional abuse was truly important, but everything that came out after the film surrounding Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni made me really sad. The film is beautiful and the current news is undermining the hard work everyone has put in It Ends With Us and its subject matter. If everything surfacing right now is true that’s just simply beyond my comprehension 🤢 It brings me to The Man and that more female directors and producers are necessary in the film industry. The films I’ve seen this year that truly resonated with me because something felt more realistic, natural and truthful, were films that turned out to have female directors and producers. So even though Blake Lively might have acted like a brat in the past, I’m still happy that she produced it. Work environments should always feel and be safe for everyone.

When I think about the new Trumpmuskovian age that’s coming #help (a term by Timothy Snyder), the grandpa in Russia who likes to see right-winged populist parties in power everywhere and Netanyahu destroying Israel, the one thing that comes to mind is that they are “ruling” the world is delulu because they all actually belong in prison 😑 Why do we let these madmen, who are nothing but incompetent narcissistic grandpa-toddlers, destroy people’s lives? And possibly even a safe, peaceful and green future? Why do so many families have to suffer at the hands of these imbeciles? I don’t want to end up in Interstellar and that was still a relatively optimistic film. I’m worried about everything we’re going to face the next few years.

The Man is a beautiful song because it’s light-hearted, playful and funny and it still makes the point of the never-ending different standards we hold for men and women. I don’t like small minded men with massive egos who act like they genuinely believe their voice is far more important than mine or women’s voices in general. A man who has to belittle a woman in order not to feel threatened by her, is not a true man. The men who do this generally turn out to be frustrated with themselves. I don’t like disrespect towards women. It’s pathetic, tiresome and it’s old, this endless sexism. We all know it was a vagina that once pushed out your blockhead. Their mothers should have taught them better.

27. New Year’s Day
New Year’s Day is a beautiful piano ballad that I listen to every year since it came out so it’s not specific to 2024 but I still thought it was fitting because the song is not about the festivities or getting kissed at midnight but about the desolate and sleepy aftermath, the day after when the streets are deserted and a complete mess, filled with  ashes and dust. Everyone’s hungover and sleeping in. Taylor describes having hosted/having been at a party: There’s glitter on the floor after the party, girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby. Candlewax and polaroids on the hardwood floor. She’s so good at painting pictures. I think it’s a very romantic song that takes place in the desolate moments that aren’t glamorous.

My husband told me that his favourite moment on our wedding was escaping our party crowd and sitting on a bench at the park together. Our guests were done dining and evening fell so we knew we were going to transition to the dance party, but it was this moment where it was just us in our wedding clothes holding hands and staring at a bunch of deer. My husband has inherited his father’s love for desolate, industrial and abandoned places, and we developed this ritual of visiting cinemas late in the evening. Cinemas used to be very warm and cozy places in the Netherlands but they’ve changed over the last ten years. Most cinemas today feel like large, indifferent, stale and cold places and if you’re really unlucky you’re not even getting your popcorn from a person. There’s one arthouse cinema close to my husband’s hometown where there’s music, people have dinner, art classes and it’s still more of a cultural habitat, but most cinemas in the Netherlands are built for blockbusters and mass entertainment. However, going to a big cinema in the evening with only a few other people present, actually gives the best film experience. But New Year’s Day also reminds me of walking through misty streets together when it’s really cold but we still want to go for a walk, is an integral part of our relationship. It also reminds me of walking my parents their whippet Bliss (golden whippet snout) in the park behind their house during evenings when it was damp and drizzling and everybody preferred to be inside. New Year’s Day is loving and clear and very underwater sad (this is my favourite performance).

28. Willow (lonely witch, moonlight witch, dancing witch version)
Oww, I love every version of Willow! I love Willow, I love Willow Lonely Witch Version, I love Willow Dancing Witch Version, I love Willow Moonlight Witch Version, I love Willow Nineties Trend Version, I love Willow Grammys’ Version and I love Willow, Eras Tour version. There’s only one big natural wild park in The Netherlands (our country is pretty small and crammed but you can see it on the map) known as The Veluwe (there are plenty of pine trees, meadows, owls, deer, foxes and wolves, and people travel through the park on white bikes, there’s no lights in the parks so you have to make sure to be back at sundown) (how people go hiking or camping in The United States where puma’s and bears live is absolutely beyond me, just like people going into the sea in Australia)(I think my life as a Swiftie truly started the first time I saw Taylor talk and she was talking about sea urchins) and visiting it with my husband very much feels the mysterious, playful and earthy way Willow sounds. What I love about the lyrics is that Taylor seems to be writing about a woman in a slightly different world in a different time, there’s a very tribal element to it. We are somewhere in Scotland or Ireland or maybe medieval England.

Taylor’s Tales are usually very concise, but there’s something slightly dreamy in the lyrics here as well which keeps intriguing me. The narrator simply has to see how it goes, which is the basic truth for many relationships, we can’t always predict everything that will happen. You could even interpret Willow as Arwen’s/an Elvish perspective, not really fitting in with the human world and papa wants you to join your fellow elves and Aragorn (btw we need more of those men) might die and blabla, but she found him and she’s prepared to weather the storms and orcs of Middle Earth for him. I love that these lyrics unfold a story where the narrator reflects on the adventure and the progression of the relationship (guess I should’ve known from the look on your face/every bait and twitch was a work of art) with her man. Usually when Taylor refers to witches it’s because they’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one, but she’s taking a more positive Kate Bushish turn on witches in Willow, where her main protagonist is probably a clever, bewitching, independent, free-spirited and a mysterious woman, who has been excluded and counted out, but still finds her soulmate and gets her romantic love story. I believe that if Taylor has shown us anything in 2024, its how kaleidoscopic the inner world of a woman truly is ✨

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