Taylor Swift at Wembley: my reflections.

I love writing. It's one of the things that gives me the most pleasure and something I try to do every day. I try to write something daily that is meaningful (to me). Writing is something that I enjoy. Something that allows me to channel my inner desire to be a writer - something I have wanted to be since being a child. 

But, today's writing is a little different. As well as writing for the joy of it and savouring the creativity of trying to find the right words, phrasing and cadence, I am attempting to make sense of something. I am writing to understand. As Alastair Campbell says, I am thinking in ink. 

I am trying to get my head around my experience on Saturday afternoon and evening: attending the Taylor Swift concert at Wembley (alongside 88,500 others). 

First some context. My daughter, Miss J, is a huge Taylor Swift fan. She is ten and has been listening to Taylor Swift every day for what feels like years. We got the tickets for Wembley 11 months to the day before the concert, having missed out on getting tickets for Anfield. I have also been listening to Taylor Swift every day for what feels like years. Our school run car journeys have been dominated by her music and quizzes about which album this track is from and questions about what lyrics should feature on the latest bracelet Miss J was making. More of bracelets later. 

Before I reflect on some of the more psychological or philosophical (that sounded pompous, sorry!), aspects of the experience, I want to say something about the personal side of the experience. 

Miss J had the time of her life and I had the time of my life seeing her so happy. It was a shared experience that neither of us will ever forget and it gave us precious, joyful time together, which we both loved. I also got some lovely tender moments of stolen hugs amongst the "I'm a little too cool to be talking to you dad when I could be singing, dancing or trading bracelets!". 

I believe passionately that parenting is as much about building positive, forever memories and happy unforgettable experiences as is it about teaching right from wrong and supervising homework. I believe passionately that I never want my daughter to feel the cold, aching pain of abandonment that I felt at times in my childhood and instead feel warmth, and love, and acceptance, and to be seen. Going to see Taylor Swift - with its hefty price tag and the anxiety the event, travel, crowds and being away from home brought up for this introvert, still in recovery from a breakdown, dad  - was all about these things. And the dressing up - with me sporting a Miss J designed "Swifty Dad" t-shirt, which received much positive feedback and a few wry smiles. 

Joy. Love. Happiness. Memories. Togetherness. For that, the event ticked every box.

It also opened up lots of other boxes and had me reflecting in depth about what I had experienced. Some obvious things first. Although Wembley is a dreadful place to attend any event (as I have experienced before when visiting Anfield South - especially if you are using public transport as we did) the crowd was the most friendly, warm and unthreatening I've experienced at any major event. No fear. No worry about the atmosphere turning nasty. No safety worries. No aggression. It was an incredibly pleasant, safe feeling and it is not hard for me to see why. 

The crowd is mostly girls and women. The men are mostly being Swifty dads like me, or with their female partners or female friends. There are not large groups of men. Drunk men. Leering men (accept for the slightly creepy stewards doing the best to chat concert-goers up as they navigated the outside zones of the stadium). It made such a difference to my experience of the event. It was a family atmosphere, even though lots of attendees were not families but groups of friends - including some hen dos snd lots of people enjoying a drink. They were there to enjoy the event, not be a pain in the arse to others by enjoying themselves without consideration for others, as I have experienced so many other times at mostly male-dominated sporting and other events. I've always preferred the company of women to men - that's a whole other blog post to explore my history with men, including at work -  and Saturday reinforced this for me.

There was such a strong sense of community at the event - and on the train and outside the stadium. The ongoing trading of bracelets added to this sense of there being something unifying about the experience - something of a shared experience based on kindness and literally on sharing. Miss J has spent months making bracelets and was thrilled to do so much swapping and to get a warm response from everyone - without exception. At a time when the world feels full of anger and division, there was something deeply moving about the shared experience of total strangers being nice to each other and the kindness that girls and women of all ages showed to each other. A multi-generational demonstration of what the world could look like without people like Donald Trump.

It struck me too that the lack of stuff to belong to/to feel part of - physical communities, society, clubs and places for shared endeavour (as we spend so much time in our individual virtual worlds) - means that people are longing to savour the chances they get to meet in person and be with others with whom they share a passion and some values. Perhaps for the songs, or perhaps for nothing more than the chance of being with other people who want to sing and dance in safety and comfort. It was a lovely thing to behold. It felt bigger than one artist with some catchy songs - it felt like a movement.

In my more sceptical moments, this tipped a little into being a bit like a cult. Something tribal. The singing of every word. Knowing all the moves and the hidden meaning of songs, and what to shout out at what point. The dressing up. The merch. There were times when it felt like a religious or spiritual experience, with attendees expressing devotion to their god. Then I would catch myself on. Why is this different to the tribal loyalty of football or going to mass? As someone who has been going to watch Liverpool for 40 years and going on and off (now off!) into catholic churches for a little longer, I am bound to say, there is something less angry, intimidating, hypocritical and scary about the Taylor Swift experience. A lot less. 

There is something too in the songs. Yes, they are of course well-crafted songs, some of which have a real pop feel but others that feature many other genres and contain clever and ironic lyrics. But there was something else that I loved - especially as the dad of a daughter and the husband of an exceptionally smart and talented wife. There was a clear strong women/feminist messages that exuded from every pore of Taylor's work. The songs. The choice of dancers and backing singers. The costumes. The videos. The whole vibe (look at my using young people's words!). It says to girls and women that there is nothing they cannot do and no reason to take a step back. I can really get behind that message for my daughter and for all of us. 

And for the female attendees there appears to be something else. Despite her global mega star status and power, wealth and influence, which is a far cry from her Pennsylvania, country music roots, she is her audience. She sings about them. Their lives. Their loves. Their losses. Their battles. Their trials and tribulations. She sees them and they see themselves in her. It is an incredibly powerful combination. It is for many of her audience as if she wrote that song for me. She demonstrates too the importance of resilience, kindness and civility. The handing out of the 22 hat was a great demonstration of this - and the look on the little girls' face was a highlight of my night. 

I will give some of the last words to Taylor. I was thrilled that she sang my favourite of her songs, August, at Wembley. Not least, because it has this wonderfully hopeful and yet bittersweet line in it: 

"Back when we were still changin' for the better

Wanting was enough

For me, it was enough

To live for the hope of it all".

In a world that is seemingly full of hate and despair, it is significant that the Taylor experience, for all it's occasional cult-like discomfort, has an overriding message of togetherness, hope, civility and feminism. These are things I live in hope for as I think about my daughter. My wonderful daughter. My happy, smiling, singing, dancing daughter.