It's Wednesday night, I'm once again sitting on my balcony in awe of the beautiful scenery and weather around me, a bowl of warm pasta in my lap, when all of a sudden You Need to Calm Down comes blaring through my AirPods. In any other moment, I would have taken the opportunity to "skip" the song and go on to the next quiet, more peaceful and relatable song that is Afterglow, but instead, I let myself listen to a more upbeat tune that puts me into a good mood just as the sun is going down.
As a thirteen-year fan, I can truly attest to the fact that there is not one song released in the past thirteen years I truly did not like. Of course there are some I like better than others; I listen to different songs when I am working out in the morning, driving to and from work, and falling asleep. I have days where I listen to one album on repeat and days when a single song is on repeat for 10, 20, maybe 50 times before I even consider changing it to something else. It is the magic of lyrics and melodies that draw me in, and I have been able to relate to each song in one way or another over the past thirteen years. That being said, that mantra is what this blog is truly about: the connection of the listener to the music, and quite possibly there is no better way to connect this topic to the moment I experienced tonight than to share my YNTCD story.
It's a rather short one, to be honest. I was on the last week of a 4-week break between graduation and starting my job when I decided to spend an afternoon getting lost in an art gallery near my apartment at the time. I'm fortunate to live in a place with easy access to some of the greatest museums in the country, but two years of a rigorous graduate program and the constant plague of weekend work made it hard to enjoy any free time that in all honesty was better allocated towards functioning as a decent human-activities such as sleeping, eating, running errands before certain products ran out, and catching up on a good book/movie. So on one of the last few days of pure "freedom," I let myself get lost in an art gallery I had only visited briefly once in my three years living there. So sure enough when my phone buzzed that afternoon {albeit at an unusual time when no one would need to reach me}, you could imagine my excitement at the announcement of a livestream the next day at 5pm.
The day of June 13 I was entirely and completely lazy. I slept in, worked out, and in an effort to get out of the house and pass the time, walked to a nearby spa and got a pedicure. It was the perfect way to spend my last day being 24 years old. Come 5:00, my friends and I were abuzz with excitement as the livestream began. In a matter of minutes, the prospect of turning 25 went from depressing to exciting...a new single! a new album! in two months! a new video! And to top it all off I was spending the evening with my friends at a baseball game...which we mutually used to pass the time until midnight.
So how does this all tie together you may ask? You see, You Need to Calm Down may not be my most favorite Taylor Swift song ever; it is probably not even in my top 5 songs from Lover, but it holds a special place in my heart as the single that was released on my 25th birthday. Track 14 on June 14th. And while my friends and family may have asked me to calm down repeatedly upon its release and try to convince me otherwise, I will never not accept You Need to Calm Down as the birthday present gifted to me by the queen of pop herself in honor of 25 years of living and 13 years as a fan. And for that, I will always proudly bop along to the true award-winning classic it is.
LoveLoveLove,
Hannah
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