IIt’s an overcast Saturday night in Edinburgh in early June and I’m in a rugby stadium surrounded by young women wearing sequins and homemade friendship bracelets. Pink stetsons and shiny bodysuits abound, middle-aged men in TK Maxx less so. This isn’t my tribe – I’m here with my 12-year-old daughter, Laila, to see Taylor Swift in concert. She had been looking forward to this night for months, after she had the Eras tour countless times online. Every night since the tour began, Laila has been watching live streams, but nothing could have prepared her for the moment Swift appeared on stage and the stadium screamed along to Cruel Summer. Laila sings the lyrics with passion and pleasure. I can tell from her expression that today is the greatest day of her life.
Trying to remember a time when Laila wasn’t a Swiftie is like trying to remember a time before I had kids. It must have existed, but it is hard to believe. It feels like Taylor has been an unofficial part of our family for years. She comes up in almost every conversation with my daughter, especially in recent weeks, albeit in a sombre tone, following the tragic events in Southportwith the deaths of three children, all Swift fans, and the riots that followed — so far from the inclusivity and joy that Taylor Swift embodies.
Taylor Swift has been a constant presence on any road trip for years and she is the permanent soundtrack in our house. However, she was not immediately welcomed into our family. It was about two years ago, while I was reading Guinness World Recordsthat Laila spotted a reference to Taylor Swift. “She did the biggest stadium tour of 2018,” she told me. I’ve heard of Taylor Swift, but I haven’t really listened to her. I remember looking her up and watching the lyric video Bewitched and I loved it immediately. From that moment she was all in. The intensity of Laila’s Swift obsession reminds me of my youth when I also encountered an American singer-songwriter whose work seemed to encompass all my hopes, fears and dreams.
I was 16 when I was first introduced to the music of Bruce Springsteen. It changed my life – a journey I wrote about in my memoirs Greetings from Bury Parkwhich was adapted into the movie Blinded by the Light. In the early days of my Springsteen obsession, I listened to bootleg cassettes with rare outcomes, just as Laila will search online for unreleased Swift deep cuts. I read books about Bruce, she listens to podcasts. We both love merch.
I went to look first Bruce Springsteen in June 1988 when I was 17 and my reaction was similar to Laila’s reaction when I saw Taylor Swift. “You don’t think of her as a real person,” Laila told me after the Swift concert. “You have her everywhere on your wall, on your blanket, on your T-shirts and so the thought of her being like a real person and seeing her there is quite a transcendent thing.”
Seeing Springsteen for the first time was equally transcendent for me, but there is another parallel between our musical obsessions – it inspired us both to write. I went from keeping a diary to writing poetry to finally end up in journalism and screenwriting. Laila used to write poetry, but after listening to Swift, she turned to songwriting. “I started writing my own songs because of Taylor,” says Laila. “She really helped my songwriting style.”
I bought Laila a cheap second-hand acoustic guitar a few years ago, but for her birthday earlier this month – she just turned 13 – she asked for a Taylor Swift Baby guitar. Young girls don’t usually choose to share much of their inner lives with their parents, but by discussing Taylor Swift and her songs and listening to Laila’s own songs, I get an insight into Laila’s inner world. Her songs are similar to an emotional diary, but one she is willing to share with her parents. Taylor Swift helps me connect with my daughter, which is why I ended up listening to Swift too. I assumed one of the privileges of parenthood was that I could share my tastes with my children. They grew up with me singing Springsteen songs as bedtime songs. I have a memory of Laila as a two-year-old at my brother’s house in Luton. She was jumping on a trampoline in the garden when suddenly she began to sing, “You can’t make a fire without a spark, this gun is for rent if we only bounce in the dark.” I remember feeling an intense jolt of love and pride.
That was then, but these days I agree with my daughter that Taylor Swift is also an incredible writer and artist whose work can range from the shiny pop of Style to the indie-folk of Exile to the bruised electronica of Fortnight. She is an artist who can tap into her personal life in songs like All Too Well and So Long, London that take apparently real-life incidents to create work that is both richly specific and also universally relatable. Simply put, if you don’t believe that Taylor Swift is a generational talent, then you’re just not listening closely enough.
On a recent trip to New York, the very first thing I did after checking into my hotel was go to Cornelia Street to visit the apartment block where Taylor lived and which she mentions in the song of the same name. I visited the Hotel Chelsea, namechecked in the title track of The section for tortured poets. I did all this for Laila, and it was lovely to FaceTime her from Cornelia Street while she was home in London. My wife later told me she was genuinely touched that I made the effort to go to these places because I knew they meant something to her. It was that feeling of making a connection that led me to jump at the chance to see Taylor Swift in Edinburgh a few months later.
Last week, after the canceled concerts in Vienna in early August, Taylor returned to Britain for the final performances of her historic eight-night stay at Wembley. I was lucky enough to attend with Laila last Saturday night. It was an incredible experience to be in the stadium with 92,000 other fans on that hot night, but it was not the first time I had visited Wembley this summer.
Flashback to a rainy Thursday night in London at the end of July. I was there to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. I have been here many times since 1988, but this night was special because I had Laila by my side. I warned her that the concert would be long and I dreaded hearing the ominous words, “Daddy, I’m tired.”
Waiting in line takes me back to the queue for Taylor Swift in Murrayfield back in June, albeit with more denim and less sequins. The Springsteen concert started and soon Laila and I were singing along to Hungry Heart, Want the Night and Dancing in the Dark. My mind kept returning to the nights I listened to these songs as a teenager clinging to Springsteen in an effort to better understand myself. I remembered the arguments I would have with my late father. He claimed that by listening to an American singer I was somehow betraying my Pakistani Muslim heritage. “You have your music, your own culture,” he would tell me and he wanted me to tell him what was so great about this Bruce guy. The worst part was that I could never explain it to him. I didn’t even try because he would never have understood.
I tried to imagine my own father stood by my side at a Springsteen concert and I couldn’t do it, but here was my daughter by my side at a Springsteen concert just as I was by her side at a Taylor concert . Somewhere around nine o’clock – with almost two hours of the concert still left – I heard the words I had been dreading: “Daddy, I’m tired.” My heart sank. “But don’t worry,” Laila said, “I’m going to stay until the end.” She must have wondered why I had tears in my eyes.
My parents were confused and often hostile to my Springsteen obsession, but Laila shares my passion for Bruce and I enjoy her love for Taylor. If Springsteen was a wall between me and my parents, Swift is the bridge between myself and my daughter and thus I am a proud if unlikely citizen of the Taylor Nation. Her music brought so much joy to my young daughter and shook me out of my middle-aged addiction to revisiting the past; it reminded me of the way I’m like my daughter and my daughter is like me. Springsteen and Swift: they are the ties that bind and this is our story – Laila’s version.
