Happy International Women’s Day! Have you ever wondered what it is like to be the most famous woman in popular culture? Find out more about Taylor Swift in our biography, The Story of Us by Caitlin Robson.
This highly anticipated book is finally here and we asked Caitlin, our resident Swiftie to fill us in with some more information as to how this book came about and what’s inside.
First things first, what inspired you to start writing in the first place?
When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with reading and with telling people stories. I read books in the car with no light except for the streetlamps that were at traffic lights. When I was in high school, and learned to write down my own stories, my imagination was absolutely on fire. I found random stories tracked through the History and English syllabuses I was learning about and etched them into my memory bank. I decided before I graduated that I wanted to pursue journalism at university and find more stories to write down. I self-published a poetry book that I had written in the pandemic, and started getting comfortable with writing down my own histories as well as reading everyone else’s. 7-year-old me would absolutely lose her mind if she held two books in her hands staring at her own name.
So remind us again about the beginning process of this book?
I started following Black Spring Press Group on Instagram in July or August 2022, because I was looking online to find a publisher that would be interested in publishing my poetry collection, because of their focus on poetry. But it wasn’t until a post on their social media in early January 2024 that said “Do you know anyone who wants to write about music superstar Taylor Swift? Send us a dm to get in contact with us.” And so I did. I submitted some work, had a meeting with Todd and signed a book contract a week later. By the first week of February, I had started writing at a speed, and all the fun facts and anecdotes were coming out like an avalanche. But on February 4, when she announced her latest album The Tortured Poets Department for an April release – I knew that this was going to be one hell of a journey.
How long have you been a fan of Taylor’s for?
18 years and counting. Without sounding ridiculous, every Swiftie knows that Taylor’s favourite number is 13 and in a magical coincidence, I first heard the song “Love Story” when I was 13 years old. So I find that pretty significant. She hugged me at a concert when I was 16 and this year I will turn 30, and I truly feel like I have grown up with Taylor singing me through every milestone good and bad. Best friends, parties, concert memories introducing me to the idea of falling in love long before it actually happened and turning me unequivocally into a hopeless romantic. Then it seemed that we faced every silly teenage problem together. She lived it and then sang about it and a few years later – the same things happened to me. High school bullying and Peter Pan Syndrome (the fear of growing up, which I still have), loneliness and anxiety, I’m not alone in attaching Taylor’s lyrics to my life. If you told 15-year-old me that she’d be talking to BBC Radio the same time as Taylor was on stage in 2024 in the same city. She wouldn’t believe you.
Is this book just for the Swifties?
I wrote this book with two audiences in mind, I wanted to attract regular music fans and Swifties alike. Swifties will buy it anyway – anything with her face on it sells but I did try really hard for this to be a good starting point for people that were interested about learning about her. My best friends don’t like Taylor much – and it’s cool that they’ve given me feedback about it to say that it does interest them. I’ve found some really surprising people have bought this book and it’s
Taylor has been around for a while now, why and how is she still culturally relevant?
It did take about 5 years for the music industry to take Taylor seriously. She was so young and easily overlooked – arguably like all famous musicians. But she captured this really specific target audience which was teenage girls who hadn’t at all been marketed to in her chosen genre. And then Swifties look at the shift in her music that happened 10 years ago, from her fourth to fifth album as the turning point from talented musician to global superstar. She went from guitar ballad country preppy princess to bona fide pop queen and won her second Album of the Year Grammy for 1989, which is where she definitely started to be taken more seriously. Now, almost 20 years after her debut album, the success of her lockdown albums (each album literally replaces the previous one in terms of breaking records) and the phenomenon of her Eras Tour – it’s hard to not know about her. And, for me, to know her is to love her.
What happened when you went to The Eras Tour and then had to write about that experience?
Obviously the Eras Tour is indescribable, until it is actually your job to describe it. Writing it down was trickier than I thought. I was about 70% done my manuscript when I went to my show in June 2024 at Wembley Stadium, and giving it the space it deserved was really special. I was quite literally writing sentences sitting on the stadium floor looking up at the famous arch. Absolutely surreal. We lined up for 10 hours, and got inside and it did feel like being in a movie of the last 15 years of my life. I saw tiny, tiny little girls younger than 10 who were too scared to trade friendship bracelets until I walked up to them and their eyes popped out of their heads. Being a Taylor fan is such a different demographic now, you can be 6 years old but you can also be 60 years old (Hugh Grant is 64, and I saw him and his daughters dancing with Travis Kelce in the VIP Tent).
What would you tell Taylor if she managed to get a copy of your book?
If I could give it to her, (she doesn’t need to read it – she’s lived it) but if I did actually manage a conversation with her – I would just say thank you. I don’t think my life would be as colourful as it is if I didn’t study and love her music. There’s a concept that I talk about in the book called para-social relationships, where celebrities have created this relationship with fans that makes people feel on a deep emotional level like we already know them and we’re friends with them. It’s not delusional, it’s highly developed and not one-sided either. She has reached out to fans with meet-and-greets in the past, and in recent years written letters and sent gifts. So being a fangirl is far from unrewarding. I say in my acknowledgements page at the back of the book, this is my dissertation that I’ve been writing for 18 years, and so I really hope people enjoy it, and by people I mean Taylor.
One last question. It’s International Women’s Day, why has gender played such a massive part in Taylor’s popularity.
Because she focused on it such early on. In 2006, teenage girls were listening to the same music as their older brothers and dads. Then comes along a tiny curly blonde girl who looks like them and sings about the same stuff they go through at school and suddenly they have a spokesperson. If you want to know what Taylor thinks about gender, I will direct you to one song and one song only, it’s called “The Man” from Lover in 2019. Or go and just watch her documentary, because I can’t speak for her journey but I do feel extremely validated for being a LOUD female because of her. My parents made sure my voice wasn’t softened, they nursed me through the bullying and loneliness but..so did Taylor. Paving the way for the next generation of female pop stars is also something I talk about in my book. There’s a section in my last chapter. I was recently asked to speak about championing women’s voices at the high school that I attended by my English teacher and that was a really special, and I felt really privileged to be able to do that. I definitely think in recent years my confidence has had a bit of a battering, but going back and remembering where everything started for me is really nice. Gender shouldn’t be an issue, that’s the point of International Women’s Day, but since we do celebrate it – we should be completely making space for powerful women like Taylor to come through. Because I know that there is going to be another Taylor Swift for my daughter one day.