Swiftory

Alicia and Melissa were thrilled to have a chance to speak with Kevin Evers, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review and author of There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. Kevin really brought the goods to Swiftory this week speaking about what makes Swift the savviest decision maker and disruptor of our time. This conversation was truly a delight, exploring a variety of t...

In our BIG finale of All Songs Anne Boleyn week, there could be no other song to send this Queen of England into her afterlife. Our featured song this week is “My Tears Ricochet” from Taylor Swift’s 2020 Folklore album. Alicia breaks down this haunting, ghostly classic from Taylor’s point of view in the first half, and then switches the focus to Anne Boleyn for the second half. Truly Shakespearean...

In this continuing arc of Anne Boleyn’s Swiftory Playlist, Alicia continues with songs three and four of Anne’s traumatic 1536, "False God" and "If This Was a Movie". These choices, from Lover and Speak Now respectively, provide an insight into Anne’s thoughts and feeling through this very difficult year, taking her up to the final days of her life. As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Sw...

In this second installment of the Taylor Swift Playlist of Anne Boleyn, it's time to pull out the anti-Anne song Paper Rings from the Lover album. Alicia feels that Anne gets handed a terrible reputation through history as a scheming homewrecker, but the real story is quite a bit different. This episode takes us from Shrovetide 1522 all the way through the reluctant and rocky courtship of the Henr...

In this episode, Alicia begins her Anne Boleyn/Taylor Swift playlist with The Archer, from the Lover album. This song is packed full of literature references along with self-sabotage, revenge and so much more! You will likely not ever think of Henry the VIII or Anne in quite the same way! As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voi...

This week, Alicia takes us through her imagined Taylor Swift musical journey of Mary, Queen of Scots! Mary has been the focus of one of her other podcasts, Trashy Royals, recently, and there is so much more to say about Mary, a glamazon queen with a terrible picker. Talk about being born at the wrong time. Mary’s story is a ride through her three ultimate Taylor songs, according to Alicia. Mary’s...

Hello Swiftorians, I want to tell you about a new show that I’m really excited about. My friend Rainbow Valentine has been collecting the stories of the first generation of women to have access to The Pill, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and LSD.  In her podcast Psychedelic Women, Rainbow talks to the women who lived and made the counterculture in 1960s San Francisco and, eventually, the world. It's a fascinating...

This week, Melissa takes us through The Swiftory of Queen Victoria, with seven songs to take this long-reigning Queen of England from childhood through her romantic entanglements.  As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 404-594-3658. We may use your Swiftories on a future episode! To advertise on our podcast, please r...

In this episode of Swiftory, Alicia and Melissa are feeling 22! From Taylor's RED album, 22 is a joyous glitter pen ride of a song. It is hard not to groove along to this one - this one is truly 22,000 times more fun than the actual age. Also included in this one, a TTPD ChatGPT listing which is a real hoot.  As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.c...

This week, Alicia and Melissa reveal their love for “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”, the standout track 13 from The Tortured Poets Department. This one has a real message within its infectious pop beat, and we are here for it!   As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 404-594-3658. We may use your Swiftories on a fut...

In this week’s Swiftory, Alicia and Melissa dissect this most triumphant diss song from Taylor Swift’s TTPD, The Anthology. Who saw thanK you aIMee coming? Not us. There is a whole lot of alternate perspectives, past hot gossip, and joy included in this one.  As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 404-594-3658. We may...

This week, Alicia climbs right up on her soapbox about the song “Dear John” from Taylor Swift’s third album release Speak Now. Swift uses the Dear John letter device to express some strong sentiments, and we all have big feelings about it, and the song’s inspiration too.   As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 404-59...

The Swiftory of the Gilmore Girls would not be complete with Rory Gilmore. In today’s episode, we visit the youngest Gilmore and journey in song about her friends, loves, mother, and community too.   As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 404-594-3658. We may use your Swiftories on a future episode! To advertise on ou...

This week, we turn our attention to Lorelai Gilmore and her catalog of Taylor Swift songs. It's a little complicated, just like Lorelai’s character. With some opposing sun sign magic thrown in, we explore Lorelai’s journey, including youth, motherhood, daughterhood, and her love life too. We have so many feelings about the men in her life. As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory sto...

Travel with us to Stars Hollow this week as Alicia and Melissa begin The Swiftory of The Gilmore Girls. Of course, we must begin with the matriarch of all matriarchs, Emily Gilmore.  As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 404-594-3658. We may use your Swiftories on a future episode! To advertise on our podcast, please...

The Gabor sisters were some of the most iconic cultural figures in the second half of the 20th century, having arrived on our shores from Nazi-occupied Hungary, where they experienced loss and engaged in heroic resistance. Along with their mother, Jolie, sisters Eva, Zsa Zsa, and Magda, stormed the mid-century zeitgeist and lived through extremely complicated family dynamics, as well as complicate...

It's such a hard age, but it makes sense that Taylor Swift entirely nailed it when she wrote Fifteen for her 2008 album Fearless. After all, she was just a few years past it, and - because everything is copy - had a true-life anecdote from her friend Abigail to narrate. Our Swiftorians dive into their own fifteen-year-old experiences (and mistakes) and get into what it means to grow into yourself...

Today, our Swiftorians head back to 1989, pull out their dance cards, and dive into Taylor's 2014 bop Blank Space. To say this song was a monster hit doesn't really capture things - it was Taylor's first song to hit one billion streams on Spotify, and topped charts around the world on the way to numerous nominations and awards. As a piece of Taylor biography, Blank Space is unique in that it isn't...

From the vault, welcome to Swiftory's first ever episode! Notably, Welcome To New York was not released as Episode 1, but why not for Episode 13? In it, our Swiftorians - Alicia and Melissa - take a look at New York City, its real estate, and the power of place. As always, we want your Midnights! Share your Swiftory stories at swiftorypodcast@gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 404-594-3658. We...

Alicia and Melissa are back with a bonus episode this week to commemorate two significant Tudor-era murders. On February 13, 1542, Queen Catherine Howard of England, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII, was executed on Tower Green, in the Tower of London, along with her lady in waiting, Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford. As our Swiftorians ponder their stories, an array of Taylor's songs come into f...

In this unexpectedly solo episode, Alicia announces the four winners of the Invisible Strings book contest (congrats!), and shares some of your reflections on Taylor's All Too Well (10 Minute Version). The core of the episode centers around some neurological research pointing to why, and how, sad songs end up making us feel better. It turns out Taylor's not kidding about putting narcotics in her s...

This week, Alicia and Melissa wander back in time as Taylor revisits a long-ago love affair that left her feeling like a crumpled up piece of paper lying here - and they remember it all too well. From Scarf Stealer's (Jake Gyllenhaal's) apparent continuing pattern of seducing women way too young for him - which is certainly one part of this song's origin story - to the glittering emotional clarity...

How does one even decide to own a million dollar couch? This week, Alicia and Melissa tackle I Bet You Think About Me, from 2012's Red and 2021's Red (Taylor's Version). Along the way, Jake Gyllenhaal gets a nickname (Scarf Stealer!), F. Scott Fitzgerald gets a shout out, and Stevie Nicks swoops in to play Fairy Godmother to Taylor. Is I Bet You Think About Me the spiritual descendant of Fleetwood...

Alicia and Melissa sit down with award winning poet Melissa Studdard, whose Invisible Strings contribution, When You Rise from the Dead, I Drive You to the After Party, responds to Taylor's song Karma. This is a heartfelt conversation about the power and joy of language that will leave you inspired to dig into your own creative process, and hand you some tools for that journey, too. Email swiftory...

One of Taylor's more interesting compositions is from her 2022 release, Midnights. Karma, which also served as the Eras Tour closing song, was widely expected to be a thorough takedown of the many industry figures who've wronged Mother over the years - but it turns out to instead be a canny, upbeat, and lyrically fluid praise song for all the good things that have come into Taylor's life by, as sh...