The saddest thing I’ve learned today was that back in 2010 Taylor Swift and Adam Young (Owl City) were in email correspondence for months, and eventually met at a party (above) where they both described the experience as “enchanting” later on. Taylor ended up writing a song called “Enchanted” on her album “Speak Now” (notable for being entirely written by her) in the fall of 2010, about how she felt meeting him, and even addressed this in interviews.
Come the next Valentines Day just months later, Adam releases his own cover of the song on his blog, directed at Taylor from his perspective, reciprocating those feelings. But it went ignored. She never acknowledged it, and he ended up deleting it months later. She later went on to repurpose her song to sell her ‘frangrance’ “Wonderstruck”.
Look, I’m not one to care much about celebrities and their relationships, but Adam Young means a lot to me. He’s a soft spoken, awkward, nerdy autistic man who makes soft, heartfelt, and often cutesy music that makes him feel good, and frankly there aren’t enough people out there like him. Just look at that tiny overjoyed smile on his face there. The man’s music has helped me through a LOT, and it’s almost like a magic cure to help me focus sometimes. There’s just something about the way he uses words that I can actually relate to for once… but I digress.
I’m not sure whether she was insincere about her feelings, or if her feelings really are as fleeting as her media persona would lend one to believe, but that’s just cold. To not even politely turn him down and just move on like it didn’t happen? She wrote a whole song about him, the least she could do would be to at least acknowledge he responded. You could argue he should have said something sooner, but Adam Young has a track record of and has publicly come forward about having difficulty communicating his thoughts, feelings, and ideas to others, which is part of why he makes music; it just comes more naturally to him.
At least he just quietly accepted it and didn’t pursue it any further, but damn was that sad. I know it’s dumb to get all torn up about a social misstep of two famous people (one whose image and persona has gone off the rails as of late) from three quarters of a decade ago, but this is so relatable it kind of hurts.
For anyone interested, here are links to their songs:
Taylor’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTf8Bptqyp4
Adam’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePhOHRPzhnY
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