#topic: fans

[tayfabe75]

November 7, 2014: In an exclusive backstage interview with The Rave, Matty is asked about his intense and dedicated fans, describing hearing their stories as both humbling and enlightening. (source)

[tayfabe75]

"I think one of the things is that with the internet, it's provided this kind of false sense of a shared experience and what a shared experience is. And I think that kids have a certain expectancy or a certain desire to involve themself in a personal experience with the person that they like, that they kind of found through art, really. You know, like with me, I never had any desire to actually try and get in touch or talk to the old… the pantheons of my childhood. So, it's just a bit weird for me."

July 31, 2014: Matty describes how fan expectation has changed over the years. (source)

[tayfabe75]

"It's sort of a tradition that we started a very long time ago. I think the first time that I started dropping sort of cryptic clues and things in my music was when I was 14 and 15 putting together my first album. And I wanted to put… I wanted to do something that incentivized fans to read the lyrics because my lyrics are what I'm most proud of out of everything that I do, every aspect of my job, so I really wanted people to read the lyrics. And um, I... when I was a kid, I used to leaf through CD booklets and just read the teeny, tiny print and just obsess over it. And so I wanted to incentivize them. So, in my lyrics, for my first, you know, several albums, I would have all lower-case-letter lyrics, except for capital letter, capital letter, capital letter, every once in a while, and if they circled the capital letter and wrote them down, it spelled out a secret code, a secret passage… It was really fun, and it would either tell them a story about the album or a hint about what the song was about. And so that's when it started, but when it got out of control was… was when I started to realize that it wasn't just me that had fun with this, that they had fun with it, too. And I should never have learned that. Because then I couldn't stop. And then all I started thinking of was how do I hint at things, like, how far is too far in advance. Can I hint at something three years in advance? Can I even plan things out that far? I think I'm gonna try to do it. There was the first time that we did a crazy video like that was a video called 'Look What You Made Me Do', and I started playing with doing nods to former musical eras I've been in in my career and all kinds of weird stuff for them to just go through the video and be like, 'That over there! What's that? What's that? What's that? Does this connect to that? What does that mean?' There's all kinds of like, really, really… we go really into the weeds over it. And look, I think that it is perfectly reasonable for people to be normal music fans and to have a normal relationship to music. But… if you wanna go down a rabbit hole with us, come along. The water's great. Jump in. We're all mad here."

November 12, 2021: Taylor explains the evolution of her Easter eggs to Jimmy Fallon. (source)

[tayfabe75]

"There is an element to my fan base where we feel like we grew up together. I'll… I'll be going through something, write the album about it, and then it'll come out, and sometimes it'll just coincide with what they're going through. Kind of… Kind of like they're reading my diary."

January 31, 2020: Taylor describes how writing music feels like sharing her diary. (source 1, 2)

[tayfabe75]

March 14, 2014: Matty and George are asked about American fans and Matty describes the girls, in particular, as more "forward". (source)

[tayfabe75]

"It sounds weird to say, but my fans are the reasons why I have a house. It just made sense. And also practicing trusting people and when you give them that trust and you allow them into your life, honestly, usually they show that trust and that respect back."

2014: Taylor is asked about inviting fans into her home for 1989 'Secret Sessions' listening parties. (source)

[thecorychronicle]

When someone's super super excited to meet you, you can't help but be affected by that positive energy, so, you smile! And that happens, so many hundreds of times an hour, at the end of the hour your face hurts from smiling so long. It's like when I was working at Walmart as a people greeter [...] you'd constantly be smiling at people and I'd go on my lunchbreak and I'd be rubbing the side of my face, because my face'd hurt from smiling.

Cory on what it's like to deal with so many fans