EVERY GUITAR STRING SCAR ON HER HAND
Taylor Swift at The Eras Tour. Photography via @4k_taylorr.
"Welcome to the acoustic section," Taylor Swift would’ve said every night of The Eras Tour at the start of the so-called Surprise song act. She often mentioned that it is her favourite part of the show because it changes every night. For about ten minutes, she played songs not on the set list. As the name suggests, they were unplugged versions. There were only piano, acoustic guitar, her voice, and lots of madness. Or, female rage as she loves to call it.
At first she planned to challenge herself to “only play a song one time, pushing myself to play as many songs from my discography as possible." After a few shows, she decided to increase her efforts. Swift did surprise songs on her previous tour but not like this. On The Eras tour, it became the event for itself. Each night, fans would get mashups or medleys which would sometimes consist of three songs at once. One of the best examples is, how she called it, The Max Martin Medley consisting of "Message in a Bottle" / "How You Get the Girl" / "New Romantics." It soon became clear which songs were her favourites, so Swift made a rule for herself – I can repeat the song only if I screw it up. The Eras Tour became a lawless land and Swift started doing whatever she wanted. Songs like „Maroon“ and „You're On Your Own Kid“ she performed more than eight times and fans started joking about it.
Swift had many reasons why she decided to create this section on the concert. For her, it has always been crucial to play an instrument and to show it. “I could play songs that I’d write, and that way I wouldn’t have to depend on anybody," she said years ago. She started practicing with a local instructor whom she called “real jerk of a teacher.” He told her she would never be able to learn twelve-string guitar. That Christmas, Swift asked for one and she practiced it until her fingers bled. On the Red Tour, she reunited with it out of a desire to prove the point. A big part of her persona is proving to everyone that she is capable of writing music. During the promotion of her album, reputation, she did no interviews. But, she released a series called The Making of A Song. Every clip began with her at the piano or guitar. She was trying to figure out the chords, lyrics, or melody. The message was clear: be sure I am in control, I made myself famous and I am showing it once again.
But, that didn’t come out of nowhere. Ever since she began her career, people have questioned her skills and talent. It exploded when the second record Fearless won the Grammy for Record of the Year. At that time, Swift was the youngest artist in history to win the biggest award of the night. At the top of it, those were her songs about her stories from her life.
In the 2000s, it was rare for young pop musicians to write their own songs, let alone play an instrument on stage. Many musicians at her age received a song in the studio. All they had to do was sing. No songwriting, producing, or sharing ideas was welcomed. As Rob Sheffield writes in Heartbreak is the national anthem: How Taylor Swift reinvented pop music, "she arrived in the post-Britney era, a time when pop girls were relentlessly sexualized and objectified, when bare midriff was a standard part of the image." Swift was the captain of the flight and couldn’t be manipulated. To put it in clear terms, Swift was the worst combination of factors for greedy music businessmen. She was young, decisive, bright and had a strong sense of business. The latter was far worse than anything.
But, seeing Swift with a guitar was the best thing that could’ve happened to young girls. Millions of girls watched her strumming strings while pouring her heart out. For once, young girls in 2000s didn’t watch male guitarist going up and down guitar neck playing guitar solo for as long as possible. They saw the girl around their age. Of course there were women before Swift who played guitar. The difference is she did it at the age and time when that was not it thing for a young musician who aims at becoming the biggest pop star.
The Washington Post published an article, The Death of Electric Guitar in 2017. Journalist Geoff Edgers wrote that starting in 2010, acoustic models began to outsell electric. Guitar teacher Phillip McKnight noticed the change: girls started outnumbering boys. He had an explanation for it: Taylor Swift. Girls had a female guitar hero and many males couldn’t wrap their heads around that fact. Andy Mooney, the Fender CEO, had an opinion about this new trend. "I don’t think that young girls looked at Taylor and said, ‘I’m really impressed by the way she plays G major arpeggios.' They liked how she looked, and they wanted to emulate her.“ What Mooney doesn’t want to admit is that many boys wanted to play a guitar to appeal to the girls and to look like their guitar hero. Not because they were wondering how Jimmy Page plays that barre cord.
Besides that, Swift sent a message to the young girls that their feelings and thoughts matter. Swift valued girls' experiences and feelings. She validated them by giving them a voice. Moreover, Swift didn’t try to sound older or more cool but sincere. “My life doesn’t gravitate around being edgy, sexy or cool. I'm just not any of those things” she said and when journalist asked her how she sees herself, Swift answered: “I’m imaginative, smart and hard-working.”
Those young girls are now part of her Surprise sections at The Eras Tour, more than two decades later. They are Gracie Abrams, Phoebe Bridgers, Sabrina Carpenter and many more. “When I was little, I wanted to be a songwriter. I had lots of big feelings, and I wanted to write songs about them. But songs were written by adults about their very adult lives. Then, one day, I was listening to country radio with my mom and Taylor came on. I heard a girl, not much older than me, sing a song she had written about her own life” said Bridgers at at the iHeart Radio Music Awards last year when she presented Swift with the Innovators Award.
Taylor Swift at and Gracie Abrams at The Eras Tour. Photography via @4k_taylorr.
Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers at The Eras Tour. Photography via @4k_taylorr.
Taylor Swift at and Sabrina Carpenter at The Eras Tour. Photography via @4k_taylorr.
For all these reasons, the acoustic section is a pivotal moment during the concert. Every time she sat at the flower-decorated piano or took the plectrum between her fingers, she reclaimed her own stories. She showed that having “a lot of feelings” is not something to be ashamed of. With every guitar string scar on her hand, she gave a voice to women.
