I Took My Kids to Shake It Off at a Taylor Swift Tailgate

A music mom’s bittersweet Taylor-gating experience

I’m the problem, it’s me.

Before I had kids of my own, my “baby” was Three Imaginary Girls, the music website I co-created and ran for years, where I not only reviewed countless live shows, but also hosted them.

I’ve always taken my kids to shows.

My eldest is an enthusiastic music fan and loves the noise and crowds of live shows. We’ve seen Katy Perry (her first show), Panic! at the Disco (her second show), First Aid Kit, and other smaller club shows like The Garden, Coco and Clair Clair, and Slater. Recently, my youngest has started coming with, and we’ve together we’ve seen Girl in Red (which we all loved), Sisters of Mercy, and The Cure.

I’ve loved the shows. My eldest has as well. My youngest, with the exception of Girl in Red, has (I think) just tolerated them. She’s not so into loud noise or crowds, and live shows just for the sake of shows — that’s not really her thing.

But one show all three of us really, really, really, really, infinity-plus-one really wanted to see? That was Taylor Swift.

And sadly I failed, as a music fan and a mom.

I did not get us Taylor Swift tickets.

I’d like to blame Ticketmaster, but that’s only part of the story…

Don’t blame me, misogyny made me crazy

Actually, blame me. And Ticketmaster. But mostly, me.

Ticketmaster is an easy target. We all hate Ticketmaster, and Taylor Swift fans, exponentially so. Ticketmaster never even sent me a pre-sale link to even try to get tickets, in spite of my sign-up.

(I hate Ticketmaster, a lot.)

It would be easy to just blame Ticketmaster and be done with it. But the real problem is me (hi, I’m the problem).

See, during those years of running a music website — and who am I kidding, for my entire teenage and adult life — I’ve lived under an indie rock. My tastes still favor lo-fi hidden gems, local PNW music, discovering up-and-coming artists. I have years of music pop culture history missing, because I wasn’t paying a stitch of attention to Top 40 tunes. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The problem was — I was dismissive of young, beautiful women pop stars, because I assumed their stories were empty.

I assumed they weren’t writing their own songs.

I assumed they couldn’t play any instruments.

I assumed they couldn’t really even sing, that autotune helped close the pitch gaps, that they were mostly famous for being beautiful and singing lowest common denominator pop drivel in order to make money for dumb VPs of record labels.

I assumed this about Taylor Swift for years, without listening to her music. The fact that she started as a country artist? That only heightened my disdain.

I ignored Taylor — and Katy, and Gaga, and Ariana, and Beyonce, and so many others — because I thought they had nothing to say.

Then my children started playing them, and I came to realize the immense talent and power that was Taylor Swift.

And through this, I realized that even for me — me, a self-professed feminist killjoy — misogyny had crept in, insidious, and created some awful biases. I’ve been atoning ever since, exploring Taylor’s back catalog with my kids, alongside loads of other pop divas, whom I like to varying degrees.

But Taylor? I love Taylor.

I’m so sorry, Taylor. In my own small way, I made your fight in this world a little bit harder over the years. I love that it was my children — the next generation of music fans — who showed me the way.

The least I could do was to get them tickets.

I just wanted you to know that this is me trying

I tried, my beautiful daughters, I really tried.

I checked Stub Hub and Vivid Seats on repeat, for the months/weeks/days leading up to the shows. But the tickets remained out of reach, financially. They were fetching well over $1k per seat, and even day-of-show only dipped down into the $700 range. And that was for obstructed seats.

It just wasn’t feasible or reasonable.

And all the while, I knew it was my fault.

My daughter’s friends who’d been longstanding fans, their moms had signed up for the Taylor fan club along the way. They’d been able to get seats when they first went on a sale as a result.

I finally got there, to Taylor fandom. But I was too late, at least for this tour.

It breaks my heart. But also, I know I’d earned it.

My kids, they deserved better.

So I did the best I could do.

I packed up my kids, some snacks, two of their best friends, and one of their moms, and headed down to the stadium parking lot, where we — and thousands of other fans — stood outside and listened to the show.

But what I found was more than just a listen. It was an event in and of itself.

On the outside, looking in

Taylor-gating — it’s a thing, and it’s a party.

I’d read about how at each stop on her tour, thousands of fans who couldn’t get tickets gather outside her arenas and have a dance party of their own.

Here’s what it was like for us.

We got on the train downtown, jam-packed with sequins and sparkles and sashes, fans all dressed in their favorite Swift “Era.” About midway down, the train broke out in song. It’s a Love Story, baby just say yes…

We arrived to the stadium at 6pm, about 30 minutes before the first of the two openers started. We found a smidge of shade (it was a blazing hot 80+ degrees in our fair city), bought some over-priced dinner, and waited.

The north lot was still pretty sparse of parking lot campers at this point; most people took selfies in front of the stadium and then headed inside.

I was surprised by the actual heartache I felt in witnessing it.

I had failed, and all these others people — so many of them moms with daughters — had succeeded. Were they longstanding fans? Were they crazy wealthy so they could spring for the four-figure seats?

It didn’t matter; were were on the outside, and they were walking in.

It wasn’t so much about me. Don’t get me wrong. I really wanted to experience Taylor Swift live now, at a career peak and on her “Eras” retrospective tour. I wanted to see this force of nature of a songwriter and performer at her apex, and to dance and sing along with 73k of her fans. But that wasn’t my biggest heartache.

It was about my youngest.

At long last, she has a favorite musical artist, and a show she really, really, really wanted to see. And she couldn’t see it. Because I’d failed.

But, at least she could hear it. As much as it wasn’t ideal, for this show, it had to be enough.

I think we all arrived to the parking lot agreeing to focus on the positive aspects of the experience, but being just outside the gates tugged on all of our hearts — or at least, I know it did on mine.

The kids made up for it with some pre-show amusement…

I remember it all too well

If there’s anything that can raise my spirits, it’s a collective sing-a-long. So I’m grateful for every single other Taylor Swift fan who packed the parking lot with us and stayed with it through her 45 song set.

Yes, you read that correctly. Taylor played 45 songs for us.

I swooned when The Cure played 29 songs. Taylor’s performance was next level.

I know, technically she didn’t play them for us, but for the fans in the stadium. (insert shrug and sad face emojis)

Thing is, Taylor didn’t have to do that. She could play eight songs and split, thankyouverymuchgoodnight, and still people would clamor for her tickets. But Taylor is a go-getter and yeah, she played for 3.5 hours.

45 songs.

Incredible.

For those not in the know, on this tour Taylor plays her set by album. She started with songs from Lover (including the title track, my very favorite), then Fearless, evermore, reputation, Speak Now, Red, folklore, 1989, and then her latest release, Midnights.

She also features two “surprise songs” per show. Ours were two deep cuts I didn’t recognize (though the crowd around me sure did): “Message in a Bottle” from Red and “Tied Together With a Smile” from her self-titled debut. She introduced the former by saying it was the first time she’d played it live since she recorded it.

The crowd around us went wild.

And can we talk about the crowd?

I’m a terrible estimator of things, so take my numbers with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I’m confident there were thousands of us. Maybe 3–4 thousand? Yes, I’d say at least that many.

I do know the Parking Lot of Misfit Taylor Toys show was larger and more enthusiastic than nearly any live show I’ve attended in recent years. Considering she played two nights to a sold out 73k seat arena, and still had all of us — well, her popularity cannot be overstated.

Also evident was the sheer joy in the lot. Fans were giddy, singing, screaming, dancing, hamming it up for their cell phones and friends, rejoicing, waving their hands, and generally just experiencing an epic good time rocking out to the echoey auditory leftovers of the show itself.

It’s not an exaggeration to say these fans — the ones who didn’t even get in — knew Every. Single. Word. To. Every. Single. Song.

All 45 songs.

All 10 minutes and 13 seconds of “All Too Well,” which has a lot of lyrics and complicated shifts from versus to bridges and back, but every single one of us regaled the rest of the crowd by raising our voices and singing it as one.

It was rare. I was there.

I even witnessed loads of synchronized call and responses. Apparently there’s a Taylor Stan code for the Eras tour, that for certain lines of the song the audience members know to shout out a prequel to the lyric, so it sounds like Taylor is answering them.

For example, in the aforementioned “All Too Well,” when Taylor sings:

“You said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine”

The fans chants:

“How’d that make you feel?”

Before Taylor answers with the next line:

“And that made me want to die.”

A simple Google search shows this is totally a thing, a thing I wasn’t aware of because I’m easily twice the age of the average Taylor fan and haven’t prioritized keeping up with the latest antics. But that didn’t make me find it any less endearing to witness.

It was like seeing the Rocky Horror Picture Show and the joy in yelling “Darkness, Virgins!!” back at the screen during the opening song, “There’s a Light.”

Except this was a live show — no, it was more than that.

This was a celebration of the live show, and a refusal to mourn a lack of tickets for a live show. We all had a Blank Space where our Ticketmaster-endorsed spots in the stadium should’ve been, but we insisted in writing our names, by showing up. For Taylor, and for ourselves.

And in my case, for my kids.

I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake…

We had a peek-a-boo view of the top of the stadium screen, so we caught glimpses of Taylor’s iconic, perfect bangs. We could see some of the laser lights shot up into the sky, and the fire shot off during “Bad Blood.” But we couldn’t see the stage show, the dancers, the costume changes, the sets. We couldn’t see her facial expressions nor see any of the instruments I’m certain she was playing throughout.

Today, the morning after, I’m still having pangs that we missed it, and especially for my kids.

But with the memories of that ridiculously fun parking lot party buoying my spirits, I’m hoping I can Shake It Off.

Greetings!

I’m All My Little Words, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I write about career, music, feminism and perimenopause, cooking, ambition, fun, parenting, and more, with an offbeat perspective on how and why the world works (or doesn’t).