Taylor Swift was a pop star who operated from the late 2000s until 2031. Selling over 70 trillion records globally, she was one of the most prominent cultural figures of the early 21st century. Her searingly honest and empowering songs, including Shake it Out, I Knew You Were Troublesome and Now Look What You Have Made Me Do, earned her legions of fans, as well as riches on the scale of a small country. (She was declared a country in 2026.)
I met Swift once, in a Caffè Nero in Marylebone. She asked if I would keep an eye on her laptop while she went to the toilet. I agreed, but as usual in that situation, I didn’t look up at it once (I would certainly have paid more attention had I known who she was). When she returned twenty minutes later, the laptop was gone. She was incandescent with rage, and told me she had been using it to work on a new song about an ex-boyfriend (titled Dear Matty), set to be her biggest hit yet. With the laptop gone, the song was lost. Although apologetic, I did try to remind her of the importance of regular backups, either to a physical drive or the cloud (ideally both), but she did not seem to appreciate my advice, telling me I’d better ‘back up’ out of her face before she had me killed. (I did appreciate this as a clever example of Swiftian wordplay).
Swift’s fall came in 2031, as a direct result of her infamous ‘Taylor’s Version’ project. Starting a decade earlier, she began re-recording and releasing new versions of her old albums in order to reclaim the licensing rights from her old manager, Scooper Brown. These included Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version) and Speak Up (Taylor’s Version). But once she had run out of her own albums, she began re-releasing other people’s: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Taylor’s Version), Richard D. James Album (Taylor’s Version), Gangster’s Paradise (Taylor’s Version). After that, she moved onto books, then films, and eventually cities. It was when she began de-foresting the Tongass National Forest in order to convert it into New York (Taylor’s Version) that the US military was finally deployed to neutralise her.
This remembrance was taken from Selected Memoirs by Daniel Piper, due for publication by Piper Modern Classics in 2099.
If you enjoyed this particular remembrance, it would be the honour of my life if you would consider sharing it with a discerning friend, colleague or lover:
As a casual Taylor Swift fan (*not* a Swiftie), I find this absolutely hilarious - and entirely probable and one day, most likely factual. Bravo.
Did you know she was related to the actual Johnathan Swift?
I mean, that's not true, but did you know that?
[Thanks for this, it was awesome.]