It’s no secret that Taylor Swift’s fandom on the internet can be absolutely terrifying. Rabid Taylor’s fans, known as Swifties, have been known to send death threats to music critics who dare to dismiss his albums as anything other than perfect, former doxx producers who worked with Swift and have since felt the full extent of his anger and used their massive buying power to propel their favorite to the top of the charts, consistently.
On TikTok, a dizzying analysis of Taylor Swift’s lyrics and her profusely dropped Easter eggs evokes something like TikTok astrology: Symbols and signs that can mean one thing to devotees and absolutely zero to casual viewers are without endlessly separated, assigned certain meanings and rearranged into kaleidoscopic and vaguely unbalanced configurations.
That’s why a recent trend from Swift’s latest album, Midnightsis such a refreshingly silly entry into the Swiftie lexicon: in the chorus of one of Swift’s bonus tracks, “High Infidelity,” she sings, “Do you really wanna know where I was on April 29?”
An aside – when I first heard this I was sent into the stratosphere and moved to tears, as I am a shameless Swiftie and April 29th happens to be my birthday. It was the best late gift ever!
Almost instantly after the album was released two weeks ago, TikTok obsessives Taylor Swift began posting this snippet of the song along with photos documenting what they were up to on April 29.
What Swift herself was doing on April 29 that was significant enough to be referenced is still disputed: Perhaps he was attending Dianna Agron’s circus-themed birthday party in 2019 (Gaylors, the Taylor obsessives who believe she had intimate relationships with some female friends in her past, are the drivers of it)?
Or maybe the April 29 lyrics refer to the 2016 release date of Rihanna’s song “This Is What You Came For,” which was produced by Swift’s ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris. and who was later revealed to feature Swift’s co-written voice? It’s still a mystery.
For the nearly 62,000 Swifties who have hopped on the TikTok trend so far, however, where they were 7 months ago is no big mystery, thanks to the magic of smartphones. The results range from the wholesome (“Plant shopping at Lowes” with toddlers), to the mundane (buying a printer) to the awful (“I wanted to do this cute trend but realized my friend was committed suicide on April 29 and I was completely unaware of it until a few days later”).
Is posting something like this kinda crazy in practice? Sure, but consider this: Rather than attacking Taylor’s internet haters with this trend, her fans are taking a break to reflect on their own really interesting lives, and that’s a good thing.
And like human beings, April 29 contains multitudes! A young woman’s grandmother was hit by a car on this date, while another was about to chew on the back of a child’s neck at the club, while yet another took snaps of Google Images results screen for Goldendoodles. To reiterate, the biggest thing that happened on April 29 of this year was my birthday.
There’s a riff on the trend: A TikTok user edited the “High Fidelity” audio to have Taylor sing “Do you really wanna know where I was January 6th?” This is a reference to the infamous day when insurgents stormed the United States Capitol, a dark day in our nation’s history. The audio montage itself appears to be a reference to when Swift was called an “Aryan Goddess” by the alt-right, a label she resoundingly rejected.
One quality that is widely regarded as one of Swift’s strongest attributes as a songwriter is the universality of his lyrics. Anyone who’s ever been through a breakup, dreamed of a former lover years after they broke up, or sat up late at night to discuss a long-dead argument can relate to what she sings, no matter how emotionally charged or overwhelming the subject matter.
What’s so funny about the April 29 trend is that you don’t have to be in love, going through a breakup, or getting revenge to understand these Taylor Swift lyrics. It is enough to have been alive and to have done something on that date. Now it is universality.
