I thought I’d been coping with my sister’s death – a Taylor Swift song showed me I hadn’t
As I sat in a park during the pandemic, listening to the Evermore album on my headphones, one song finally released the grief that I’d pent up for five yearsWhen the pandemic hit in 2020, it had been five years since my sister, Emily, had died.She had lived with cystic fibrosis her whole life, yet we were a close, tactile family.We laughed, hugged and sang often.When Emily died, relatively suddenly, aged 30 (I was 27), I coped with it as well as anyone could.In fact, I prided myself on how outwardly resilient I seemed: I spoke to a therapist, started a new job.
I poured myself into a packed diary and a big city,It wasn’t until time stopped, in a way, in 2020, that I really sat with my grief,I was forced to – made redundant like so many others that summer, my days had no shape,Like many people living in city flatshares, my one little freedom was a daily walk,Taylor Swift’s Evermore album came out that December and, like its predecessor, Folklore, was quickly on heavy rotation as I strolled about my south London neighbourhood, waiting for something to change.
I walked mainly around Tooting Common, taking the same comforting route: past the athletics track, along the tennis courts, looping around the small lake,Here I would pause to sit on “my” bench, staring at the ducks rippling the water,That’s where I was the first time that track 13 of Evermore, Marjorie, came on over my headphones,As the opening synths shimmered into my ears, tears began to fall,Before I’d even processed the lyrics, the very sound of it released something in me.
Each time I listened, the ethereal sound and simplicity of the lyrics whisked me back to winter five years earlier, the early days of grief,“If I didn’t know better / I’d think you were talking to me now,” sings Swift,I later read that she was addressing her grandmother Marjorie, who had died when she was young,But Marjorie is not a particularly maudlin song; it builds to a pulsing, almost clubby beat that speaks of being alive,Towards the end, Swift’s grandmother’s singing voice is sampled hauntingly, just audible over the production.
On my walks, I could feel what Swift was doing here – reaching out beyond this life to touch the spirit of her loved one.Just listening to it, I felt I could do the same.I could feel Emily, almost physically, sitting on the park bench beside me, gazing at the bulrushes.As the lyrics say: “If I didn’t know better / I’d think you were still around.”I first encountered Swift during her 1989 era, gazelle-limbed and glossy-bobbed at a time when she was stomping in six-inch heels and singing of Manhattan nights over bouncy Max Martin productions.
In the subsequent years, dancing to Blank Space and belting out Style at karaoke, I never pictured turning to Swift in times of grief,But Marjorie did something I hadn’t managed in five years of therapists and packed diaries – it made me sit still with the grief I’d compressed for half a decade,In 2024, I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the Eras Tour,Twenty-seven weeks pregnant with my son – the nephew my beautiful sister never got to meet – I stood in the stands with other Swifties as the pulsing intro to Marjorie built in the pitch-black stadium,As Swift sang the opening words, 90,000 people flicked on their phone lights into a constellation of stars, all saying: we’re here with you.
I felt the baby kick and wriggle.I don’t think I was the only fan with tears running down my face.I don’t go to church, but that experience may be as close as I’ll ever get to that kind of communal faith and euphoria.Through a pop song and a pandemic came a small ritual so meaningful to me that it healed something I didn’t know needed healing.If that’s not great songwriting, I don’t know what is.
Did a cultural moment prompt you to make a major life change? Email us at cultural,awakening@theguardian,com
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As a schoolboy, I was fascinated by coverage of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. A few years later, on a family holiday, we visited Wells Cathedral. Outside the grounds lay a gleaming brass strip in the pavement marking the distance that Mary Rand long-jumped to create her world record. A lovely tribute to this remarkable person (Mary Rand, first British woman to win Olympic athletics gold, dies aged 86, 27 March).Anil BhattSunderland Your review of the fourth instalment of Alan Bennett’s diaries, Enough Said (24 March), says he nearly always notes the anniversary of the beginning of his national service: “8/8/52
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The betting market for the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on 2 May was thrown into confusion on Tuesday when two significant candidates from the Aidan O’Brien stable, Gstaad and Albert Einstein, were taken out of the race, apparently as the result of an administrative error.The chaos was then compounded later in the day by uncertainty over whether a plan to re-engage both colts if necessary at a cost of £30,000 each might be prohibited by the rules of entry, before the British Horseracing Authority confirmed that supplementary entries would in fact be accepted.Gstaad, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Del Mar in November, was priced up on Tuesday morning at around 6‑1 for the first Classic of the season, and seen as potentially the Ballydoyle first string for a race the stable has won a record 10 times.He assumed the role of O’Brien’s No 1 contender after Albert Einstein, the winner of his first two starts as a juvenile in 2025 but unraced beyond May because of injury, finished only sixth of 10 runners on his three‑year‑old debut in a Listed race at the Curragh three days ago.Despite that reverse, however, and a subsequent suggestion that Albert Einstein might revert to sprinting with the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot as an initial target, the colt was still priced up at 20-1 for the 2,000 Guineas and O’Brien intended to confirm both two-year-olds at the latest declaration stage on Tuesday
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A new documentary charts the tragic events that led to the former NBA star overdosing in a Nevada brothel – and what came nextThere’s a version of the Lamar Odom story that ends in a Nevada brothel. It’s not hard to imagine the grand finale – the TMZ bulletin relating his fatal drug overdose, followed by emotional tributes to what was lost: a radical basketball prodigy of the New York tradition, a two-time NBA champion with the Kobe Bryant Lakers, a glittering career that spanned coasts and eras before caving under the weight of addiction. A cautionary tale of incandescent fame, with Odom’s celebrity wife Khloé Kardashian cast as a man-eater to eclipse her more notorious older sister, would have been the epilogue cemented in a thousand think pieces.But by living to tell the tale, Odom has instead become the latest fallen star to prove a core truism of Western mythmaking: heroes who don’t die young are doomed to live long enough to become the villain in their own tale.“There is a way of understanding Lamar where everything in his life is kind of in reaction to death hunting him since he was a kid,” says Ryan Duffy, executive producer of Netflix’s Untold sports docuseries
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Surrey look well placed to reclaim the title after their runner-up finish last season while all eyes are on promotion for LancashireCaptain Tom Westley Coach Chris Silverwood Last season 6th Div OneEssex seemed to spend most of last summer chasing their tail. The bowling resources were stretched, with Sam Cook battling injury as well as spending time with England and Simon Harmer not romping through sides with quite the gusto he once did. Some prudent signings have added ballast: the zippy Zaman Akhter from Gloucestershire and young Mitchell Killeen, from Durham, can provide cover for Cook and the ever reliable Jamie Porter. Jordan Cox will miss the early part of the season with the Indian Premier League but Charlie Allison has a chance to make a name for himself after a fabulous 2025. Prediction 6thCaptain Kiran Carlson Coach Richard Dawson Last season 2nd Div TwoAfter 20 years skulking around Division Two, Glamorgan are finally back in the big time
The Breakdown | Parling’s TV spat with Doyle symbolises the tug of war for rugby’s modern soul
No prizes for guessing the most viewed rugby clip at the weekend. The number of views on X has long since passed three million and – spoiler alert – people were not studying the finer detail of Gloucester’s defensive effort at Villa Park on Saturday. Leicester’s Geoff Parling used to be just another stern-faced Prem coach; suddenly he is an unlikely global social media star.For those who missed it – and here’s hoping you enjoyed your mini-break on Jupiter – here is a potted summary. The TNT Sports presenter Craig Doyle and a new colleague, Liam MacDevitt, were on the pitch before the game, with MacDevitt being urged to take a kick at goal as part of his on-screen Prem initiation
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