Until April 19, not a single international act had made it to India’s Top 50 Songs chart on Spotify this year. That changed when Taylor Swift released her new album, The Tortured Poets Department. In one day, the album’s lead single, ‘Fortnight’, debuted at No 18, while eight other tunes from the 31-track collection entered the top 200.
The pop behemoth has yet to land on Indian shores, but the country’s Swifties are rabid as ever, eager for any glimpse of their hero (or Anti-Hero, if you will). When her concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, was released here in November last year, cinema chain PVR INOX sold 3,00,000 tickets (with 25,000 tickets sold on just the opening day) for the movie across 75 cities, from Srinagar to Salem and from Kota to Kolkata. Theatres turned into veritable karaoke bars, with fans singing along, dancing in their seats, and parading down the aisle dressed in outfits that paid homage to their favourite ‘Era’ or album.
A not-insignificant Indian contingent also managed to see her live this March when she performed in Singapore, the closest geographical stop on her ongoing world trek. After the movie premiered on Disney+ Hotstar that same month, fans started contests to see who’s watched it the most frequently. In Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad, fans regularly congregate at Swiftie Nights, essentially a singing, listening, and dancing party that two Indian fan girls have been organising since December 2021. Their Instagram page has more than 26,000 followers, and tickets reportedly sell out in minutes. “It feels like a safe space to sing, dance, and cry your heart out to Taylor Swift,” says beauty influencer and long-time Swiftie, Deep Pathare.
Tribute gigs have become increasingly popular, too. “The energy is insane,” says lawyer Chelsea Das, who performs such shows with her friend and co-vocalist Kiara Alemao in Mumbai. “There are hundreds of people singing the lyrics louder than we are.” At all these events, Swifties come wearing merchandise that they’ve either made themselves or bought online from the dozens of small businesses that peddle everything from jerseys to journals to cater to the seemingly insatiable demand from fans looking to don their devotion. Of course, no ensemble is complete without friendship bracelets—spelling out a song name, album title, or lyric excerpt—which fans make and then trade with each other.
It’s clear that even in this age of hyper-personalised, algorithm-driven market segmentation, Taylor Swift’s following rivals those of pop superstars such as Madonna and Michael Jackson at the peak of monoculture. In India, the frenzy she elicits has been compared to that evoked by the likes of Shah Rukh Khan.
As these super-Swifties featured below tell us, there’s just something about TayTay. For some, it’s about how she essays the emotional highs and lows we experience with lovers, friends, and frenemies. For others, it’s about how deeply she seems to care about her fans and how she never fails to express her gratitude to them. Still others idolise her for how she has fought for what’s rightfully due to herself and her fellow artists. For all of them though, the main reason is simple—listening to her makes them happy.
Natasha Mahtani, 27, artist manager, Mumbai
A bona fide Super Swiftie, Mahtani hasn’t just watched the pop icon perform live six times, she’s also met her. In 2017, she was invited by TayTay’s team to be part of the secret listening sessions the singer held for superfans ahead of the release of Reputation. Mahtani, who was studying in Los Angeles at the time, managed to make it to Nashville for the meet and greet at the singer’s house.
She echoes a chorus of Swifties who loved how TayTay gave her undivided attention to her fans: “She knew every single person’s name and where they had come from.” Mahtani even got a chance to hold the 14-time Grammy Award winner’s trophy for 2009’s Fearless, the very record that made her a Swiftie when she was all of 11. “I know it sounds clichéd, but [it was like] somebody was writing about my own personal experiences. Even on the new album, there are songs that I feel were written about my life.”