KC LibmanI never set out to be a music journalist. If it hadn't been for a bizarre series of events — including, um, the urging of Taylor Swift — you wouldn't be reading this now.
It happened like this: During my senior year at the University of Arizona in 2011, I began writing about music for my school paper. Three articles into my time at the Arizona Daily Wildcat, I wrote a piece called “Why Bros Love Taylor Swift.” Though my friends thought it was funny, it didn't exactly set the internet on fire.
But then, somehow, she actually read the thing.
Two weeks after the article ran, I got a call from Swift's publicist, explaining that her firm had come across the piece, passed it on to tour management, who then brought it to Swift's attention. She liked it enough to invite me to meet her at her tour stop in Phoenix the following Saturday. Shellshocked, I said yes.
That following Saturday, I received a call that my father, who was living in Prescott, AZ at the time, had been in a motorcycle accident and was being airlifted to Phoenix. I forgot about everything and quickly drove the 100 miles north in time to meet him coming off the chopper. Despite ten broken bones and a compound fracture, he'd made it.
And though he was about to go into surgery, he insisted that I must go meet Taylor Swift. (He was in good hands, he assured me.) And not only that, but I should take my brother, Rory, who had come down with him.
So that's just what we did. We booked it to the Jobing.com arena and made it backstage just in time. We were led through Swift's lounge, resplendent in the reds and purples of the Speak Now tour, and then to Swift herself.
Dressed in a yellow sundress and matching flats, she wrapped Rory and me in hugs. We briefly explained about our dad's accident; she asked for details and if he'd be OK. It seemed genuinely…genuine.
She then complimented me on the article far more than I deserved, and asked me how long I had been writing. Sheepishly, I told her three weeks. As we posed for a picture together, she told me that I should keep it up, that I had to keep it up.
Maybe she was just being nice, but whatever the case, it really inspired me, and for the two years since then I've been working my ass off as a writer. Though I was a biology major with aspirations of medical school at the time of the Daily Wildcat article, I added an English major and decided to hold off on medical school for at least another year. The support from Taylor and my dad exposed me to something that's not just a job, but that I'm passionate about.
Oh, and my Dad was OK. After a plate and five screws were applied to his shattered leg — as well as a month of in-patient rehabilitation — he's back to riding again. Perhaps some of Swift's pixie dust rubbed off on him. Whatever the case, consider him another bro who loves her.
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