Taylor Swift Inspires Prison Inmate To Write Moving Essay On Her Music
By Rebekah Gonzalez
September 5, 2023
Taylor Swift's relatability has always been a hallmark of her songwriting and global stardom but a recent essay in The New Yorker proved just how universal her music can be. Over the Labor Day weekend, the weekly magazine published an emotional essay by Joe Garcia, who detailed the deep connection he formed to Swift's music while serving a life sentence for murder in prisons around California.
"The jail was full of young men of color who wrote and performed their own raps, often about chasing money and fame, while Swift was out there, actually getting rich and famous," Garcia admitted when he first heard of Swift in the late 2000s. "How fearless could any little blond fluff like that really be?" However, over time, Swift's music became a balm for Garcia. "There was, in her voice, something intuitively pleasant and genuine and good, something that implies happiness or at least the possibility of happiness," he wrote. "When I listened to her music, I felt that I was still part of the world I had left behind."
Garcia even detailed meeting other Swifties in prison, watching her perform "All Too Well" at the 2014 Grammy Awards, and even converting some of his fellow inmates into fans. "By the time the song ends, someone new will admit, 'That girl’s got jams.'"
The essay goes all the way to Swift's most recent album Midnights. "I wonder whether her music would have resonated with me when I was her age. I wonder whether I would have reacted to the words “I’m the problem, it’s me,''" Garcia muses towards the end of the essay. "Hers must be champagne problems compared with mine, but I still see myself in them."