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Welcome to New York! By now, all Swifties know Taylor’s obsession with New York City. And, for those of us in the city, we know why. From Greenwich Village to Coney Island to Long Island, Taylor Swift includes New York easter eggs in many of her works. In everything she has done, since her album 1989, there are overt and more subtle references to the city. Swift’s confession of love for the city, as seen in her music and even a tourism ad, shows her favorite places and memories in the city. Here, we follow the easter eggs in her music and revisit some of her most memorable moments in this (non-exhaustive) list of Swiftie sites!
Taylor Swift has an eye for fashion. Case in point: bedazzled bodysuits. Now, on display at the Museum of Arts and Design, you can see some of her most iconic outfits, from music videos, concerts, and more at the Taylor Swift: Storyteller exhibit. Untapped New York Insiders are invited to take part in a free, member-exclusive tour of the exhibit on August 15th or August 16th!
Taylor Swift: Storyteller Tour
This tour is free for Untapped New York Insiders! Not an Insider yet? Become a member today and get your first month free with code JOINUS.
If we go back to November 2021–knitting red scarves, Jake Gyllenhall trending on tik tok–we return to the anxious anticipation of the re-release of Taylor’s fourth studio album. Red, originally released in 2012, featured the song “All Too Well,” a “sad girl autumn” anthem. But in that fateful November on 2021, the full version was released. All ten minutes of it. The maroon cherry on top was the short film Swift released to accompany the song. The Grammy award-winning music video was filmed spanning New York state, with the final scene filmed at Housing Works Bookstore. There we see Taylor signing copies of her book, entitled All Too Well. No more time dancing around the kitchen or hearing stories about his tee-ball team, she’s untying their invisible string and moving on.
As mentioned in her song “Cornelia Street,” Ms. Taylor Swift rented a West Village home during the beginning of her relationship with her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn. In more succinct musical terms, when she wrote Lover. Taylor has since moved and the house is up for sale. If you have a spare $18 million or $45k a month, you too can tell people casually that you “rent a place on Cornelia Street.” Now after her move, she owns a house in Tribeca. Her penthouse is located on Franklin Street and consists of two individual combined properties.
Since Taylor Swift started her professional career young, signing with Sony/ATV Music at the age of 14, she skipped out on the traditional college experience. Now, she’s Dr. Swift, as she received her honorary doctorate of arts from New York University in 2022. It was a fabulous and fearless feat for Swift, to not only walk the stage but to also give the commencement speech to the graduating class at Yankee Stadium.
Electric Lady Studios, made famous in the 1970s by musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Patti Smith, continues to be used by popular music artists of younger generations. Recent projects at the studio include artists like Frank Ocean, Clairo, Faye Webster, Bleachers, and (of course) Taylor Swift. There she recorded the album, Lover, and was recently seen leaving the studio with rumored (former) boyfriend Matty Healy of the 1975. Who knows, maybe a new album is in the works featuring Mr. Healy.
Taylor Swift, a known advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, made a surprise appearance at Stonewall in 2019, the 50th anniversary of the riots. There Swift performed the iconic track from her 1989 album, “Shake It Off.” In the same month, June 2019, Swift released the single “You Need to Calm Down.” The pride anthem includes overt lyrics like “Shade never made anybody less gay” and “Why are you mad when you could be GLAAD?”
“I thought I saw you at the bus stop,” Taylor sings in “The 1”, but she missed a crucial word: cafe. Any city has a bus stop, but only New York City has a Bus Stop Cafe. Therefore, the argument is being made that Taylor meant to invoke the iconic restaurant and not a bus stop for buses. In another song, Taylor sings of hearing her lover’s “heartbeat on the High Line/ once in twenty lifetimes.” Not only is this poetic, but it mentions a modern NYC sight, the High Line. The railroad tracks that makeup what is not the High Line park were destined for destruction after a demolition order was signed by Mayor Giuliani in 1999. The High Line is now a free greenway above NYC with design inspiration from the industrial and natural history of the city.
Fans of Taylor Swift and early 2000s movie, Uptown Girls, alike will know the calming effects of watching the bright Coney Island lights spin around you. On Swift’s 9th studio album and her second release of 2020, she features the NYC amusement park in the track titled “Coney Island.” The song hides many easter eggs, like a call-back to “Paper Rings” and “Out of the Woods,” and implications of the history of Coney Island itself.
Prior to the Will Smith x Chris Rock slap at the Oscars, an event at the 2009 VMAs was considered one of the most scandalous in award history: when Kanye took the stage to interrupt Taylor. “Taylor, I’m really happy for you, and I’m gonna let you finish,” he interrupted as Swift was accepting her award for best music video by a woman. This moment sparked a decade of controversy between the two artists, with rebukes by Swift herself, tracks by Kanye, and a potential call-out in Midnights.
It’s no secret that Taylor has been invited to and attended several Met Galas, and rumor has it, that’s where she met long-time boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. In her song “Dress”, Swift calls back the looks each of them was wearing at fashion’s biggest night. This was the era of Bleachella, as Swifties have deemed it, where she took on a platinum look for Coachella and kept it for the Met Gala. She references this look in the song saying, “Your buzz cut and my hair bleached.” Long live Bleachella!
One of Taylor’s best music videos has to be the Grammy Award-winning song, “Blank Space.” Not only was the video a cinematic masterpiece but it was filmed in a Long Island mansion. Oheka Castle was transformed into a beautiful set for her music video and has later been used for shows like HBO’s Succession. The castle should remind you of West Egg, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby, and evoke a sense of unnecessary decadence, which Swift plays on in the music video.
Next, check out: 10 NYC Haunts of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and Trace Patti Smith From Tompkins Park to CBGB
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