Mom and Dad are Swifties, too: How Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets Department' release helps parents connect with their kids on a new level
Chris Braster got an alert on the family calendar about April 19 when his daughter was watching the Grammys. His 15-year-old, Kara, an avowed Swiftie, quickly added the event as soon as Taylor Swift announced her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, during the awards ceremony in February.
“I know all about it,” Braster, 50, told Yahoo Entertainment of the pop star’s 11th album. As its release date arrived, the first thing he asked his daughter on Friday morning was how late she stayed up when it came out.
Kara was wrapped up in the 16 tracks of The Tortured Poets Department as soon as the clock struck midnight, but she fell asleep before the 2 a.m. drop of The Anthology, which included 15 more songs.
This isn’t the family’s first brush with Swift fandom. In February, Braster and Kara were interviewed by CBS News Philadelphia after the dad wrote a viral Facebook post about how grateful he was “to Taylor and Travis for [piquing] my daughter’s interest in [football] and giving us a common interest for Sunday afternoons.”
Their bonding over Swift didn’t end after the Super Bowl, and this week was Braster's chance to engage in an activity his daughter loves — listening to Swift’s new music.
“This is his first album that he’s listened to in years,” Kara tells Yahoo.
Braster corrects her. “I can’t say I listened to a whole entire Taylor Swift album until Saturday.”
“He was texting me [his thoughts] while he was mowing the lawn,” Kara adds.
The much-anticipated release of The Tortured Poets Department is helping to strengthen the invisible strings between parents and kids and turning parents into proud Swifties.
From making a stereotypical dad joke about how often Swift uses the f*** word to guessing which tracks were about Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and announcing which songs he liked (“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” had a good upbeat tempo while doing yard work), Braster kept the family group chat active on Saturday with his first-listen reactions.
While it’s not the type of music Braster would normally play, he appreciates how Swift’s songs have “added another layer” to this new bond that he shares with his daughter. “[It’s been a] fun six to seven months to have something that kind of brings us together to talk about at the dinner table and around the house,” Braster says.
Like Braster, Bridgette Flack was not a Swiftie one year ago. The evolution began when she became one of the parents lucky enough to secure “Eras Tour” tickets for the Atlanta show for her daughters, now ages 18 and 13, in November 2022.
Getting the tickets was a huge deal. Her kids were so excited and Flack wanted to be able to fully participate in the experience. “I didn’t want to just take my kids to a concert and be like a bump on the log,” the 50-year-old mom tells Yahoo.
Leading up to their six-hour road trip from Memphis for the show, Flack and her daughters listened to Swift’s music constantly, watched her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana and read articles about the pop star online. At the concert, the mother and her daughters dressed up, made friendship bracelets and had a wonderful time.
“I’m definitely a Swiftie because of my kids, but after they got me into it, I totally love it. I love everything about it. I love what she stands for. I love what a wonderful role model she is for girls,” Flack says.
Flack’s oldest daughter is now in college so they couldn’t listen to Swift’s new album together, but she stayed up on Thursday night to listen with her 13-year-old as soon as it dropped — something she couldn’t imagine doing until after the “Eras Tour.” They were surprised that some of the songs were slower, but they still liked them.
From the album cover to the lyrics and themes, The Tortured Poets Department is easily Swift’s most mature album to date, but it doesn’t bother Flack.
“[Swift’s] used that language before, and my kids are old enough now and more mature … they understand using that language in context and understand the purpose and emphasis that those kinds of words [give art],” she explains.
Flack also thinks the more mature content is describing things her kids may experience in life and hopes that hearing Swift sing about them will initiate conversations between them and help her kids “develop compassionate empathy” as they get older.
As a mom to a much-younger Swiftie, Julie (who asked Yahoo to use only her first name to protect her daughters’ privacy) was more concerned about the explicit language and content of this album, so she scanned it before she played it for her girls. Her youngest turned 5 on the day the album was released, so they listened to some of the clean songs at breakfast. Julie’s daughter is named Clara, so the song “Clara Bow” felt like a birthday gift just for her.
“I asked her, 'What is your favorite part of this song?’ and she said, ‘I just love that Taylor sings this.’ Anything Taylor Swift does is amazing right now, and it’s super fun to be a mom of girls right now and just [be] into it with them and be in the fanfare,” the 39-year-old mom tells Yahoo.
Chris Felice, 48, has an 11-year-old, and he feels similarly about Swift.
“A lot of my friends’ kids aren’t as diehard as me, so I don’t think a lot of the guys that I speak to have the same experience we do in this house because that’s all my daughter listens to and talks about, but it brings joy just to see the joy in her face when she listens to her, and I actually enjoy the music also,” he tells Yahoo. “She’s a very talented artist.”
Once the album dropped, Felice knew it was all they’d play. He gamely programmed his car for the limited SiriusXM satellite station, Station 13, aka Taylor’s Version, dedicated to Swift’s music.
He also made adjustments to his daughter’s entire wall of Swift paraphernalia, which includes posters, vinyl and CDs, to make room for her new signed copy of The Tortured Poets Department.
“My job is to rearrange everything new she gets that goes up on her wall,” Felice says.
