Tortured Poets Take the Lower East Side

Swifties stomped and swayed to Taylor Swift classics at Arlene’s Grocery last Friday night.

I wish I liked anything as much as these people like Taylor Swift is a recurring thought I found myself having while pressed against the wall of Arlene’s Grocery last Friday night.

As someone whose knowledge of Swift’s discography and personal life has always been information acquired by happenstance, my attendance at this album-release party and costume contest for The Tortured Poets Department felt like sociological field research. I was an impartial observer sent to study the Swiftie in their natural habitat.

An overwhelmingly white, late-20s crowd turned out to celebrate the debut of Swift’s latest album at the Lower East Side bar around midnight. They danced in small clusters around the room. The women were largely clad in light-wash denim and various bodysuits, while the men seemed fresh off a long week at their marketing jobs, ripping shots before dancing it out with their boys and then quickly moving on to the next bar. But the more die-hard fans stayed for hours, belting out the words to every track while doing a lot of what I can only describe as hand choreography — pointing, clapping, and spirit fingers, punctuated by the occasional dramatic flourish of an invisible tambourine — which is a style of dance not all that dissimilar to the professional choreography I’ve seen clips of Swift doing onstage. During a couple of particularly rowdy numbers (“Love Story” and “22”), the crowd stomped their feet to the beat until it shook the floorboards. There was actually quite a bit of stomping that night.

As I circulated among the Swifties, attempting to glean what it is they love so much about this woman and her music, I heard the same answer time and time again: It’s the lyricism. Her ability to put into words the subtle nuance of the human experience, particularly as that experience pertains to love. These fans told me they’d grown up with Swift, their romances and heartbreaks, triumphs and losses unfolding in lockstep with her own. Their entire lives had been accompanied by the soundtracks she’d created. Their own youthful memories intertwined with these songs. It was a fact I could see plainly on the face of a man who gravitated to the center of the dance floor when “Style” came on, eyes closed and arms outstretched overhead as though lost in religious ecstasy.

In preparation for these conversations, I’d brushed up on my Swift lore, listening to snippets of the new album and binging the many TikTok conspiracies explaining what they all meant, connecting the ever-present clues in her work to a grand unified theory of the Swiftie-verse. But it turns out all that prep was unnecessary as they didn’t play a single track from the new album all night. The costume-contest aspect also turned out to be a bust with only one man showing up in a sundress and folklore cardigan. The closest runner-up was wearing a sweater vest. Not exactly the eager, enthusiastic stans I had expected to see flooding the venue that night.

I was also, selfishly, disappointed not to witness the crowd’s live reaction to these new songs. I wanted to glance slyly around the room during lyrics such as “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” and “I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists,” curious if their fandom was sincere enough to withstand these cornier moments, or if I would catch them admitting to the fallibility of their idol with a knowing eye roll and a shrug. Instead, the DJ stuck to Swift’s standard repertoire of radio hits. Pop classics, to be sure, but at this point going on a decade old. While not a ringing endorsement for the popularity of this new record, many attendees informed me that TTPD was not exactly bop heavy. It’s an album for the real fans, not the masses, they explained. About two hours into the event, the DJ stopped playing Swift’s music entirely, replacing it with the staples of my own middle-school dances, like Shaggy, the Black Eyed Peas, even Sir Mix-a-Lot. And when Justin Bieber’s “Baby” came on, it received, by far, the biggest reaction of the night.

With the release party being a bit of a letdown, at least for the Tortured Poets among us, I stopped by the restroom before heading home. There, I came upon two drunk women pressed tightly into one of the stalls, whose conversation I couldn’t help but overhear as it was delivered in heightened stage whispers. They were unpacking some drama that had just transpired on the dance floor — a heartbreak in progress. One repeatedly proclaimed that she was “so done” with this unnamed man as the other attempted to comfort her, confirming not only his profound idiocy but her friend’s utter perfection. As I sat there, I couldn’t help but feel like somehow this was the true Swiftie experience.

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