It is barely 10pm in Limehouse, east London, when the first pyro goes off and a crowd of sequined, red-lipped Taylor Swift fans lose their minds: “I did something bad,” Swift is singing, “So why’s it feel so good?”
A man has ripped off his top, and is whirling it around his head. Every foot stomp, every ad lib is perfectly replicated by a sea of dancing fans and you can almost taste the euphoria in your warm can of White Claw. But Swift is thousands of miles away on tour in the US: this is Swiftogeddon, a club night dedicated to the singer’s music that started as a novelty one-off event and has snowballed into a UK-wide phenomenon.
The brainchild of Dave Fawbert, a DJ and former journalist who has been an unlikely fan of Swift since her 2010 album Speak Now, Swiftogeddon began in London in August 2019, weathered the pandemic and now takes place across the UK every weekend (it almost always sells out).
Fawbert is not the person you might picture as the mastermind behind a Swift club night. He gives off strong dad energy in his uniform of long baggy shorts and T-shirt, and often runs out from behind the decks to air drum and dance. He takes his job as master of vibes very seriously: “If you get out the front, sing along and make yourself look a bit of an idiot, then people feel free to do the same,” he says with a grin when we meet up before the event. He may have been the first to spot the potential in an all-Swift club night (there is now an unaffiliated night that tours the US), but even he had no idea how big it would become. “I thought, it’ll fizzle out at some point; it’s not a real job,” he says. “But it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Now, Swiftogeddon is a real job. Fawbert won’t be drawn on specifics, but he makes enough money running the night to support his young family without needing what he calls “sensible” work. He still DJs the London dates and has recruited and pays Swifties from around the UK to DJ elsewhere, in some cases training them up from scratch.
In the pub, I meet Hannah and Caitlin, two 19-year-old Swift fans having pre-drinks after travelling for more than an hour to get to Limehouse. They are sporting matching pink cowboy hats and have choreography planned for I’m Only Me When I’m With You. “It’s the nicest club night I’ve ever been to,” says Hannah. “Everyone’s just like, ‘I love your outfit!’ and taking pictures with each other.” Her only complaint is that the queues for the ladies are too long.
Swiftogeddon is a very feminine space. Most of those in the crowd are women or gay men, with the odd hetero boyfriend gamely trying to sing along. Everyone I speak to stresses how safe it feels, with no fear of judgment or harassment. “I feel like a lot of her music really captures the collective female experience,” Fran, an older Swiftie, tells me. “That’s what I love to be part of – singing those songs with a room full of people who feel the same.”
Emma, who has dragged her non-Swiftie friend Aaron to experience Swiftogeddon for the first time, also stresses the feeling of community. “It’s so warm and inclusive,” she says. There have been no reports of drink spiking, unwanted sexual attention or violence, problems that dog the nightlife industry as a whole. The only trouble Fawbert can remember is when one irate woman asked him to make an announcement over the mic because she thought someone had stolen her drink.
Inside, things are growing increasingly feverish. Confetti rains down regularly throughout the night and bartenders wander the dancefloor with trays full of lurid pink and blue shots, some of which I will witness on their way back up in the smoking area later on. Everyone dances as freely and awkwardly as Swift herself. During Enchanted, a woman near me bursts into tears: her best friend has just asked her to be maid of honour at her wedding. Every moment is a celebration and every song is received as though it were the greatest song ever written.
You may wonder if Swift herself is aware of this fan-run cottage industry growing up around her music. Famously litigious, she has pursued her former guitar teacher for buying the domain itaughttaylorswift.com and homemade bootleg merchandise sellers on Etsy. “Since day one, I’ve been waiting for the call from Big Swift,” Fawbert says, wincing a little as though he expects a lawyer to leap out from under the table. There is nothing illegal about what he does and he maintains that he is not taking money from Swift’s bulging coffers: there is no Swiftogeddon merch and no way that these nights will replace anyone’s desire for a ticket to the forthcoming Eras tour (every Swiftogeddon customer I spoke to had at least one ticket to their name).
Swift’s representatives declined to comment but there are some good signs: her label sent decorations and concert tickets to give away at that first Swiftogeddon in 2019, and Swift herself reacted to a video from one of the early nights on Tumblr: “WHAT!!!!!!!! This is amazing!!!!”
And it is amazing. Nights such as Swiftogeddon strengthen what is sometimes a hectic and competitive fan community with shared experience between tours. They give devotees a chance to live out her songs without the pressure of having to look at the stage, film every second or take a week’s leave to vie for tickets. Countless times on the dancefloor, I found myself singing ardently to people with whom I’d just happened to make eye contact as they serenaded me back: at that second, we were best friends and perfect strangers sharing an exquisite moment. There are few artists for whom this sort of night could exist and endure as Swiftogeddon has done: Swift’s knack for taking the personal and making it universal almost needs these collective experiences to become complete.
As if to prove the point, the pinnacle of the night is the 10-minute version of All Too Well (Taylor’s Version). A very long song with no obvious drop and no obvious chorus, about a deeply sad moment in a young woman’s life, it has the entire venue rapt. “I think you could hate the rest of the night and you could still go away and have had a great time purely from that 10 minutes,” Fawbert had said weeks before, a little starry-eyed remembering so many All Too Wells. “But if that was the one you wanted to hear … just outrageous.” Sure enough, faces are raised, voices are swelling, and drinks are sloshing as we act out the words and reach to hug each other again.
