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Swift, Fans Bond Over Boys, Heartache

Tribune photo by GEORGE H. NEWMAN

Taylor Swift performs at Strawberry Festival March 1.

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By CURTIS ROSS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 2, 2009

PLANT CITY - The shrill din of teenage shrieks filling the Florida Strawberry Festival stadium Sunday night didn't sound much different from the one that might greet the Jonas Brothers. But the cheers were for Taylor Swift, and they were less adulation and more identification.

After all, Swift, 19 (or "Class of 2008" as she told the crowd), sings about the universal themes of teenage girls - boys who act like jerks, boys who cheat, boys who date other girls when they really should be dating Taylor.

Swift may not be blazing new trails in songwriting -- but she's got the benefit of recent experience. The joys and heartaches are all fresh and new to Swift, and to her audience which hears their lives in her songs. And they love her for it.

So much so that the show sold out faster than any other concert in Strawberry Festival history, and so much so that the free seats in the bleachers were packed, despite Sunday being unseasonably cold and windy.

Swift is classified as a country artist, but aside from having a fiddler and banjo player in her band, her music is mostly straight-up Disney rock - clean, catchy and buoyant.

"You Belong With Me" was the opening number, a banjo part its only connection with country. Swift sang the tune wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, perhaps as a concession to the chorus - "She wears high heels / I wear sneakers" - but by the end of the song she was in her trademark gold lame mini-dress and cowboy boots.

"Teardrops on My Guitar," "Should've Said No," and "White Horse" -- the evening's best number, which Swift performed with just her backup singers and her own guitar for accompaniment - are about the boys that broke her heart. "Tim McGraw," "Fearless" and "Our Song" are about the ones that didn't. "Change" is the optimistic-in-the-face-of-adversity ballad. As Willie Dixon said long ago and in a completely different context, the little girls understand.

Reporter Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.

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