'This is Getting Good Now': Bay Area Fans Brace Themselves for Taylor Swift's '1989' Album Re-Release

Ava Jeffs was a sophomore in high school, listening to music and cooking her mom’s favorite meal: braised short rib with parmesan risotto.

Jeffs loved cooking — especially for other people. But Jeffs was struggling with an eating disorder — and her love for cooking felt like a constant battle in her head.

Then she heard the lyrics:

When I was drowning… that’s when I could finally breathe.

“I remember tasting the dish, and then I went outside, and it started raining, and it was just a very cathartic experience for me. It almost seemed unreal at the time,” Jeffs, now 19, says. For her, “the song is about the first time that I really felt clean of all of those negative feelings that came along with food.”

The song was Taylor Swift’s “Clean,” from her pop-crossover magnum opus, 1989.

It’s the song that inspired Jeffs’ college admission essay to Stanford University, where she now studies computer science.

In Palo Alto:

Next spring, Jeffs — as a sophomore — will teach a class at Stanford about Taylor Swift that examines the singer’s storytelling abilities.

“That song just got me through such a hard time and is one of the reasons why I’m here,” she says. “So it’s almost like paying back by doing this class and showing other people how they can get the same thing out of songs if they are able to read something in a specific way.”

The class is called “The Last Great American Songwriter” — a reference to Swift’s song “the last great american dynasty” on her album folklore.

@avathearcher13 LET THE GAMES BEGIN #swifttok #erastour ♬ …Ready For It? – Taylor Swift

“There has been some pushback about there being a class like this at a university like Stanford,” Jeffs says. But that’s exactly why she wanted to create it. “I think that a lot of the time, songwriting as a medium of art and storytelling is undervalued, and I want it to be valued.”

Jeffs is one of thousands of Bay Area fans bracing for the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) on Friday.

1989 originally came out a decade ago — and Taylor’s Version is the artist’s project to re-record her back catalog in order to fully own her masters.

Re-recording is not a new concept for artists. But Swift’s journey back to her old music, revisiting the raw emotions of her teens and twenties, has only given more momentum to an already — let’s say — passionate fandom. Especially amid Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour.

And there is no shortage of gatherings for Swifties: Drag shows, themed parties, and, of course, karaoke.

In Emeryville:

At Bay Street Emeryville’s outdoor terrace on Oct. 19, 11-year-old Jaionna Stanfield gave a lively rendition of the 1989 single, “Shake It Off.”

“She’s just so nice and kind, and she’s just a very good singer,” Stanfield says. “She’s so pretty and beautiful, and that’s all.”

Swift attracts fans of all ages — especially those who grew up with her music and relied on her songs to get them through anxiety and heartbreak. At Bay Street Emeryville, 30-year-old Aireonna Westbrook says she can get up on a stage and sing in front of complete strangers (she sang “22”) because of Taylor Swift.

“I’m not normally an extroverted person, but that’s how she makes me feel,” she says. “Just be bold, be yourself, and just go full throttle with everything.”

In San Francisco:

In addition to local fan events, Swift is also on the silver screen, with her concert film of the Eras tour premiering earlier this month — a far more affordable, accessible way to enjoy the tour whose tickets were notoriously pricey and hard to buy due to Ticketmaster’s monopoly on the live music industry.

On Friday the 13th — the singer’s favorite number, and under a full moon — the San Francisco Alamo Drafthouse’s theater lobby was buzzing with joy as Swifties traded friendship bracelets before the show.

Amanda Sterner brought two sets of friendship bracelets to give out: classic bracelets with lyrics and album titles and “unhinged” bracelets with deep cuts to Swiftie lore. (One bracelet read “RIP Scooter,” referencing the music producer Scooter Braun with whom Swift had grievances in the battle to own her music.)

Sterner is an elementary school teacher who looks forward to turning her students into Swifties using pre-recorded buttons in her classroom.

“So when they don’t put their name on a paper, it goes, ‘I’ve got a blank space, baby, and I’ll write your name.’ Or when they’re being really loud, there’s another one that [goes], ‘You need to calm down, you’re being too loud,’” Sterner says.

When you ask a fan why they are so drawn to Taylor Swift — you will get a range of answers.

Her lyricism conjures vivid imagery: “You can hear every drop of the leaves falling, and then you can see a picture of her dancing in the refrigerator light.” Michael Micael, a movie attendee, says of the song “All Too Well.”

Regarding the pure nostalgia of revisiting her songs: “[Taylor Swift] really embraces what it means to go through girlhood and to experience those really turbulent emotions that you go through in your maturing,” Jeffs says.

Swift’s music reminds some fans of the memories it holds with their families. “My dad is always really into female artists who play their own instruments. And I remember when her self-titled [album] came out, and he was like, ‘One of these girls plays guitar,’” says Courtney Carlomagno, wearing a shirt depicting Swift as Jesus Christ.

Perhaps Christine Chen, arms also donned with friendship bracelets, says it best: “There’s just something for every mood or every type of Taylor fan.”

Pop. Country. Folk. Feeling contemplative? folklore or evermore. Angry? Reputation.

“Because we’re not homogenous, right? We don’t all love the same things,” Chen says. “We all love different aspects of her and her music.”