A man sentenced to life in prison began listening to Taylor Swift’s ‘Red.’ Years later, ‘Midnights’ is shaping how he will face a parole board.

Fans of Taylor Swift have long said that her music has helped them through struggles big and small.

When she was a teenager singing about high-school loves and heartbreaks, fans said her lyrics were like hearing their diaries out loud. As those same fans have grown up alongside Swift, 33, they’ve said she’s helped them navigate adult life, heartbreak, devastating losses, and medical diagnoses.

Now, in a candidly honest essay, one man says Swift’s discography helped him through years of incarceration.

Joe Garcia, 53, said he first heard about Swift in jail shortly before he was sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for murder, he wrote in The New Yorker, published Saturday. At the time, he wasn’t very impressed, preferring artists like Prince instead.


The technologies that will take us beyond the metaverse are converging

In 2013, he was transferred to a lower security prison for good behavior, where he and his cellmate listened to the top 40 hits on a pocket radio.

“During that time, I heard tracks from ‘Red,’ Swift’s fourth studio album, virtually every hour. I was starting to enjoy them. Laying on the top bunk, I would listen to my cellmate’s snores and wait for ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ to come around again,” Garcia wrote in his essay.

Taylor Swift performs “Delicate.”
Emma McIntyre/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Garcia wrote that the songs made him think of his past loves, including a sweetheart who visited him in jail. He also reflected on his past, ruminating on Swift’s 2019 song “Daylight,” where she sings that she’s “been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night, and now I see daylight.”

“There was, in her voice, something intuitively pleasant and genuine and good, something that implies happiness or at least the possibility of happiness,” Garcia wrote in his essay. “When I listened to her music, I felt that I was still part of the world I had left behind.”

Garcia kept up with Swift’s music through the years, finding songs he liked on the albums “1989,” “Lover,” and lately, “Midnights.” He saw himself in the song “Anti-Hero,” where Swift sings that she’s “the problem”.

Garcia is due to face a parole board in the coming months and added that Swift’s discography pushed him to reflect on similar questions.

“In ‘Karma,’ Swift sings, ‘Ask me what I learned from all those years / Ask me what I earned from all those tears,’” Garcia wrote. “A few months from now, California’s Board of Parole Hearings will ask me questions like that. What have I learned? What do I have to show for my twenty years of incarceration?”

Related Posts

Chris Hemsworth filed for divorce from his wife on his 41st birthday after she abandoned him amid rumours… See more

Los Angeles: Amid rumours about their split, Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth shared a loved-up festive photo dump of his wife Elsa Pataky and three children. The ‘Thor’ star, 40, and…

Read more

Chris Hemsworth is virtually unrecognisable as he reveals his incredible transformation

Chris Hemsworth transformed his body to a superhuman state to play the role of arrogant god Thor in a slew of successful films. But the Australian actor is now sporting…

Read more

La pasión secreta de Lionel Messi por el baloncesto se revela cuando lleva a su familia a los partidos de la NBA

La reconocida leyenda del fútbol Lionel Messi no sólo ha cautivado a los fanáticos con sus extraordinarias habilidades en el campo de fútbol, ​​sino que también ha encantado a los…

Read more

Defendiendo el título de la Copa América, Lionel Messi está listo para el próximo partido de cuartos de final ante Ecuador

  .   .   .

Read more

Arabia Saudita dio una bienvenida particularmente dulce a Lionel Messi

Arabia Saudita dio una bienvenida particularmente dulce a Messi      

Read more

57 Cute Winter Nails Designs + Art Ideas for the 2023-2024 Season

The temperatures are dropping and the days are getting shorter, and that means it’s officially time to break out our favorite winter nails and nail art design ideas! Nothing helps…

Read more

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *