In the time between the release of Midnights, her October 2022 mega-blockbuster, and Dec. 8, 2024, when the “Eras Tour” closed in Vancouver, Taylor Swift achieved a level of success beyond what nearly any sane human mind could process. Just as anyone with a normative experience of reality cannot know what it’s like to free-climb El Capitan or thread a payload of bunker-busters into an Iranian nuclear mountain lair, the inner life of the last great American megastar is necessarily something distant and mysterious, the province of a unique subset of the human race consisting of but one single member. 

What must the world look like to these wondrous freaks? Luckily, the loneliness of singular experience is one of the most consistent themes in art. The rest of us can get a taste of their freakdom, so as to better understand the freak that lies within us all. “What do I fear? Myself?” Shakespeare’s Richard III wonders in horror on the eve of his defeat and death. “I am a god; hurry up with my damn croissants,” bellowed rapper Kanye West a few centuries later, channeling much the same self-alienated sense of cosmic isolation.