Taylor Swift’s new album is a reminder of how long we’ve been in this pandemic

Taylor Swift is dropping another new album tonight, on her 31st birthday. As a fan I should be excited. I am excited. But I am also a little sad. Because pop culture moments like this are the landmarks my brain uses to gauge the passage of time—and I now realize that it’s been a long time since my then 4-year-old fell asleep in a tent in our unfinished basement listening to Folklore.

Swift’s eighth studio album, Folklore, dropped on July 24, 2020. It couldn’t have come at a better time. We needed a distraction after months of pandemic panic. And the fact that Swift is dropping another album, Evermore, tonight reminds me of how long my life has been in limbo…how long my family has been frozen in time, making no progress at all.

It’s the same way I feel when someone references Tiger King—our early pandemic guilty pleasure feels so long ago, now. And if that feels long ago to me, then how must my child feel? Does playing soccer with friends feel like ancient history? My child hasn’t played organized sports or gone to a dance class since, like, four months before Swift dropped Folklore.

And when that album did drop we bonded over it. Listening to it as we fell asleep at night and as we took long, meandering drives because we couldn’t go anywhere.

I’m happy for Swift. But I’m sad that we’re living through a time when “pandemic albums” are a thing but play dates aren’t.

Oh, and to everyone out there (especially mothers) wondering how Taylor could make two studio albums during this crisis while some of us can’t even manage to but on a bra, take it easy on yourself. Taylor has help that most of us don’t. “Taylor released two albums during quarantine” is the new “Beyoncé has the same number of hours in the day as you do.” We can’t hold ourselves to the same standard as people who have an entirely different level of support than we do.

Beyoncé and Taylor are not doing endless loads of laundry or refilling sippy cups. And they can get work done without being interrupted every two minutes.

I’m grateful that Taylor is dropping an album tonight. But I’m not going to hold myself to that standard of productivity (and I don’t think Miss Taylor Alison Swift would want me too).