The Tortured Poets Department — her surprise double album released on Friday — broke streaming records across all the major platforms, from Spotify to Apple Music. It’s the first album in Spotify history to have over 300 million streams in a single day; it’s the biggest pop album of all time by first-day streams on Apple Music; and on the day of its release, became the most streamed album on Amazon Music — ever.
Which is probably why information on the billionaire singer, however inconsequential, is now a huge commodity.
Step forward Tyler Conroy, a self-confessed superfan who has been hired by ITV‘s This Morning to be the show’s first Taylor Swift correspondent. According to Conroy, who has followed her for 16 years, Swift remains determinedly down-to-earth despite her immense stardom. Her biggest weakness: monogrammed bath towels. Monochrome, with TS embroidered on them, to be precise.
Conroy, a 31-year-old Massachusetts-born influencer, has been following Ms Swift since 2008. Aged 15, he began having guitar lessons so that he could learn to play every song from her second album, Fearless. He penned the 2016 biography Taylor Swift: This Is Our Song.
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Conroy, now 31, has been following Ms Swift since 2008. He said: ‘When I met Taylor she just hugged me so closely, she knew I had been bullied and she knew she had helped me. I didn’t want to let her go’
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The Tortured Poets Department — Taylor Swift’s surprise double album released on Friday — broke streaming records across all the major platforms, from Spotify to Apple Music
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Tyler Conroy is a self-confessed superfan who has been hired by ITV ‘s This Morning to be the show’s first Taylor Swift correspondent
The undoubted zenith of Conroy’s life, Tyler says, took place when he was invited to spend the day with his idol at her New York home after putting on a musical in her honour.
There, he and other select fans were given free rein over the star’s downstairs living quarters — using her bathroom (and those monogrammed towels), helping themselves to anything from her giant fridge that was filled to the brim with her beloved Diet Coke, eating pizza, and wandering around her library where Taylor likes to retreat to read Harry Potter novels.
Her protective father, Scott, was even there at the time, relaxing in the TV nook.
And the music in the background as the astonished superfan made himself at home? Taylor’s chart-topping hit Shake It Off, of course.
Taylor, 34, bought the seven-bedroom $18 million (£15 million) Tribeca townhouse from Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson in 2014. When she was considering its purchase, Sir Ian McKellen was lodging there, as Tyler reveals: ‘Her father told me when Taylor went to look at her apartment Ian McKellen was sat there at the dining table in his pyjamas.’
After McKellen moved out to make way for her, Taylor then expanded the property, snapping up three units in the building next door for just under $10m (£8m) each, before combining the top two floors together to create one vast space, spanning 8,300 sq ft.
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Ms Swift bought the seven-bedroom £15 million Tribeca, New York townhouse from Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson in 2014, which she then expanded with three more units
Today, the property is estimated to be worth $50m (£40m). Inside, says Tyler, the decor is rather rustic. Taylor is notoriously private when it comes to sharing her life at home, but in those few pictures of her apartment on social media you can see her yellow-walled kitchen has white, rather country-style cupboard doors and wooden beams that span the ceiling. A large wooden dining table has pride of place.
Another room has a large TV hidden in a wardrobe, concealed behind some dainty looking Laura Ashley-style white curtains.
Red walls, velvet couches and neoclassical chandeliers throughout also complete the look.
Tyler tells me more: ‘Taylor had the whole top floor. Everything was brown, it was in an old New York style with a red sofa and a nook.
‘Her dad was sat there when I was there and told me they had watched Frozen a few weeks before. It was so cute.
‘I played with her pet cats and it was then I noticed that there was a birdcage with a broken Grammy award in it. Taylor had broken it [after dropping it at the awards ceremony] and she wanted to look after it by putting it in the cage.’
Unsurprisingly, awards litter the house, says Tyler: ‘They were all over the place, there were a couple on the fireplace. There was even one on the top of the toilet, I have never seen anything like that before. Most people have some potpourri or some flowers but she had a Grammy award on her loo.’
And the apartment’s crowning glory was undoubtedly the bathroom. ‘To get to [it] there is a secret door behind a bookcase. It’s a kind of speak-easy,’ reveals Tyler.
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Ms Swift’s new album is the first in Spotify history to have over 300 million streams in a day
The singer also has a Polaroid camera on a cupboard in the lounge, as she likes to take regular shots off the cuff. Indeed, her walls are covered with many Polaroid pictures of her family.
It’s fitting for someone who still tries to keep her feet on the ground, according to her friends. While she has been recently criticised for using private jets to visit her boyfriend, those who work with her say she ‘always mucks in’.
Indeed, her work ethic is said to be ‘stupendous’ for which her parents, Andrea and Scott, are credited.
Taylor regularly insists that her fans come first and she enjoys engaging with them. ‘There are no airs and graces, unlike some,’ says a member of her team.
That doesn’t mean she shies away from confronting critics, however. Her new album has already made headlines for seemingly criticising her foes in its lyrics.
Fans claim Kim Kardashian – with whom Taylor famously has had a long-running feud after a vicious spat between the singer and Kardashian’s ex-husband Kanye West – is the target of acidic song ‘thanK you aIMee’, as the letters K, I and M are capped up to spell out her name.
‘The ultimate f*** you’ wrote one Taylor fan online, while another said: ‘Kim your day of reckoning is here’.
Others see Matt Healy — Taylor’s ex and lead singer of band The 1975 — as a target of her song The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, with brutal lyrics that seem to refer to their short-lived relationship last summer.
Meanwhile So Long, London seems clearly aimed at her ex, British actor Joe Alwyn and the end of their six-year relationship.
Truly, when Taylor speaks, her adoring fans listen well. Indeed, Tyler Conroy insists she ‘helped me through my 20s when I was working myself out. She has been my professor over the years.
‘When I met Taylor she just hugged me so closely, she knew I had been bullied and she knew she had helped me. I didn’t want to let her go.’
As well as this, Tyler, who is gay, says: ‘She helped me come out. She helped me speak out. I was a freshman at college in New York and was 18 and I thought something deep was going on and I had to do some deep searching.
‘Taylor helped me come out to my family. It was scary but I listened to her Fearless album and I just knew.’
‘The last time I saw her I asked Taylor to write the word ‘Fearless’ in her handwriting on a piece of paper. She was so thrilled to do it and I then took it to get a tattoo of it on my left foot.
‘I am an advocate for her and I know so much about her. I feel like the luckiest Swifty in the world.’
