1989!

Hey guys! I really don't have the readership to be able to say "hey guys" but I guess what I mean is "Hey anyone-who-could-potentially-be-reading-this!" but "hey guys" is shorter.

 So it's been a while! My last post was on the 13th and now it's the 31st. SO NOT A COINCIDENCE. Which reminds me of the obvious main topic of this post...1989!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 I'm sure you all know but Taylor Swift released a new album a few days ago everyone and anyone who has ever met me is aware of my excitement for this album due to my life-long love for T-Swift, and this. album. is. GLORIOUS! I love it so much. It is everything I hoped for: confident, but not egotistical; fun, but not meaningless-dance-music (which is what most pop music is like nowadays and I really hate it. Sometimes I watch the top 10 on MTV and literally want to burst my own eardrums); and smart, and witty, and well-written, and catchy, and it just consists of all-around greatness only Taylor could achieve.

 Let me quickly summarise my thoughts on the songs: 

Welcome To New York - It's honestly not my favourite but I do really love it, it is such a fun song! 

"The lights are so bright but they never blind me."


Blank Space - so witty and catchy and ahhhh I'm so glad it's the next single. 

"'Cause darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream."

Style - MY. JAM. I want to learn to drive just so I can drive around late at night and listen to this. 

"You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye and I got that red lip classic thing that you like."

Out of the Woods - Jack Antonoff (I really like bleachers so I was so excited for Taylor's songs with him)+ Taylor are such a Godly collaboration. This song is so evocative and beautiful. (I'm actually jammin to I Wanna Get Better on repeat right now. SUCH A GREAT BAND.)

"But the monsters turned out to be just trees. When the sun came up, you were looking at me."

All You Had To Do Was Stay - One of my least favourite on the album but still fun and I do love it. 

"People like you always want back the love they gave away..."

Shake It Off - CLASSIC.

I Wish You Would - Another great Swift & Antonoff creation and I really love this, it sounds old-school and honest and like it should be in the background of a looking-out-the-car-window-scene in an old movie.

"We're a crooked love in a straight line down..."

Bad Blood - This song is just kick-ass in every way. 

"If you live like that, you live with ghosts..."

Wildest Dreams - ONE OF MY DEFINITE FAVOURITES BECAUSE IT IS MAGICAL.

"Say you'll remember me, standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset, babe. Red lips and rosy cheeks, say you'll see me again even if it's just in your wildest dreams..."

How You Get The Girl - Fun and cute and endearing and it is almost reminiscent of songs from Fearless. I love it.


This Love - I love this song SO much, it is Hayley Williams' favourite and of course it is because she would never have poor judgement. This song makes me feel like I'm in a dream and it's truly phenomenal.

"Through losing grip on sinking ships, you showed up just in time."

I Know Places - The Holy Ground of 1989. (a.k.a. the happily-underrated song of the album that Taylor's fans see as their secret.) This song is so SO good I love the piano I love the lyrics I love the voice memo it's all just perfect.

'Loose lips sink ships all the damn time, not this time."

Clean - CAN WE ALL JUST TAKE A SECOND TO APPRECIATE THAT TAYLOR SWIFT AND IMOGEN HEAP WROTE A SONG TOGETHER. 

CAN WE.

PLEASE. JUST.

Every album Taylor has one collaboration that is tailored (no pun intended) just for me. It's obviously a force of nature. I've lllloooovvvvveeeddd Imogen Heap's music for so long and this song is no disappointment because it is really so incredible. The production is so, for lack of a better word, cool. And the lyrics are stunning. I have this really nice memory of listening to this song really loudly in my earphones just after downloading the album and walking by the sea, it was cold and windy and beautiful and I felt different...clean, I guess.

"Hung my head as I lost the war and sky turned to black like a perfect storm. Rain came pouring down when I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe."

Wonderland - This song is '!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'. I think this is a perfectly adequate description. And there is nothing I love more in this world than interesting metaphors.

"You searched the world for something else, to make you feel like what we had. And in the end, in Wonderland, we both went mad..."

You Are In Love - UM. I'M NOT EXAGGERATING WHEN I SAY I HAVE TO FIGHT BACK TEARS EVERY TIME I LISTEN TO THIS AND I DON'T EVEN GET IT LIKE IT'S NOT A SAD SONG. I just love Lena and Jack (the song is about Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff's relationship if you didn't know) and I love that Taylor wrote this for them. She has such a beautiful mind.

"He keeps a picture of you in his office downtown. And you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars, and why I spent my whole life trying to put it into words...'Cause you can hear it in the silence."

New Romantics - THIS IS ALSO ONE OF MY FAVOURITES AND I'M SERIOUSLY UPSET IT'S ONLY A DELUXE-EDITION TRACK BECAUSE IT IS SO GOOD! Taylor never really sings deluxe songs on tour (with exceptions) but I really hope she does sing this because it would be SO good live and it's the perfect mix of 80s + pop + fun + sassy + cool + empowering. It's my new listen-to-when-in-a-bad-mood-song. This title was perviously held by The Best Thing - WATiC (although this song still fits the purpose and will be used when my mood is so bad a second song is needed).

"We wait for trains that just aren't coming. We show off our different scarlet letters - trust me. Mine is better."

Overall I think this album is wondrous and breathtaking and extraordinary and harnesses Taylor's emotive witchcraft in beautiful, beautiful ways. It's like she took her musical magical powers and poured them into her music in new and exciting ways, to create something suitably new and exciting, but still the same in the strengthening parallels between this and her previous albums. I really just love Taylor Swift. She is a ridiculously great person.

The packaging of the album is also SO cute, definitely my favourite of any album. The polaroids are so pretty, the whole design of the cover and booklet and everything is all just stunning. I already have two copies but I need more. I just want a stack of them because they're so darn pretty. I also want all of the polaroid sets.

To conclude, it is 2:42am*, I love this album, Taylor Swift, and being off school so I can stay up writing all night. 

Thank you for reading this far and let's all be grateful we live in a world where music like this exists and people like Taylor exist.

*Not that I'm going to sleep. I'm totally going to listen to the album through at least once more then consider it. 

fangirling, clothes, and more fangirling

Hey guys! Soooooo it's been a little over a week, I guess? In this post I want to talk about being a fan of things/people and that kind of thing. But before we get into that how about a little life update. Because they're so necessary because I just live such an exciting life. Really.

 So I went to see Ed Sheeran in concert in Belfast on Wednesday and LORD. He was unbelievable. The whole way through I was just in awe of his talent and passion for music. He's also such a great human and I just. I just. Here's a 15 second clip I instagrammed of Bloodstream (my favourite song on X, which was reaffirmed when it was beyond all of my hopes live). 

  Me and my friend Eleanor's attempts at taking a selfie at the concert. SelFAIL.


Since then I really haven't done anything exciting except have a few mental breakdowns over school, which are kind of a regular thing nowadays. With the odd bit of angsty poetry.

Ooh I forgot to mention in my last post but when I was in Italy I bought a few things in Brandy Melville, the God-sent American shop I would kill to have here. Actually no, I just want them to ship to the UK for a reasonable fee. I love that shop so. much. Everything in it is so cool. 

 I got these two tops and a long necklace with a teal-coloured shark-tooth-looking type thing. The whole 'one size' thing annoys me although luckily they fit me perfectly. But I really do disagree with their idea of the correct size or whatever. It's toxic.

 Regardless, the tops are cute and as you can see I wore the one on the left to the concert. It's quite low at the sides but with a bandeau it looks so cool. I love shirts like this.

The sunflower top on the right is so pretty but it is really tight and low-cut so I don't know when I'll ever actually wear it. Maybe during summer with high waisted shorts or something.

Awkward selfie time! I really do like this top. I like anything I can wear chokers with.

  Okay so on to the actual topics of this post.

 I was saying to my parents today how annoying it is how people think it's weird and strange how I'm such a big Taylor Swift fan, yet the people my age being obsessed with boybands and cute-boy-type-humans is completely normal. You probably don't think it's weird that I'm a fan of Taylor, but a lot of people I've met do. And that's ridiculous. As if it's unrealistic for me to look up to a female who has achieved incredible things in her life because it might give me the motivation to do the same, but realistic for me to idolise a teenage boy and make it my dream to marry him (lol). Grrrrrrrrrrr.

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"...as brightness, pouring itself out of you, 
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive."

- Pablo Neruda
(a part of 'Ode To A Naked Beauty)

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 What I'm trying to say is that, being a fan of something means you love it, and care about it, and whether that's a boy band or a female artist-superhero or a T.V. chef or a fictional character, that is a good thing! It's an amazing thing! It is something to enjoy and be proud of. Being passionate about things is one of the greatest joys of just being a person. Don't let anyone tell you it's 'weird' or 'immature'. When you look for it, fangirling is everywhere. In masterchef the judges fangirl over the food, in Top Gear the presenters fangirl over cars, and on QVC they fangirl over, well, anything that could possibly be sold. 

Book-I-like-and-want-to-talk-about: Where Rainbows End/Love, Rosie - Cecilia Ahern

 Okay, I am not really a fan of this author's books, but I read this book on Saturday because my it has been my friend's favourite book for so long so I wanted to read it and then I saw the trailer and knew I just had to read it. The trailer looks so. good. I'm going to love it so much. Too much. I love generic teen romance movies. Almost as much as I love generic teen-romance books. I liked the book, I didn't love it, I really only found myself reading the whole way through to see if the two main characters would EVER end up together. Seriously. I'm not going to spoil it but let's just say it was infuriating. Buuuut I am making it book of the week because I do love the two main characters and there was something really nice about the book. Lily Collins is really the most perfect human ever and she's definitely the perfect Rosie.

Video I-like-and-want-to-talk-about: Well this is easy! Taylor Swift covered a song I've loved for so long and it's really just so beautiful and angelic and every-positive-adjective. Her playing piano and singing a slow song is my favourite thing ever. She just has this emotive superpower/witchcraft. I even find myself thinking about the lyrics differently since hearing her sing them.

Album-I-like-and-want-to-talk-about: Hozier's self-titled album. 

 The best popular artist this country has created since Snow Patrol. He is ridiculously good. Such a good album. I have had Take Me To Church stuck in my head for months and I'm not complaining. 

 Okay so it's 11:42 (I usually write these at like 2am! WOW!) and I should try and sleep now. So even though it could be any time of day when you read this, good night!

rambling about italy, exhaustion and self-worth

Hey there! I'm currently listening to Ed Sheeran's album X and freaking out because I love him and I love his music and I'm seeing him live on Wednesday. EEEEEEEE! 

 In other news, I got back from Italy last night and so now I am so exhausted. I have a ton of school work to catch up on but I needed today to recover from a week of 1. barely any sleep and 2. SO. MUCH. WALKING. Including trekking up freaking Vesuvius. Tons of walking/standing around etc. + scoliosis = not good. But I'll be fine in a few days. It was SO worth it! 

 So our hotel was in Sorrento, which was so beautiful! And our hotel was so so lovely, it was right on the beach and ridiculously picturesque. We climbed vesuvius, went to the solfatara, shopped in Naples, visited Pompeii & Herculaneum, sight-saw in Rome, and visited a farm where we got the most authentic italian lunch which was amazing and made everything else I've ever eaten seem unhealthy and stale and boring. But the best part of the trip was easily the fun everyone had together, having 42 of us on long bus journeys and site-seeing led to a lot of singing and laughing and selfies. Especially at night in the hotel everyone from my year would pile into one room and play 'never have I ever' and talk about boys and eat sweets and dance to terrible dance music. Such fun times.

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“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.” 

- Simone de Beauvoir

(Obviously I get all my quotes for these posts from the internet but this quote has been floating around my head all week. Let's just say I relate.)

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The weekend before I went to Italy I went out with my friends, which was so fun! And then saw my sister become an All-Ireland Champion in football. I was ineffably proud. 

Being the supportive lil sister I am. And the only person in the country not wearing a jersey.

The dress I wore out from (asos) the brand Lavish Alice. I really loved it!

So that's pretty much a fill-in on my life lately. Now onto the actual post. I feel like unless I talk about life at the start of the post then I'm being secretive or something for the rest of the post or I'm always leaving something out. I don't know. If the life updates are annoying/boring please comment but I kinda like them. I'm just narcissistic, really. 

In this post I want to talk about the things people value in life. I don't know why exactly, but it occurred to me while I was in Italy and I thought about it a lot. I think it stemmed from how this girl I was on the trip with was so obsessed with instagram likes, follower counts, who you know, who you go out with, all that kind of stuff and she really saw it as this hugely important thing and said it was one of her life goals (not even with sarcasm) to get like 200 likes on an instagram post. 

 It really saddened me because you could tell that comparing herself to more popular girls in these things really got to her and lessened her feeling of self-worth. She idolised the people that got hundreds of likes etc. It really did sadden me and make me grateful that I realise and can see the triviality of those things and wish I could get her to agree with me. I mean, I love getting likes on instagram and I'd like more followers and that kind of thing but I don't strive to have them. I don't base my self-worth on them. And I wish no one did. The thing is, it's so obviously ridiculous to do that, but so many people do. 

 I'm pretty sure I've ranted about self-esteem enough but really I just wanted to think about what I value, what's my equivalent to that girl's social media popularity? I think I value when people are friendly, more-so as I get older and people become more and more gossip-y and I become more aware of how everyone deserves to be treated kindly and inclusively. That sounds cheesy but I really believe it. I value treating people nicely, regardless of who they are. It's something I've always, and will always, notice first about someone.

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“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.” 

― Virginia Woolf

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 Side note: I'm not saying I'm some angel when it comes to being friendly, when I'm in a bad mood, which is not un-often, I am definitely not able to fit in the 'friendly' category. Or even the 'some-what nice' category. But everyone has those days.

 Okay I wanted to also talk about being a fan of things and pushing people away but it's 1:06am and I, as you know, am currently in a constant state of exhaustion. So they can wait until the next post. Thank you for reading this far, see you next post!

P.S: Song of the week: Hospital Beds - Cold War Kids. It's been in my head all day. Such a classic.