Dear Taylor: Elon student’s scrapbook on display in Grammy Museum
By: Ryan Greene
“I have loved her for seven years, going on eight. Before she was huge.”
Swiftie Stories 2 (bottom right corner) on display at the Grammy Museum in LA. Photo from McKenzie Floyd.
First year student McKenzie Floyd has been to dozens of Taylor Swift concerts, has met the singer four times and now has a scrapbook, Swiftie Stories, on display in the new Taylor Swift Experience exhibit at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
“I just fell in love with her music and it just kind of snowballed from there,” Floyd said.
Back in 2010, Floyd made a Facebook group where fans could submit their letters to Taylor Swift. Some letters were only a sentence or two long, while others went on for pages. She says most of them just wanted to say “thank you.”
Floyd then took the hundreds of letters she received from all around the world and put them together in a scrapbook. It took her about two months to complete the first book, saying it “completely took over” her life.
“[It was] a lot of glitter and a lot of trips to Kinkos,” Floyd said.
Floyd (left) and her best friend with the first Swiftie Stories book in 2011. Photo from McKenzie Floyd.
At a Taylor Swift concert in 2011, Floyd was able to give her idol the project she had worked so hard on. She says Swift was flattered by the gift.
“She means so much to me. It’s just crazy that I did something that meant something to her,” Floyd said.
But the letters were still flooding into Floyd’s Facebook page. She made another scrapbook to give to Taylor Swift when she saw her in concert again in 2013. The second book, the one on display in LA, had letters from more than 50 different countries.
Floyd said she was in disbelief when a friend told her the scrapbook had made it into the Grammy Museum. According to the website, the exhibit give an inside look into Taylor Swift’s life through personal items like photographs, clothes and handwritten lyrics.
“Not only did she read it, but it stood out to her enough to put it in an exhibit,” Floyd said of Swiftie Stories.
Floyd (left) meeting Taylor Swift in 2011. Photo from McKenzie Floyd.
And the project isn’t over yet: Floyd says there will be a third scrapbook and she’ll be seeing the singer on her 1989 tour this summer.
She also plans on going to LA during Fake Break to see the book she spent hours sitting on her living room floor making.
“I think it will probably all become real,” Floyd said.
The first song Floyd heard Taylor Swift sing was “Tied Together with a Smile” off the singer’s self-titled debut album from 2006. From there, she was hooked.
“Not a lot of people have something that just makes someone happy no matter what,” Floyd said. “And Taylor Swift is that thing for me.”
The Taylor Swift Experience exhibit is open through May 10 at the Grammy Museum in LA.
