Getty Image / Buda Mendes / Christopher Polk / mspoint / istock
Eddie Vedder, the frontman of Pearl Jam, compared Swifties to punk rockers after taking his daughter to a Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert last Summer and honestly, he’s making some pretty valid points.
Vedder‘s listed Fugazi and The Clash as major influences on his music, two iconic early punk rock bands who explored other genres. Suffice it to say he knows the punk scene as well as anyone despite Pearl Jam being bucketed as Grunge Rock.
With that in mind, it was interesting to hear Eddie compare the experience Swifties are going through with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour to his early days days of punk rock. In an interview with mojo4music, Eddie Vedder said:
“The run-up to it, making friendship bracelets with her and the generosity of these young girls and boys, trading these bracelets with different messages on them – lyrics, song titles, just acts of good will on these little bracelets. They had found their tribe; they were all agreeing on something.”
“The craziest thing was it reminded me of punk rock crowds, of being aligned with all of the misfits in our town, back in the day. It was galvanizing and powerful…”
He gets it. I’m no Swiftie by Eddie Vedder understands the punk rock scene was just as much about young people finding their place in an ever-changing world and the same can be said for Swifties.
The music is what binds people together but it’s the community within that keeps it going.
The same can be said for all genres of punk music as well as the jam band scene, Hip-Hop/Rap, and countless other music scenes. It’s never just the music that bring people together, there is always an element of people ‘finding their tribe’ as Eddie Vedder calls it.