How horny are the Swifties?

It’s 1am at East London’s Troxy: a Grade II listed cinema-turned-music venue that’s previously been home to an opera training school and Europe’s largest organ.

On this evening in October it plays host to Swiftogeddon: a club night for Taylor Swift’s most ardent fans that’s been running for over five years. The crowd wears album-themed outfits and swaps friendship bracelets. Drunk on badly punned cocktails – Long Island Iced Tay and Passionfruit MarTayNi, anyone? – they belt out the lyrics to even the most niche of Taylor’s 243 (officially) released songs.

Straight boyfriends wear Travis Kelce tees, to show that they are, in fact, straight boyfriends. Occasionally, they pretend to vibe to one of Taylor’s better known hits in an attempt to win back their partner’s attention. This is clearly a fruitless endeavour. What nobody is doing – surprisingly for a drunk, like-minded community in a club space past midnight – is getting off. Not a single person.

It’s certainly a departure from other prominent pop fandoms, who are, very clearly, getting off. There was a rumoured orgy in the third floor bathroom at Gaga’s Chromatica Ball in London. Kim Petras said there is ​“definitely gay sex happening” in the crowd at her shows (“which is lit”). And it doesn’t take much to decipher that Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s Sweat tour was a gang bang of thirst. Then there’s Little Mix’s Jade, who is selling branded butt plug merch to her fans, and Sabrina Carpenter, a pop girl dressed like a 1950s pin up, who has a penchant for on-stage innuendos and enraging the church.

The internet tells a similar story of hornless Swifties. On X, @tayfessions posted a blind item from a fan claiming to have lost their virginity during the Red section of the tour, an announcement that elicited more ire at missing some of the best songs than confessions of similar behaviour. On the r/​Taylor Swift subreddit, a thread is dedicated to Swifties who have never had a relationship or dated. ​“I found my people! Literally never even held hands romantically. I’m in my early 20s,” one user posted, among others who shared similar experiences.

Still, romance has formed at the Eras Tour, just not in a sweaty, hedonistic mosh to a Reputation track – rather, in a way that reads more like the plot of Heartstopper. There was the wholesome story of Kayla and Kat, two fans who met at Taylor’s Chicago concert in 2023. They bonded while Taylor performed Champagne Problems – a song about rejecting a marriage proposal – with Kayla giving an emotional Kat a friendship bracelet. ​“She prizes her bracelets, so she doesn’t just give them out willy-nilly,” Kat says. They went to three more Eras tour dates together across the US that summer; a year after meeting, Kat proposed with a friendship bracelet.

As the Eras tour pulled into London for a second time in late August, in the name of journalism, I paid for Grindr Xtra, which granted me the ability to speak to the presumably horny gays at Wembley Stadium. In the hours before the show, many profiles on the grid had already changed their headlines to showcase they were at the Eras tour. However, few were here to use the app the way it was intended. Most of them said they were looking for gay Swifties to chat to, but nothing more.

This sense that the Swiftie community is too wholesome for a hook-up filters down into other spaces, too. After The Eras tour was cancelled in Austria, following a foiled terrorism plot in August, fans came together as bars played the tour documentary on TVs usually reserved for sports.

​“People were wearing their tour outfits on the streets and I came back with so many friendship bracelets. There was such a palpable spirit in the air,” says 28-year-old Sam, a fan who spent the night dancing to Taylor in Vienna. Did he garner any romantic attention?

​“Oh, we all met boys in clubs, but that was it,” he says, a little surprised at my question. For him and his friends, there was little interest in getting with anyone there – despite the fact their Eras experience had shifted to adult only bars and nightclubs.

​“Taylor is the most wholesome woman in pop music,” continues Jack*, a 28-year-old, self-proclaimed ​“horny Swiftie”. ​“Swiftogeddon and the Eras Tour are for gal pals.” Swifties have a libido, then – it’s just kept separate from their fandom of Taylor.

Perhaps the perceived lack of horn is directly related to the music itself. Taylor’s lyrics are filled with wistful ideations on crushes, deep romantic feelings and terrible heartbreaks, rather than anything casual or hook up‑y. Sure, there’s a burlesque chair dance during the Midnights section of the Era tour. But it doesn’t seem particularly raunchy, especially when Sabrina Carpenter is the opening act.

Historically, subversive artists have moved the sex positive conversation forward. Madonna being so outspoken about the Aids crisis in the ​’80s, for example, performing benefit concerts and including pamphlets with her album Like A Prayer, no doubt played a role in allowing artists such as Lady Gaga, Troye Sivan, Lil Nas X, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Kim Petras to thrive in all their horny glory. You probably wouldn’t see the future King of England take his kids to any of those shows.

Taylor has never been that kind of subversive. But her music can help fans find romantic love – to an extent.

Ed, who I met at Swiftogeddon, would love to date a Swiftie but doubts it’ll ever happen. ​“I’ve been screaming break-up lyrics with every potential guy I’ve met tonight.” Hardly an aphrodisiac.