Taylor Swift has been known to go hard when it comes to physical releases of her albums. She’s actually kept things relatively tame for the new 1989 (Taylor’s Version), offering the album on vinyl, CD, and cassette via her online store. You might remember, though, that she has five different CD editions of Midnights available. Many of Swift’s younger fans didn’t actually grow up listening to music on these mediums: Spotify launched in the US in 2011 and has grown to become the primary music consumption medium for a lot of people.
Still, Swifties want their merch, and since CDs are now “retro,” it’s an easy add to the cart. The problems start, though, once the CD arrives. In a video shared by Taylor Swift X (formerly Twitter) fan account @swifferupdates, a group of three young Swift fans try to figure out how to take a 1989 (Taylor’s Version) CD out of its case. They struggle to use the little circular mechanism that holds the CD in place, claiming that the CD is stuck before eventually freeing the disc.
| Taylor liked this video of young fans opening a CD for the first time
pic.twitter.com/dj3Uew3EgL
— Taylor Swift Updates 🩵 (@swifferupdates) October 29, 2023
The video has over 600,000 views on X and per the Swift fan account, Swift herself liked the original upload on TikTok (which does not appear to be publicly viewable anymore).
To be clear, by the way: The girls didn’t do anything wrong. Why should they know their way around a CD case? Music streaming revenues overtook physical music sales for the first time in 2018. Mediums come and go, and we don’t have to have familiarity with everything that came before our time.
Check out the video above.