I’m a middle-aged male Swiftie (and I don’t care who knows it)

I recently underwent a surgical procedure that according to the surgeon who performed it would cause either no discomfort at all or result in ‘exceptional pain’ for at least two weeks. No way to tell until I was on the operating table, apparently. She said this matter-of-factly, as if discussing bus routes, just as I was about to receive a general anaesthetic. As soon as I came to, I learned it was the latter.

In the following days, bedbound and near-delirious with pain and medication, I listened to hour after hour of Taylor Swift. I didn’t want to hear anything else. I found her music, with its vast emotional depth and stunning lyrical dexterity, terrifically soothing.

Surely the music we turn to in distress, when we really need it, says more about our tastes and who we are than the songs we listen to when we’re happy or indifferent. Lying there mewing and terrified of movement, my other favourite bands – the Smiths, the Libertines, the National, the Strokes – were no use at all.