CELEBRITY
A Taylor Swift fan who has legally declared she wants to be cremated with the singer’s CDs has said the decision is a “funny jab” at her fiance who insisted she wrote a will before planning the “fun stuff” of their wedding.
A Taylor Swift fan who has legally declared she wants to be cremated with the singer’s CDs has said the decision is a “funny jab” at her fiance who insisted she wrote a will before planning the “fun stuff” of their wedding. Phoebe Hall, 28, an account manager, who lives in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire got engaged to her fiance, Harry, in April 2024, and he instantly encouraged her to write a will.
So, “out of spite”, she decided to include that she would like to be cremated with Taylor Swift’s CDs – to jokingly make it “slightly awkward for him” when she passes away. When telling him, Harry “burst out laughing” claiming it “made perfect sense”. Phoebe has been a Swiftie, a Taylor Swift fan, since she was 12, and thinks her music has helped with her anxiety, especially because of the relatability of Swift’s lyrics – she even has a tattoo of This Is Me Trying, a song from Swift’s 2020 album Folklore.
Phoebe, who listens to the singer every day religiously, also has tickets to see her on the Eras Tour this summer in London and is planning on dressing up in the style of one of Taylor Swift’s albums. Phoebe told PA Real Life: “At various points in my life, I’ve had some really difficult struggles, and I’ve always found that there’s been a Taylor Swift song that resonates with that and it also helps me get through it. “Then I was like, ‘That’s it, this is my personality now’.
“I actually have a tattoo from her song This Is Me Trying – after quite a bad bout of mental health problems, I kind of just woke up every day and took it step-by-step, day-by-day, and then it all just came together.” After Phoebe got engaged in April 2024, her fiance Harry, a “very strategic man”, decided they should both write their wills. She explained: “Whilst I was off thinking about cakes and dresses, and all that fun stuff, he had like a long list of all the things that we needed to set up – various bank accounts, get wills, make sure that we’re each other’s in case of emergencies and all that really, really fun stuff.
“So I literally just Googled ‘wills at home’ because I didn’t want to go anywhere to do it.” Phoebe then discovered Octopus Legacy, which describes itself as a place to plan for death and find support following a loss and offers online will writing. She added: “I was just doing it out of spite, because he’d sort of rained on my parade of all the fun planning stuff, and I was like, ‘Okay, if you want it to be this quick, I’ll do it!’”
When writing her will, in the section for any particular cremation requests, Phoebe wrote that she would like to be cremated with Taylor Swift CDs – at the moment, she has 14 out of 24 of them, including live albums and re-recordings, but is hoping to complete her collection before she passes away. “Again, it’s a bit of a funny jab at my fiance…just to make it slightly awkward for him, I was just like, ‘You have to do this’,” Phoebe said.
“I can just imagine him trying to explain it at the crematorium, or the funeral house or whatever being like, ‘Yeah, this is what my wife would like’. “(When I told him) he just burst out laughing because he was like, ‘That makes sense’. “It encompasses both my love of Taylor Swift music and my love to annoy him – so it’s a complete Venn diagram.” On what Swift would think of her will, she said: “Taylor Swift is a celebrity and has probably had much weirder things thrown at her in the past. “So I probably do think she would think that much of it.”
Phoebe has been a Taylor Swift fan since around age 12 and thinks her music has helped with her anxiety. She explained: “I have quite bad anxiety at times and I tried kind of everything under the sun to manage it… one day I was about to get into an exam or something like that, and a song from debut (her first album) came up on my iTunes and everything kind of went a bit quiet and I was like, ‘Hold up, is this all I needed to do to?’”
Phoebe listens to Taylor Swift at least once a day and thinks there is a song to match any of her emotions. “If I am sad, and I just want to be left alone with my feelings, (I’ll listen to the song) All Too Well 10-minute version, sad autumn girl edition,” Phoebe said. “If I’m more excited and more hopeful for anything, it’s anything from (her album) 1989. “1989 came out the year I moved into my uni accommodation, and (the song) Welcome to New York was playing when I moved in, so that’s my go-to song if I ever need a real pick me up.”
Phoebe has been to two Swift concerts, on the Red and 1989 tours, and is extremely excited to see her on The Eras Tour in August 2024 at Wembley Stadium, after paying £87 for her ticket in the pre-sale. She said: “I didn’t get tickets for Reputation (another one of Swift’s tours) which was quite possibly one of the saddest moments of my adult life. “It (the 1989 tour) was absolutely amazing, there was just the atmosphere around it, it had turned into such a spectacle and so much work had gone into that concert that I was really blown away.
“From what I’ve seen online and reports of the Eras Tour, I can imagine that I’m going to feel like that but tenfold.” Phoebe has also planned for her family to scatter her ashes while going on a road trip throughout the UK. She explained: “(My family) mean the world to me… I’m the youngest (sibling) and so… I was the annoying one. “We’ve got a few stops along the way that just means something to all of us… it would be in the places where I annoyed them the most.”
She has also collected postcards since age 16 and plans on passing them down to future generations and donating the remainder to the British Museum. She explained: “(I get them) everywhere I go, whether that be like the small local church to international holidays. “I will pick up a postcard and then write down where I was, who I was with, and when it was, and it’s acted like a bit of diary for my entire life since I was 16 years old.
“My sister had a baby last year, and on the day that my niece was born, I got a postcard and then…I got them all to sign it.” Octopus Legacy (formerly Guardian Angel), is a company that helps people plan for death’s realities like wills and funerals but also encourages people to leave behind sentimental mementoes like voice messages, recipes, and videos.