You might not know it from her public persona, but Swift is funny; she has a dry, ready wit. I told her about the strange man who was seated next to me at the concert the night before. He looked to be in his early forties and was wearing a Taylor Swift T-shirt covered with Taylor Swift pin-back buttons. He announced that he was alone and had driven to Nashville from Oklahoma for the show; he filmed the whole concert on his phone, mouthing every word to every song with unnerving intensity. “He’s probably in a file somewhere,” Swift said.