Watch: Taylor Swift Has Rare NYC Family Outing With Both Parents, Brother Austin Swift
A fan sent a paper airplane flying, flying, flying—so Taylor Swift had to express her gratitude.
After Madeline, an 8-year-old fan of the “Out of the Woods” singer, went viral for sending her neighbor a song request by sending one of the folded fliers over their shared fence, the Grammy winner sent her a surprise package with a handwritten note and a signed guitar.
“Dearest Madeline,” Taylor wrote in the note, which Madeline’s mother Natalie Hulec shared on her now-private Instagram account May 26. “I just wanted to let you know that it made me SO happy that you asked your neighbor to play my song for you. You brought the biggest smile to my face!”
Alongside the note, Taylor included a signed guitar from her Midnights merchandise collection, adding to the Ohio native, “I’m sending you your own guitar in case you ever want to learn too!”
To complete the message, Taylor added, “Sending you all my love.”
In the aforementioned TikTok—which was posted on April 23—Madeline’s mom noted that her daughter had been doing homework when she heard her neighbor, Ethan Hayes, playing guitar in his yard and asked him to play a song from Taylor’s repertoire.
Upon receiving the paper airplane note, Ethan—a full time musician—told People he “panicked” a bit, as he was not fully up-to-date with Taylor’s robust musical catalogue, but he managed to play the expectant fan “Love Story,” to her delight.
For Madeline’s parents, the moment was too cute not to share—which prompted Natalie to share it on social media.
“There was really no expectation at all going into it,” Madeline’s stepfather Russell told People. “It was just a cute moment she just wanted to share with her friends. Next thing you know, we wake up in the morning and there’s like 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 [views]. And we’re like, ‘Oh wow.’”
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Meanwhile Ethan was just as floored by the positive response to the sweet moment.
“I’ve gained thousands of followers, which is always really great,” he added to People. “We haven’t seen one single negative comment, which I think is really, really rare, just a really wholesome situation that I’m really grateful to be a part of.”
Taylor, for her part, has long been known for going the extra mile for her fans. In addition to visiting patients in person at hospitals, sending tuition money and care packages for Christmas—which she coined Swiftmas in December 2014—the “Elizabeth Taylor” singer shared that The Eras Tour, her career’s magnum opus thus far, was devised first and foremost as a treat for her devout fanbase.
“I wanted to overserve the fans in terms of the amount of songs they were gonna hear and how far I was gonna push myself,” Taylor explained in her End of an Era documentary released last year. “My main goal is to give something to the fans that they didn’t expect.”
For more facts about Taylor, keep reading…
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