Taylor Swift tickets are the most in-demand concert tickets in my social circle since 2001 when Radiohead played at Stone Mountain. I’m not comparing their commercial stature – I’m saying my social circle has changed. In 2001 it seemed like all of my friends wanted Radiohead tickets. In 2023 it seems like all of my friends and their kids want Taylor Swift tickets.
When Radiohead played Atlanta in 2001 I was writing Creative Loafing’s entertainment and nightlife column. It was a job that gave me easy access to concert tickets, but in this case demand was higher than supply.
It was still the biggest concert of the summer in the alt-weekly world and I had to cover it, with or without tickets. So I did what any resourceful young reporter in my position would have done, I found a man with the same name as Radiohead’s lead singer and invited him to the Toco Hills Caribou coffee for an interview.
From Creative Loafing, August 2001:
Thom York has no memory of recording Amnesiac. He doesn’t really have much to say about any of Radiohead‘s albums. He does, however, have an important message for fans of the band. He wants you to know that a 30-year mortgage with no prepay penalty is preferable to a 15-year mortgage. That’s because, you can pay a 30-year in 15 years, but you can’t pay a 15-year in 30.
The Thom I spoke to is Thom York, the real estate agent, not Thom Yorke, the singer of Radiohead. Although the band’s Stone Mountain Park concert Monday happened after this newspaper’s publishing deadline, it’s too important to ignore, so I called Thom after I saw one of his signs on someone’s lawn. Thom prefers country music over rock, but when the Radiohead song “High and Dry” played on the stereo of the coffeehouse where we spoke, he liked it.
If I were still a reporter I’d have spent the past couple weeks trying to interview a swift tailor, or perhaps I’d be meeting Conyers, Georgia resident Taylor Sweet at Yankee Candle, where I’d buy her a lavender candle.
Incidentally, Thom is still in real estate if you need a house.
