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Taylored to perfection: Immersive exhibit for Korean Swifties an enchanted curated experience

Published: 28 Feb. 2025, 17:39 Updated: 02 Mar. 2025, 18:28

LEE SOO-JUNG
[email protected]

Telephone booths where Taylor Swift's fans could hear the artist's message are installed at the exhibit ″This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience” in central Seoul on Feb. 27. [SPOTIFY KOREA]

Korean Swifties have a rare chance this weekend to connect with one of the world's biggest pop stars, Taylor Swift, in an immersive exhibition spanning 18 years of her music career.

Held in a quiet corner amid the traditional tile-roofed homes of central Seoul's Bukchon Hanok Village, Spotify Korea's immersive exhibition "This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience" combines art and media with a listening experience, with some of the performer's handwritten lyrics displayed on the walls.

Digital screens display Taylor Swift's music and explanations of her album at the exhibition ″This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience” in central Seoul on Feb. 27. [SPOTIFY KOREA]

Each section of the "This is Taylor Swift" exhibition is a sonic dive into Swift's 11 albums, with sound and imagery taken from the singer's nearly two decades of making music, and a visual reenactment of the creative process that brings her music to life.

A telephone inside a booth allows visitors to hear Taylor's vocal message over the line once they dial the written number in the exhibition “This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience” in central Seoul on Feb. 27. [LEE SOO-JUNG]

The experience begins by picking up the phone inside the telephone booth from the music video of "Fortnight" (2024) and dialing Swift to hear her story of writing "Bejeweled" (2022).

The phone call leads to "Message In A Booth," inspired by her song “Message In A Bottle (From The Vault)” from her 2021 album “Red (Taylor’s Version)," with phone booths similar to those in her music video for "Fortnight." The space is also filled with Swift's Spotify performance in Korea, for instance, the 195,000 streams of her 10-minute track “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)” (2021).

In a space called ″This Is Me Writing,″ visitors see Taylor Swift's handwritten lyrics projected on wall and floor at an exhibition by Spotify Korea in central Seoul on Feb. 27. [SPOTIFY KOREA]

The experience gets truly immersive in the "This Is Me Writing" part — a reference to “this is me trying” from her album “folklore” (2020), where the singer's handwritten lyrics are projected on an entire wall and reflected on the floor against the backdrop of a dark, starlit beach with every wave gently soaking the visitor with Swift's words.

“This is where people can feel and sense Swift’s songs from head to toe,” Park Jung-joo, head of the Music Team from Spotify Korea, told reporters during a press briefing.

The “Enchanted Hallway," a pathway made up of screens that display the music of "Enchanted (Taylor's Version)" (2023) and Swift's handwriting, leads the visitors to the highlight of the whole event: "The Great Collection," a dark space filled with electronic displays showing her songs, albums and short clips of her performances.

A space called ″Enchanted Hallway″ leads visitors through sections of the exhibition “This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience″ in central Seoul on Feb. 27. [SPOTIFY KOREA]

The self-explanatory "This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience" exhibition has been curated by Spotify for Swifties worldwide.

Seoul is one of three Asian cities where Spotify is hosting the Taylor Swift-themed exhibition, along with Jakarta, Indonesia and Manila, the Philippines, even though Seoul wasn't included in Swift's "The Eras Tour" last year.

Taylor Nation and Spotify handpicked the three Asian countries.

A charm-sized key chain ornament in 11 different designs are on display at the exhibition ″This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience″ in central Seoul on Feb. 27. [LEE SOO-JUNG]

Spotify Korea team distributed a keychain ornament at a booth as a souvenir. The accessories came in 11 different designs, symbolizing her 11 albums.

Each ornament had images from her albums except those representing her first and sixth, for which Swift does not own her master recordings. The embedded images on key chains representing her “Taylor Swift” (2006) and “Reputation” (2017) albums were taken from her “The Eras Tour.”

Two Spotify staffers prepare handing out cups with a white chocolate ball with drizzle at the space dubbed ″Chocolate Street″ at an exhibition about Taylor Swift in central Seoul on Feb. 27. [LEE SOO-JUNG]

The space on the third floor called “Chocolate Street” reminds visitors of “Cornelia Street” (2019) from her seventh album “Lover” (2019).

Spotify Korea team gave every visitor a cup with a fist-sized call of white chocolate with colorful drizzles. The chocolate ball is later served as hot chocolate after hot milk is poured.

Personalized Taylor Swift playlist curated by Spotify [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Spotify also curated a personalized playlist of Swift’s songs for its users through scannable QR codes around the venue. The list is based on each user’s listening history and tells which “era” the user belongs to, according to the most frequently listened album.

The entry hall for the exhibition ″This is Taylor Swift: A Spotify Playlist Experience,” in Jongno District, central Seoul on Feb. 27. [SPOTIFY KOREA]

Swift's presence may not seem as huge in Korea as in the Western world, but her music has gained traction among Korean listeners in recent years, as proven by the numbers, Park said.

"The domestic stream counts have jumped by 358 percent during the last three years," said Park.

The four-day-long event will run through March 3 in an event space named Futura Seoul. Tickets are available on KakaoTalk’s reservation service, accessible through Spotify Korea’s Instagram page.

Spotify Korea originally scheduled the exhibit from Feb. 28 to March 2, but added one more day due to demand.

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [[email protected]]