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Taylor Swift And The Mystery Of The Unopened Fan Mail
Instead of being delivered to Taylor Swift, hundred of lovingly handcrafted fan letters (many of which were unopened), were found in a Nashville recycling dumpster. Not to worry, local TV station WKRN was quickly on the case to get to the bottom of this snail mail scandal.
The ABC affiliate, Nashville’s News 2, reported that the letters included notes decorated with colored pencils, markers, cat and heart stickers, glitter and pictures of Swift.
Nashville’s News 2 Investigates looked into the story after a local woman named Kylee Francescan contacted the station to say she had found the letters over the weekend at a dumpster in south Nashville when recycling her own newspapers.
Photo: Charles Sykes / Invision / AP
ABC’s "Good Morning America," New York City
Noting that Swift “probably gets as much mail as Santa Claus,” Francescan told News 2, “I didn’t know if they were stolen or if somebody discarded them, so I threw them in a box. And I was like, ‘Somebody needs to let Taylor know.’”
Nashville’s News 2 reporter Andy Cordan drove the letters over to Swift’s label to get some answers. A representative at Big Machine Records said he had no idea why the letters were in the dumpster and suggested Cordan head over to the P.O. Box where the letters were sent, which was located at a strip mall in Hendersonville. The owner of the strip mall said a representative for Swift periodically comes by to pick up boxes of fan mail.
Next Cordan called the singer’s PR firm, which was unaware of the issue but “very concerned.”
Spokeswoman Paula Erickson told Nashville’s News 2 that the singer gets thousands of letters daily, which are delivered to the management office. Although the letters eventually do end up recycled, she said they are first opened and read.
“The only explanation for any letters being unopened would be that a small batch of mail that was supposed to be delivered to Taylor was accidentally put with letters headed for the recycling center,” Erickson said. “We sincerely appreciate Channel 2 bringing this to our attention, and we plan to immediately pick up the mail.”
After Cordan’s investigation, a messenger from the PR firm came to the station’s studio and picked up the box of letters.
Nashville’s News 2 reports the PR film promised the letters “will be handled appropriately.”
With thousands of letters received every day, it’s a pretty safe bet that “handled appropriately” doesn’t mean that Swift will personally be reading the letters and replying on her own sparkly stationary. But, if it’s any consolation to the fans, it sounds like the letters will first be opened before being sent back to the recycling center.