Like Taylor Swift’s forgetful fans, I can’t always remember my favourite musical experiences

Taylor Swift is among the very top music stars in the world; her sellout concerts provide a remarkable and memorable experience for the thousands who attend. Except, apparently, they don’t.

After recent shows on Swift’s Eras tour, fans have complained about suffering from a sort of memory loss, unable to remember the details of what they witnessed – having paid handsomely for the privilege. Reddit boards have been chock-full of Swifties expressing their regret, with one fan saying they “honestly cannot remember most of the concert”. It’s a bit like government ministers and lockdown parties.

In fact, this is not a new phenomenon. Psychologists have been quoted across the media explaining that post-concert amnesia is a real thing, largely the result of neurons going bonkers through over-excitement. The subsequent sadness that accompanies the inability to remember, comes from the heightened expectation of assuming every minute of a longed-for experience will be indelibly etched on our memories.

I can empathise. A few years ago, I went to see the band Europe – famous for their epic 1980s anthem, “The Final Countdown” – with an old university friend. We met for dinner beforehand and washed our Thai curry down with three or four pints. When we got to the gig, we had a couple of sambucas for old times’ sake, then a couple more after the support act had finished. Oddly, I don’t remember much after that, aside from a fuzzy memory of some angry people around us who didn’t appreciate our loud singalong to the band’s smash ballad, “Carrie”.

Luckily, I’d already seen Europe twice before, and over the course of three gigs managed to piece together a patchy narrative for the memory bank. Obviously, Joey Tempest’s luscious locks are genuinely unforgettable, but his vocals are pretty memorable too, as are the solos of guitarist John Norum. What also proved handy was that one of the gigs I went to, at Hammersmith about 20 years ago, was recorded for a DVD. When the real memories become a little hazy, I can whack on the telly and it all comes flooding back. (Yes, I do still have a DVD player; what of it?)

A few other concerts I’ve been to down the years hardly deserve to be reminisced over. Foreigner and Journey joint-headlining at Wembley Arena were equal only in leaving us with a feeling of crushing disappointment. I also know that I saw the Lightning Seeds in Southampton in about 1998, but despite liking quite a lot of their songs, I couldn’t tell you anything more than that I mostly felt bored.

Generally speaking, I can’t blame my musical memory lapses on the kind of heightened emotional state that seems to affect the throngs of Swifties who draw a blank after Taylor’s shows. The closest I got was perhaps seeing Brian Wilson, of Beach Boys fame, when he played Pet Sounds at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002.

Having never expected I’d have the chance to see those glorious songs played live by the man who wrote them, I was certainly in something approaching a hypervigilant state of mind. But the spell was broken when the great man coughed into the mic halfway through a song, which of course remains one of the more notable moments in my recollection of what was otherwise an incredible show.

I may of course get giddy at the next gig I have lined up: Busted at the O2 in September. I was frankly old enough to know better when they first hit the big time in 2002, but I’m a sucker for a catchy pop song, and “Year 3000” remains a favourite. Even better, they’re being supported by Hanson, for whom I have a peculiar level of affection, given how annoying they seemed back in the late Nineties. MMMBop may be remembered for being catchy and aggravating in equal measure, but its lyrics (chorus aside) are surprisingly existential when you think they were written by a bunch of young teens.

Oddly, I haven’t yet found anyone who fancies joining me for what promises to be a brilliant evening. If you’re interested, let me know; if you’re not, forget it – just as I probably will afterwards.