An 8-year-old’s paper airplane has carried a Taylor Swift surprise all the way to a quiet street in Lakewood, Ohio, after a shy song request over a backyard fence ended with a signed guitar from the star herself.
Madeline Glynn heard music drifting from next door, where her neighbor was on his porch playing guitar. She wanted to make a request but was too shy to knock, so she folded a piece of paper into an airplane, wrote a note inside, and sent it flying over the fence.
On the other side was Ethan Hayes, a 26-year-old full-time musician who had moved in the previous September. The note asked for Taylor Swift. Hayes, by his own account, was caught off guard.
“I panicked,” he told People, admitting he wasn’t fully up to date with Swift’s catalog. He landed on “Love Story” – a song he said is “one I always usually keep in my back pocket.” He looked up the words. Madeline sang every single one, while her mom, Natalie Hulec, filmed the whole thing.
Natalie knew straight away she had something special. “I took a picture of the note,” she told People, “and of course I’m going to watch her attempt to get this over the fence. I was like, ‘Let me record this.'” She posted the clip on TikTok and woke up to a phenomenon.
“We woke up [the next morning] to get her ready for school. It was about 7:30 and there were already 20,000 views,” she told People. “And then it was going up by the thousands.”
The video has since been watched nearly 4 million times. It reached People and “The Today Show,” and Madeline’s teacher began breaking the news before her family could. “Madeline will go into class, and Ms. Perez, her teacher, will be like, ‘Madeline, I just saw you on “The Today Show,”‘” Natalie told WKYC.
Then came the part Hayes had to keep secret. Taylor Swift’s team, Taylor Nation, had seen the video and reached out to him directly. “The team that reached out to me asked me not to tell anyone until they got there,” Hayes told WKYC. The message read: “Taylor asked us to reach out after having seen your performance of Love Story for your sweet neighbor and would love to send something to the both of you.”
What arrived was a package nearly as tall as the UPS driver. Inside were signed guitars for both neighbors and a handwritten note for Madeline. “I just wanted to let you know that it made me so happy that you asked your neighbor to play my song for you,” Swift wrote, per People. “You brought the biggest smile to my face. I’m sending you your own guitar in case you ever want to learn too!”
Hayes still can’t quite believe it. “I was expecting maybe a signed poster or something,” he told People. “And then she sent us guitars, which is insane.”
He has already made Madeline a promise. “If you ever want to learn, you let me know,” he told WKYC. “I’m right there.”
