When the comedian Paul Scheer set out to capture footage of fathers at Taylor Swift’s concerts in Inglewood, Calif., in 2023, he thought he would find a smattering of men begrudgingly chaperoning their daughters to the Eras Tour.
“I went there expecting it to be these bitter dads, like, ‘I don’t like Taylor Swift,’” Mr. Scheer, 50, said. But “by Interview 2, I was like, Oh, I’ve misread this.”
Speaking to 50 dads in the parking lot at SoFi Stadium, Mr. Scheer, who is a fan of Ms. Swift and the father of two boys, captured a heartwarming portrait of devotion, which he compiled into a documentary short, “Swiftie Dads,” and posted on YouTube in December.
Some dads had driven hours with their children just to listen to the concert from outside the venue. Others had fought the online ticket wars and won. Many wore themed outfits and friendship bracelets. All of them “wanted to connect with their kids,” Mr. Scheer said.
While studies show that, in heterosexual partnerships, mothers still take on an overwhelming majority of unpaid child care and household work, Gen X and millennial fathers are participating in their children’s lives more than dads of previous generations did. And when it comes to pop music, many dads are not just tolerating their children’s interests, but enthusiastically embracing them.
Across the country from Mr. Scheer’s Eras Tour experience, Dave McCarthy, 56, of Worcester, Mass., paired his trusty Red Sox visor with a gold, sequined bow tie and matching blazer to accompany his daughter Kate, 21, to one of Ms. Swift’s shows in Foxborough, Mass.
His ensemble was meant as a tribute to the singer’s “Fearless” album, which he and his daughter first enjoyed together when she was a 4-year-old singing “You Belong With Me” in the living room.
At the concert, Mr. McCarthy belted the lyrics to many of Ms. Swift’s hits, energetically jumping up and down and screaming “I’m feeling 22” when the occasion called for it. After all the years the pair spent listening to Ms. Swift’s music together, Ms. McCarthy said, the lyrics “had no choice but to seep into his brain.”
“His enthusiasm is very encouraging,” she said. “It makes me feel better about being a fanatic Swiftie because he’s not judging me or being like, ‘Listen to someone else’ or ‘Stop being annoying.’ He’s fully in it with me.”
Mr. McCarthy’s younger daughter is a country music fan, so he has also happily accompanied her to the concerts of Zach Bryan (“He was low-key fire,” according to Mr. McCarthy) and Morgan Wallen (“He was mid”).
“You only get one chance doing this with your kid,” Mr. McCarthy said. “My life has always been, since they were born, ‘What are they doing?’ Because I’m doing it with them, and I’ve enjoyed every second.”
Mr. McCarthy’s wife, Liz McCarthy, said that she felt “very, very lucky to have Dave be the dad that he is.”
“I took Kate to a One Direction concert when she was little, and there was a father sitting next to us who read the newspaper the whole concert,” she added. “I look back at Dave, and he’s going to these concerts and full-out enjoying it — sometimes, I think, more than the girls.”
Of course, this isn’t the first generation of fathers to bond with their children over music. And mothers, aunts, uncles, older siblings and other caregivers have been doing the vital work of accompanying young fans to shows for decades.
But pop music — especially when it comes to artists with large teen and youth fan bases — is often thought of as a more feminine arena, and is an area where heterosexual men can feel like outsiders. (Ms. Swift’s audience is estimated to be more than 70 percent female, and a recent Billboard survey found that 80 percent of K-pop listeners in the United States are female.)
Now, many fathers aren’t just imparting their own musical tastes on their kids but engaging in a reciprocal relationship, where their children’s preferences inform their own. And by attending these concerts and listening to music with lyrics centered around girlhood, some men are gaining a greater understanding of their own daughters’ experiences.
Augustine Sedgewick, a historian and the author of “Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power,” noted that fathers partaking in leisure time with their children didn’t begin until after World War II, and that the more recent rise of social media had flattened previously disparate generational music experiences, making it easier for parents to keep up with the same trends as their children.
“Having fun singing and dancing shouldn’t be seen as inherently feminine or childish,” Dr. Sedgewick said. “Maybe dads and kids sharing music could be one way to challenge some of the — artificially and incorrectly, in my view — gendered labels that too often get attached to music, art and culture.”
And it’s not just the Swiftie dads who are unabashedly immersing themselves in their kids’ pop obsessions.
At the 2025 U.S. Open, the tennis player Novak Djokovic, 38, did the “Soda Pop” dance from the animated musical film “KPop Demon Hunters” on the court in honor of his daughter Tara’s eighth birthday.
“She’s going to rate me tomorrow because she told me how to dance,” Mr. Djokovic said at a news conference afterward, adding, “We are at home doing different choreographies, and this is one of them.”
Similarly, Ryan Senegal, 44, of Manteca, Calif., has watched “KPop Demon Hunters” with his daughter, Sabine, 9, dozens of times. The soundtrack dominates their car rides together, and, for Halloween, Mr. Senegal ordered coordinating “KPop Demon Hunters” costumes. Sabine dressed as the pop star character Zoe, while Mr. Senegal morphed into a demon known as Mystery Saja (complete with purple wig) and, at another event, the giant blue feline Derpy.
Mr. Senegal said his own father had battled addiction and been absent during his childhood. “That shaped how I am as a parent,” he said. “I don’t care about embarrassing myself. People are like, ‘Oh, that’s cringe.’ Well, I don’t care. My daughter likes it.”
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an anthropologist and the author of “Father Time,” believes these shared experiences have physiological benefits for both fathers and their children.
“The act of caring produces caring, and it’s reciprocal,” Dr. Hrdy said. “That intimacy has its own implications for your endocrine system. If your oxytocin level is higher, you’re going to be more prone to bond, and live longer in the process.”
For his daughter’s 15th birthday, Christian Lopez, 51, of Carmel, Ind., waited all day for Olivia Rodrigo to take the stage at last year’s Lollapalooza festival in Chicago with his wife, Leslie Lupton, and their two daughters, Zadie, 15, and Darien, 12. When the pop star sang the opening lines of “Pretty Isn’t Pretty,” her mid-tempo ballad about body and beauty insecurities, the crowd was awash with tears — including those of Mr. Lopez.
In a viral TikTok video, Mr. Lopez could be seen bopping along to the song while standing behind his daughters. As the lyrics about skipping meals and hiding behind makeup registered, he looked around at his sobbing daughters and the other girls in the crowd, and his mouth contorted into a pained frown.
“All of these girls are amazing, and then, all of a sudden, that song comes on, and they all are crying about how they don’t even eat cake on birthdays,” Mr. Lopez said in a video interview. “It made me cry. I was like, ‘Why? Why not?’”
The family tries to attend as many concerts together as they can, and the experience at Ms. Rodrigo’s concert opened up a new understanding of his children, Mr. Lopez said.
“We’re very involved in their lives,” Mr. Lopez said. “I’m with them for travel, sports, their homework and everything. And yet, my 12-year-old was screaming, crying about not looking pretty in the mirror, and I was thinking, Am I failing?”
Afterward, he said, “I told them, ‘When you feel, like, those moments, you have to be able to come to us and tell us, if you want to. It’s always an open door.’”
Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.
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