Viral TikTok of Philly-area mom who printed out the lyrics to Taylor Swift songs

Maureen Gregory had the best karaoke experience ever.

Gregory, alongside her two daughters, cousins, and nieces, went to the Taylor Swift concert at Lincoln Financial Field on Friday night, the first of three shows packed with fans dying to see the Grammy-winning pop star’s first live show in Philly in five years.

Gregory, who was 62 at the time, unknowingly made her a celebrity.

The Downingtown mom loves singing along with live music. As she prepared for Friday’s concert, she thought back to the Miranda Lambert show she went to in 2021, where a mother and daughter duo behind her knew every word to every song, as she struggled to remember the lyrics.

“I was jealous, I wanted to know all the words,” she said in an interview.

A longtime Swift fan thanks to her daughters, Gregory couldn’t risk being outsung again. So on Friday, she brought the lyrics with her — all 80 pages worth.

She pasted all the lyrics to the songs on the list into Microsoft Word and printed it at Staples. The employees there were very entertained.

The 80-page document was double-sided, and it was secured by a binder clip in cheetah print. She brought a reading light to ensure she could see it in the dark.

She was slightly worried someone would make fun of her inside the concert, but at one point, the girls standing next to her leaned in for the words of a song they weren’t familiar with.

Then, a group of young girls in the next row noticed her, took a video, and uploaded it to TikTok. It received hundreds of thousand of comments within hours. By Sunday afternoon it had nearly 750,000 Likes and 4 million views.

“She brought out the hymnal 🙏✨,” one commenter wrote.

“The church of Taylor Swift 😌,” wrote another.

Gregory said she was partially inspired by her church — even after 60 years, she said, she still brings along a missalette so she never misses a word.

Her daughter asked her why she didn’t just read the lyrics off her phone.

“It’s too small,” Gregory said, adding that she didn’t want to be distracted by her phone. “I made the font big enough so I could see it.”

But she hasn’t ruled out bringing her mini iPad to the next show, she said.

She said that going viral has made a beautiful, exciting weekend even more special. Gregory said that Friday was her fifth time seeing Swift perform, and every time, the performance has improved.

And there’s nothing like the aura the comes over Philadelphia when the singer is in town, she said — seeing teen girls decked in glitter inside the Wawa, everyone singing in unison to songs that often hold such personal meaning, including for Gregory.

She last saw Swift in concert with her middle daughter Claire, in 2018.

“I don’t really love taylor swift, but I really love my mom. So we’re gong to see Taylor Swift tonight,” Claire wrote in an Instagram post at the time.

Claire died of addiction in 2020. Gregory holds the memory of that concert close, and feels a deep connection to a handful of Swift’s songs.

Like “22″ — a song that came out when Claire, 22 years old at the time, was in Florida in a rehabilitation center.

Swift performed it Friday night. Gregory didn’t need to read the lyrics in order to sing along.