Nelson Dellis’ mind was a “Blank Space” until the six-time memory champion decided to take on Taylor Swift’s entire catalog.
The 41-year-old memory athlete from upstate New York is best known for memorizing decks of cards, hundreds of names and faces and strings of numbers that stretch into the hundreds. But this time, he wanted to try something unexpected, tapping into the mind of a showgirl.
“I thought it would be funny to do it for something that I know nothing about that’s so opposite of what I’m into,” Dellis said. “And the first thing that came to mind was Taylor Swift.”
Author and memory champ Nelson Dellis holds a copy of his book, which is due out in 2026. Dellis studied Taylor Swift’s entire discography over the summer, committing it to memory.
He embarked on a challenge to memorize every song from the singer’s catalog, documenting the process for an upcoming YouTube video.
For the finale, he asked me to test him on any 13 songs from across Swift’s eras. The parameters included playing the first two seconds. I chose songs from each album that didn’t appear on the singer’s Eras Tour set list, including “Tied Together With a Smile,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic” and “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus.” Dellis named every one correctly.
“I wasn’t born with a great memory or even any proclivity for being able to memorize better than the average person,” Dellis said when asked why he took up memory challenges.
The deeply personal reason stems from his grandmother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 2009.
“It was that point that it changed my mind about what I should be doing for my memory to try to make it better,” he said.
Dellis has broken multiple U.S. records and earned the title of Grand Master of Memory.
When it came to Swift’s music, he approached it like any other mental marathon.
“I saw Jack White being able to identify Beatles songs in less than a second,” he said. “It was really impressive.”
Nelson Dellis poses on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in August. He listened to Taylor Swift’s records while climbing the mountain.
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So Dellis began listening to each album, starting with “Midnights,” before working backward through Swift’s catalog. He even downloaded her records to listen to while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in August.
“I listened to one at a time and then I’d really, like, hear it, listen to it, feel it out,” he said. “I also memorized the track listings. And then I just built on that album by album over the last, like, couple of months.”
The deeper he went, the more he connected with the music.
“I’ve gained an appreciation and love for the music,” Dellis said. “‘Folklore’ changed everything. I literally stared at my screen just listening to the album over and over again. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing because it didn’t sound like anything that I expected.”
His favorite song, apropos for a mastermind, is “Epiphany.”
When asked what he would say to Swift, he answered: “Keep making more music. I’m really in awe of her songwriting ability.”
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Memory champ learns Taylor Swift’s entire music catalog
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