Yesterday, during the course of the usual antics in our editorial bullpen, Taylor Swift’s name was bandied about for posing with a fan wearing a swastika t-shirt. Oops!

I made the mistake of piping up and asking who Taylor Swift was and was greeted with disbelief and mock derision, so I decided to do the defacto early 21st century thing and Google her.

As a bit of background, my musical tastes run to a lot of jazz instrumental/vocal, Celtic/folk/rock, more 80’s than I care to admit and “classic” rock and or roll, sprinkled with bits and pieces from other genres.

That said, I probably stopped listening to top 40 radio sometime in the mid 1990’s so the popular music of today is pretty much foreign to me.

But back to my search de jour. Thanks to the many edits on Swift’s Wikipedia page, I learned she was born in December 1989 in Pennsylvania and is a “country-pop” singer-songwriter. She is associated with the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, having appeared in both of their movies.

Ms. Swift was also involved (through no fault of her own) in a fiasco at the Video Music Awards this past September, when egomaniac Kayne West interrupted her acceptance speech to heap praise on another artist.

So while I knew about the award show incident somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t connect it to Taylor Swift without the use of the Internet.

Moral of the story? Google deserves much praise for enlightening 30-something folks like me who have no other avenue into the popular culture and music of today.

Props to Larry Page and Sergey Brin!