It’s interesting how much can change in a year. I’m only two weeks away from the one-year of WFH mark, and my podcast with my sweet friend Ali, Good for a Weekend, is just a few months shy of hitting our one year anniversary. Let’s catch up.

What is Good for a Weekend?

Quick recap: My co-host, Ali Klebous, and I started a podcast last May in response to our Taylor Swift concert getting canceled. Ali came up with our brilliant name–Good for a Weekend–it’s a nod to one of our favorite lyrics in “Blank Space.” As of writing this, we are 27 episodes in.

Check out our website to listen or learn more about the show here.

What’s Changed?

Well, a lot. Taylor did. We had our first 6 months meticulously planned with well-researched episodes on Taylor’s life. Much like we started with episodes on her famous friendships, we hoped to continue to do deep dives into our favorite singer.

Then, July 24 happened.

Folklore changed everything. It turned our format upside down. For a music podcast that was proudly “not a music podcast,” we sure became a music podcast this past fall. Gone were the days dissecting “The Squad” and watching her boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s movie roles–we had a whole surprise album to unpack.

Things settled down. Then December slapped us with a pillowcase filled with bricks. Another surprise album: Evermore.

Rinse and repeat.

Things are starting to die down again–although we aren’t quite finished with our Evermore content yet. Our favorite segment, Gamer Girlz, has died out a bit because we simply have too much content to work with and too little time. One day Gamer Girlz will make a triumphant return!

Now we await Fearless (Taylor’s Version) on April 9. That’s three new albums before we hit our one-year anniversary.

Milestones

• Our Apple Podcasts rank in the Entertainment News category has peaked at #12, but usually floats around the top #100. After a new episode release, we float around top #50.
• With around 20,000 downloads so far, we plan to hit our milestone of 100,000 downloads this year.
• Our top three episodes are The Folklore Episode, Karlie Kloss: The Glory Days (Part 1), and The Thirteen Episode.

What’s New?

• I Did Something Kressie / Don’t Blame Ali: Ali and I both have our own individual segments of the show (10-15 minutes or so) of content that isn’t quite long enough for a full episode. With how dense our episodes can be, especially with Taylor constantly surprising us with new content, we thought these would be a nice, light break from our typical hour length episodes.
• The GFAW Hotline: We received an overwhelmingly popular response to our episodes where we share listener reactions. Some listeners sent us audio files, and others sent us emails of which we read. It’s like sitting with a group of friends and gossiping–like back in the olden days when we could go to coffee shops in large groups! We decided to try a hotline to make the recording part easier for our listeners. Recording yourself and then squishing that giant file into an email is much more work than just calling (205) 693-9160. We’ll see what happens!
• Expanding on social media: We have a Discord, Subreddit, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook! For a full list of where to find us, check out our Link Tree.

Our Goals for the Year

• We want to get better equipment. We keep getting reviews about us chewing gum during recording–but the sad truth is we don’t eat or chew gum when we record–we just have cheap equipment! We even mute our mics to take sips of wine. Podcasting equipment is expensive, and we make GFAW for free, so it will take some time for us to save up for nice recording equipment.
• 100,000 downloads. Enough said!
• More guests. We love interviewing fellow fans and it would be awesome to get an industry expert on the show.
• Make friends with more Taylor Swift fans! We’ve made so many friends from working on this podcast, and we hope to keep it up 🙂