Dance to Taylor Swift at SW Florida party, buy exclusive albums in Fort Myers, Naples

It’s almost Taylor Swift day, and Natalie Micciulli can’t wait to dance around in her friendship bracelets and sparkly blue jumpsuit.

She’s hoping a lot of her fellow Swifties will join her, too.

The reason to dance, of course, is Friday’s release of Swift's much-anticipated new album, "The Tortured Poets Department."

"I'm so excited," Micciulli says. "All day, I'm going to be listening to it."

She's celebrating the album release with a Taylor Swift Dance Party at her Bonita Springs business, Ceremony Brewing. She and one of the brewery's bartenders are huge fans.

"We're both Swifties," Micciulli says. "We're always talking about Taylor Swift stuff. Just, like, the gossip that's going on or the Eras Tour.

"We wanted to do a party, kind of selfishly, for ourselves. But we also knew that the community would really like it, as well."

Excitement for Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets Department'

Micciulli isn’t the only one who's excited, of course. Southwest Florida fans can’t wait — and neither can local music stores expecting a wave of Swifties wanting to buy the new album. That includes limited-edition colored vinyl albums — released just in time for Record Store Day.

Several Fort Myers and Naples stores plan to have the records on hand by this weekend.

"We've had a lot of people call us and ask us if we're carrying it," says Liz Cochran, owner of Fort Myers' Stellar Records. "We are. We ordered a bunch of copies."

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Cochran isn't sure if everyone will show up Friday, or if they'll wait for Saturday's national Record Store Day. She expects she'll sell a lot of the album during that popular annual event, even though "The Tortured Poets Department" isn't an official Record Store Day release.

"I did speak with a gentleman who said his daughter and all her friends are gonna come pick it up Saturday morning," Cochran says. "They all sounded, like, giggly and excited on the phone.

"I could hear them in the background. They're like, 'Oh my God, Taylor Swift!'"

Taylor Swift Dance Party in Bonita Springs

Micciulli says she'd been talking about hosting a Taylor Swift event for months at Ceremony Brewing. Then she realized: The album release would be the perfect time to do it.

She's advertising Friday's event as a T-Swift party "for Swifties, by Swifties."

Micciulli has been a Swift fan since 2006, when she was 16 and first heard the song "Tim McGraw." She even saw Swift's Eras Tour last year in Atlanta.

"I've been a fan of hers since the very beginning. I was a teenager in a tumultuous relationship," she says and laughs. "And I just felt like her music really spoke to me and helped me get through all my heartbreak and all my feelings and everything."

Friday's party includes dancing, face painting, photo ops and a deejay playing nothing but T-Swift songs. There are also three kinds of specialty alcoholic seltzers with edible sparkles, including Lavender Haze (a lavender lemonade) and Tortured Poet (a cucumber-ginger seltzer that's sepia-colored, inspired by the cover of the new album).

People are encouraged to sing along, dance and dress up in friendship bracelets and Swift-inspired costumes.  Micciulli will be wearing a sparkly blue-sequined jumpsuit, high blue-sequined boots and a garter inspired by Swift's "Vigilante Sh—" outfit from the Eras Tour.

She looks forward to celebrating Swift with her fellow Swifties. She loves the singer-songwriter's catchy melodies, storytelling and sharp, confessional lyrics.

"Oh, she's the best!" Micciulli says.

Admission for the dance party is $5. For more information, call 221-7849 or visit ceremonybrewing.com.

Where to get Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets Department' on vinyl in Fort Myers, Naples

Southwest Florida's record stores are expecting the Swifties to come out in force this weekend. And they'll all want the same thing: Limited-edition, collectable vinyl variants of "The Tortured Poets Department."

"Taylor has her ginormous fan base," Cochran says. "It's not just people in Lee County that want it. It's a global thing."

Target stores nationwide have their own limited-edition variants of the albums (both on CD and vinyl), but there's also a special "ghosted white vinyl" only available at independent record shops, Cochran says.

That's why she'll have a lot of the exclusive, white-colored albums in stock this weekend. The two-LP set, including a special book the album calls a "manuscript," will sell for $56.

Other stores carrying the record include House of High Fidelity in Naples and Joe's Record Exchange and Record Trader 1 in Fort Myers.

Record Trader 1 owner Ralph Tarantino says he's ordered about 20 copies, but he's not sure how many he'll actually get this week or which variants. The shipment should arrive by Thursday.

"Whatever I get, I'm sure I'm gonna sell 'em all," Tarantino says. "I always sell a lot. Taylor Swift stuff sells real well."

Cochran says it's exciting to see people ― especially women and girls ― getting so excited about a musical artist.

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"It's kind of unreal," she says. "I won't say it's Beatlemania or anything like that. But it's close."

For more information on Record Store Day and Southwest Florida events, visit recordstoreday.com.

Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. To reach him, call 239-335-0368 (for tickets to shows, call the venue) or email him at crunnells@gannett.com. Follow or message him on social media: Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), X (formerly Twitter) (@charlesrunnells), Threads (@crunnells1) and Instagram (@crunnells1).

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Taylor Swift's new album: Where to buy in Fort Myers and Naples, Florida