The name of Taylor Swift’s post-pandemic comeback tour is self-explanatory. How each of us got here is another story.
We all have our own tale to tell (that we know all too well). Mine was filled with profound loss, much too personal to describe here, but also relevant in the fact that it led me back to reviewing and photographing live music.
And Swift’s Eras Tour stop at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on July 7th, the first of two nights, was an earned celebration for everyone in attendance. The timing was perfect: Swift had re-released her beloved third album, Speak Now, that very morning — a “Taylor’s Version” that she re-recorded in a power move to reclaim her music from, well, The Man. A bit more on that later.
The beginning era, however, belonged to Lover, the album released the summer before Covid which gave us the surprise (and belated) hit of this summer, “Cruel Summer.” It was performed almost immediately, joined with the opening and shortened “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince.”
And boy did it ever hit. Swift, appearing fresh and in the prime of her life, sang the song, but so did 55,000 of her fans, creating a beautiful cacophony of sound that echoed anywhere it could find a wall in an open-air stadium. The song’s bridge erupted with the line, “He looks up grinning like a devil,” a rumble that I’m guessing could rival any winning touchdown drive by Patrick Mahomes (although a dude in the restroom swore that it wasn’t as loud as that one drive vs. the Bills, but I digress).
Swift took this energy and smartly used it to transition easily between eras of music that were sometimes profoundly different from one another. She never lost momentum, even when it was time for cuts from the acoustic “Folklore” and “Evermore,” two albums recorded and released during pandemic-induced isolation.
A song like “Champagne Problems” should never be able to work in a venue the size of Arrowhead Stadium. But as Swift has proved time and again over the last decade, there is always a way, especially when a very large percentage of your rapt and attentive audience knows all your lyrics and no one is cool enough not to sing. This is the way I like my concert experiences to unfurl; leave your cool-ass ego at the gate — we’re here to sing. When this happens, the acoustic portion(s) of the show become the loudest in the most moving moments:
“She would’ve made such a lovely bride
What a shame she’s fucked in the head,” they said
But you’ll find the real thing instead
She’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred”
And some people still refer to this as bubblegum pop. If that’s the case, those bubbles are eventually gonna pop.
“Are you ready for it?” Swift asked as the Reputation-era erupted. It ended with “Look What You Made Me Do,” which foreshadowed what she had just done that morning with the aforementioned re-release of Speak Now.
Allow me to submit a few thoughts about what Swift is doing by re-recording her first six albums. I have tremendous respect for anyone who talks back to assumed (legal) authority when it is warranted, mostly because the suits who shall not be named here often hide in the shadows and thrive on technicalities. This kind of childish executive behavior — the refusal to sell back masters of recordings that should always belong to the artist — has no place in creating or managing art. What does have a place is what Swift is doing now: re-recording the albums she created so they are again hers. That’s really a new era in itself.
And Swift made sure the Speak Now portion of the show was special, adding “Long Live” to her core setlist for this tour. The addition proved to be the peak of the evening for me as its message was one of triumph and resilience — a refusal to never give up, to do the same work twice if that is what it takes. We will remember her name.
And she wasn’t done yet. After performing “Style,” “Blank Space,” “Shake It Off,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “Bad Blood” from 1989, Swift used her “surprise acoustic portion” of the evening to return to the Speak Now era for a world premiere video showing of “I Can See You,” featuring actors Taylor Lautner, Joey King, and Presley Cash. While the video was being played, Swift knelt down in the darkness and watched it with us, like we were chilling at the local drive-in movie theater. When it was over, Swift brought out Lautner, King, and Cash to chat about the moment before two more solo-acoustic performances of “Never Grow Up” and the live premiere of “When Emma Falls in Love.”
As the clock approached midnight (the entire show was around 3 hours and 40 minutes), the final era was revealed with “Lavender Haze,” from her latest release, Midnights. Swift did not half-ass the ending, either, carefully and patiently performing a whopping seven songs to close out the show. The hit from the album of course is “Anti-Hero,” but more impressive was the volatile “Vigilante Shit” and the show-closing “Karma,” the latter which put a bow on everything that was just witnessed.
“You flip the script, for the hell of it,” Swift sang.
Long live Taylor Swift and karma: they vibe like that.
Photos by Jason Gonulsen at No Hidden Path
One Response
Welcome back, Jason! Such a treat to see your concert work.