FEATURE:
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour
PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
Cool Summer, Wildest Dreams… and An Important Blank Space
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THE past few weeks…
PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Louvau
has been amazing for incredible women in music. Kylie Minogue’s Padam Padam has reached the top ten in the U.K. Finally, after weeks of complaints and campaigning, BBC Radio 1 have added the song to their playlist. Fighting off accusations of ageism, let’s hope that this leads to improvement on their part. Kate Bush has scored over a billion streams for her iconic track, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God); she has thanked people for supporting the song. Madonna is gearing up for her Celebration Tour, and Beyoncé has seen her Renaissance World Tour conquer! In fact, as is the case with Beyoncé, and will be with Madonna, there is an economic impact. Depending on the countries and cities they play, the economy is vastly affected. Beyoncé was blamed for driving up inflation in Sweden recently. The fact that prices are going up to mirror the demand and increased tourism. Maybe pricing out some fans and causing issues there, I will look at the possible economic impact Taylor Swift’s current Eras Tour will have on the economy in the U.K. The current tour is ending in November. I am going to talk about various aspects of the tour and Swift’s 2024. As this live juggernaut is continuing into next year, the BBC reported about news that will please fans in Europe, Asia, and the U.K. It looks set to be another huge year for Swift and her fans:
“Taylor Swift has announced international dates for her record-breaking Eras tour, with shows set for UK, Europe and Asia in 2024.
The pop star will play nine shows in the UK, with concerts in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London.
There is also a gap on Glastonbury's final night, with the star rumoured to be reclaiming the headline slot she missed in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The first leg of the tour has seen her play to record audiences in the US.
Demand for the tickets was so high that it overwhelmed Ticketmaster's systems, with thousands of fans left unable to obtain seats.
The fiasco led to Ticketmaster being hauled in front of US senators to answer questions on the company's handling of the event.
Swift herself said it was "excruciating" to watch fans struggling to get tickets, and that she had been assured Ticketmaster could cope with the demand.
For the UK dates, fans have been invited to register interest via Swift's website, although those who tried to do so after the announcement were put in a long queue.
After registration closes, fans will be sent a purchase link for tickets. The London dates then go on sale on 18 July, followed by Edinburgh on 19 July and Cardiff on 20 July.
"We expect there will be more demand than there are tickets available," Ticketmaster warned those who successfully registered.
"Tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis while currently-available inventory lasts".
Taylor Swift's 2024 UK dates:
7 & 8 June - Edinburgh, Murrayfield Stadium
14 & 15 June - Liverpool, Anfield Stadium
18 June - Cardiff, Principality Stadium
21 & 22 June and 16 & 17 August - London, Wembley Stadium
Eras is Swift's first world tour since 2018, since when she has released four new studio albums, including the Grammy Award-winning Folklore.
Music publication Billboard has estimated the ticket revenue from the 52-date US tour to be $591m (£464m).
Those shows launched in March, with Swift playing a three-hour, 44-song set spanning the entirety of her recording career.
As well as hits like Shake It Off, Love Story and Lover, she plays two "surprise" acoustic songs at every show, often bringing out special guests to help.
So far, the acoustic section has included fan favourites like Mirrorball, Snow On The Beach and Getaway Car alongside more mainstream hits like Welcome To New York and her debut single Tim McGraw.
Fans have been clamouring for international dates for months, and the tour extension will see her play in Asia and Australia at the start of 2024, before reaching Europe in May.
Reactions from 'Swifties' - a term the pop star has trademarked and uses to call her fans - in Asia have already been wild on social media.
She will begin her Asia tour in the Japanese capital Tokyo, where she will play for four nights beginning 7 February. She will then make her way to Australia, performing first in Melbourne for two nights, and then three nights in Sydney.
Her Asia leg ends in Singapore, the only South East Asian country in her Eras tour, where she will set up stage for three nights ending on 4 March.
The UK dates will kick off at Edinburgh's Murrayfield Stadium on 7 June, and wrap up with two nights at London's Wembley Stadium in August.
Two earlier Wembley shows appear to clash with Glastonbury's first two nights. But she has a space in her diary on Sunday 23 June, which means she could close the festival with a headline slot on the Pyramid Stage.
Reviews for the US leg of the Eras tour have been overwhelmingly positive.
"The queen of pop reclaims her throne," declared The Times, adding: "If there is a danger that shifting between 10 such different albums could lead to an uneven experience it is somehow avoided here, with Swift managing to produce a cohesive experience despite the constantly changing outfits and backdrops."
"The Swifties are certainly going to be Enchanted," said Hello magazine in a review peppered with Swift's song titles.
"It's been a long wait back to this moment, but karma is, indeed, a queen - and this was worth the wait."
"The achievement is often staggering," concluded Billboard, "with costume changes, set-piece upheaval [and] vulnerable moments in a crowd of thousands and sing-alongs that will rival the scope of any tour this year."
There have been reports of fans who couldn't get tickets gathering in car parks outside venues to sing along with the star's songs.
Other fans have reported suffering a form of amnesia after the show, due to the overwhelming nature of the experience”.
It is great that Taylor Swift has this success! It seems that major artists are putting on longer sets to please fans. Quite epic shows, I wonder what effect it has had on Swift already. It is the same with all artists who put on so many dates. Madonna’s Celebration Tour is going into 2024, so you wonder whether that demand and sense of commitment will have negative impact. In terms of physical wellbeing, it is a gruelling feat. Fatigue and mental health problems are another concern. I am sure Taylor Swift is being looked after on the road but, when she gets back to her hotel toom at the end of each night, you wonder if that contrast – from thousands of screaming fans to quiet and that eerie aloneness – has an impact too. It makes me think whether we consider artists on tour and the negative aspects. On the plus side, Swift is delighting countless fans. You can see more details about the tour here. It is going to be a test of endurance for her. As much passion as she has for her fans, let’s hope that she gets enough time to recharge between dates! It is inspiring seeing her deliver such incredible shows night after night. From articles raving about the Eras Tour to this review to this impassioned feature, it seems this is one of the greatest live experiences in decades! I am going to end up with a festival prediction regarding Taylor Swift next year.
It is not just how reputation and incredible body of work that is responsible for extra dates being added. As a performer, there is nobody on Earth like her. Whereas many artists produce a big set without the intimacy and closeness that seems impossible, Swift achieves something incredible: a huge and spectacular show where she has this almost personal and direct connection with her fans. Rather than trot through the hits and focus purely on what is happening on stage, Taylor Swift very much communicates and brings her fans into the show. Earlier this month, The New Yorker wrote why Swift’s Eras Tour is startingly intimate:
“Swift has for years been a savant of what I might call “you guys” energy, a chatty, ersatz intimacy that feels consonant with the way we exist on social media—offering a glimpse of our private lives, but in a deliberate and mediated way. When Swift addressed the seventy-four thousand people who had gathered to see her, I felt as though she was not only speaking directly to me but confessing something urgent. After one long applause break, she said, “There’s nothing I can say that can accurately thank you for doing that. You just, like, screamed your head off for an hour and a half. That was insane.” Maybe it’s her savvy use of what feels like the singular “you.” When I attempted to explain this feeling to other people, it sounded as though I had been conned. Yet I’d prefer to think of it as an act of kindness: Swift sees each of us (literally—we were given light-up bracelets upon entering) and wants us to know it.
On TikTok, fans discuss each concert with a fervor and knowledge that reminds me of the grizzled heads who spend years analyzing old Grateful Dead set lists. Swift’s show is famously long—more than three hours. By the end, mothers were carrying out sleeping children. I found Swift’s stamina astounding. (She is onstage the entire time, save costume changes.) Some eras translate better than others to the shape and echo of a football stadium. The lusty bite of “Reputation,” for instance, overpowered the aching ballads of “evermore.” There were some nice surprises: Phoebe Bridgers came out to sing “Nothing New,” a wounded song from “Red (Taylor’s Version),” and the Bronx-born rapper Ice Spice performed on a smug remix of “Karma.” Toward the end of the set, Swift does two acoustic songs, on piano or guitar. It’s the only part of the show that reliably changes. That night, she performed “Holy Ground” and “False God.” The latter is one of Swift’s most carnal songs. “I know heaven’s a thing / I go there when you touch me,” she sings.
Swift’s voice has become richer and stronger over the years; its clarity and tone foreground her lyrics. Played on piano, absent the R. & B. production of the studio version, “False God” felt, suddenly, like a reflective song about resigning yourself to failure. Love and sex are a trap, its lyrics suggest; never trust the fantasy sold to you by pop songs:
We might just get away with it
The altar is my hips
Even if it’s a false god.
Swift is sometimes described as “professional,” which feels like a pejorative—it suggests decorum, efficiency, steadiness, and various other qualities that, in general, have nothing to do with great art. She has perhaps been unfairly dismissed as too capable and too practiced, an overachieving, class-president type. I’ll admit that I’ve struggled, at times, with the precision of her work. If you’re someone who seeks danger in music, Swift’s albums can feel safe; it’s hard to find a moment of genuine musical discord or spontaneity. Over time, though, I’ve come to understand this criticism of Swift as tangled up with some very old and poisonous ideas about genius, most of which come from men slyly rebranding the terrible behavior of other men. (Swift sees it this way, too. On “The Man,” she imagines life without misogyny: “I’d be a fearless leader / I’d be an alpha type.”)
The intense parasocial bond that Swift’s fans feel with her—the singular, desperate throb of their devotion—can swing from charming to troublesome. When Swift débuts new costumes, as she did in New Jersey, a wave of glee washes over Twitter. But when she puts out a new song (“You’re Losing Me”) with lyrics that suggest romantic turmoil (“And I wouldn’t marry me either / A pathological people pleaser”), it can provoke vitriol—in this case toward the actor Joe Alwyn, Swift’s former partner. (Weeks earlier, Swifties were outraged after one of Alwyn’s co-stars posted a photo of him on a scooter, which was read as an egregious slight because Swift has been in a public battle with a music executive named Scooter Braun.) It’s hard enough to understand a relationship when you’re inside it; trying to piece together a narrative via song lyrics and a few paparazzi photos seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of human relations. Swift was recently rumored to be dating Matty Healy, of the British rock band the 1975. Healy is, depending on whom you ask, either an irascible provocateur or a disgusting bigot. Some of Swift’s fans deemed him a racist torture-porn enthusiast, owing to comments he made on a podcast, and groused about him after he and Swift were photographed together. Though it would be easy, and maybe even correct, to dismiss this sort of hullabaloo as ultimately innocuous—just people being hyperbolic online, in the same way one might tweet, say, “Taylor Swift can run me over with a tractor”—the swarm-and-bully tactic feels at odds with Swift’s music, which has always lionized the misunderstood underdog. Maybe Healy deserves it. Alwyn, at least, seems innocent. This is the obvious flip side of Swift’s purposeful cultivation of intimacy. From afar, her fans’ possessiveness appears both mighty and frightening.
IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift performing during the Eras Tour opening night in Glendale, Arizona/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Management
Still, the intensity of her fandom manifests so differently offline. Swift’s performance might be fixed, perfect (it has to be, of course, to carry a tour so technically ambitious), but what happens in the crowd is messy, wild, benevolent, and beautiful. I was mostly surrounded by women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. As Swift herself once sang, on “22,” that particular stretch into post-adolescence is marked by feeling “happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time.” The camaraderie in the audience invited a very particular kind of giddiness. My best friend from childhood had accompanied me, and when she returned from the concession stand carrying two Diet Pepsis so enormous that they required her to bear-hug them for safe transport, I started laughing harder than I have laughed in several years.
As the night went on, I began to understand how Swift’s fandom is tied to the primal urge to have something to protect and be protected by. In recent years, community, one of our most elemental human pleasures, has been decimated by covid, politics, technology, capitalism. These days, people will take it where they can get it. Swift often sings of alienation and yearning. She has an unusual number of songs about being left behind. Not by the culture—though I think she worries about that, too—but by someone she cared about who couldn’t countenance the immensity of her life. In her world, love is conditional and frequently temporary. (“You could call me ‘babe’ for the weekend,” she sings on “ ’tis the damn season,” a line I’ve always found profoundly sad.) On the chorus of “The Archer,” she sings, “Who could ever leave me, darling? / But who could stay?” Toward the end of the song, she adds a more hopeful line: “You could stay”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
There are dates in Europe, Asia and Europe next year for Swift’s Era Tour. Taking it from North America and seeing the world, it will add a little bit of extra tiredness and strain. I may expand in another feature, but it takes a lot out of any artists committing to such a huge tour. It affects personal relationships, social time, and recording potential. I know Swift will have songs ready to record after the tour. At the moment, she is connecting with her fans through North America. One of the big benefits of a major artist like Taylor Swift being in town is the economic boom. Whereas some say that inflation caused by rising prices has a negative affect and impacts the economy negatively, it seems that hotel bookings, the local tourist-related economic boom and such will have positive results. When she comes to the U.K., there will be a lot of her fans here spending their month across hospitality and retail. The Guardian reacted to the news about Swift coming to Australia next year. The economic possibilities of the Pennsylvania-born modern legend coming to Oz:
“For Australia waking up this morning, the important news that broke during the night depending on your points of view was either that Australia had won the first Ashes Test or that Taylor Swift had announced her tour dates.
As a massive sports nut and also acknowledged Swiftie, this was a banner news morning.
And for someone who has written on how household spending has hit a few speed bumps, the Taylor Swift tour also raises a few possibilities.
Swiftonomics is currently surging across the US, with economists pondering the impact of her tour dates on spending and inflation and overall GDP.
In Canada, Peter Armstrong asked: “Is Taylor Swift saving the economy?”
Given – as I noted when reporting on the latest GDP figures – household spending is slowing at a rapid rate, and both Treasury and the RBA are forecasting GDP per capita is declining, will Taylor come to save us from a recession?
The reason why Swifties are able to power such spending is not just the concert ticket sales – though these will be massive. If we take Ed Sheeran’s concerts at the MCG in March, we can pretty much lock in 100,000 for both of the dates in Melbourne and around 80,000 for the three concerts at Accor Stadium in Sydney.
Given the ticket prices range from $349.90 to $1,249.90, and tickets start at $79.90 but rise to $379.90 for a spot in A Reserve, we know even with a median of $120 in sales, we are looking at about $55m being spent.
But it does not end there: at $70 a pop for a tour T-shirt, there will be a heck of a lot spent on merchandise.
Of course, not much of this will remain in Australia. There’s a reason this world tour will possibly make Swift a billionaire.
But the spending will also be for hotels, eating out, travel and just general spending around town.
Only holding concerts in Sydney and Melbourne means Swifties will be coming from other states and New Zealand, given there are no concerts to be held there, so that is some “export” dollars for tourism.
That will not be unwelcome given tourism numbers continue to struggle to get back to pre-pandemic levels.
The good news is the impact of the five concerts will not likely spur inflation – at least not in a manner that will affect interest rates.
But you can certainly expect an increase in the prices of hotels in Sydney and Melbourne on those nights.
I did a quick check of prices at a Sydney hotel I have previously stayed at near Central station. On the Friday night of 16 February you can book a room with two double beds for $325. But if you want to book the following Friday – the night of Taylor’s first concert – you will have to pay $816. That’s a 150% Taylor Swift markup.
As I write, the air fares from Adelaide to Sydney have not changed for that weekend, but you wouldn’t want to wait too long, given the experience of events like AFL grand finals”.
Of course, if you think about the dates announced next year, there is room in the diary for a headliner appearance at Glastonbury 2024! Emily Eavis said two female artists have been booked as headliners for next year – as they have none this year, there has been criticism regarding gender inequality. It does seem that the chances are high Taylor Swift is one of those headliners. She was speculated for this year, but that would mean she’d have to rearrange Eras dates and make the long trip over here. It does seem next year might be her year at Glasto. Maybe Madonna will be here too, though you suspect that would blow the budget! Whomever the second female headliner is, you know that Swift can translate her arena-ready set and spectacle to the open air of Glastonbury. It will be a boom for the festival. Let’s hope there is a blank space in her diary for next June! You think ahead to the possibilities. Maybe, potentially, one of the best headline sets the festival will ever see. Let’s also hope that, a year from now, this artist who has been touring relentlessly and is extending her your into next year is given a massive amount of space and support after the tour. It will be a decompression after all these exciting and enormous shows. Following last year’s Midnights, another new album (rather than reversions of her previous albums) will be in her mind. I also wonder whether there is a tour documentary being made. Perhaps a photobook of her on the road and the various venues. There is a chance for something to come out that would not only chart and document a generation-defining tour, it also provides candid insight into the realities of a tour and the emotional impact it has on artists. From the elation and buzz during the shows to the relative comedown that happens after, it could well provoke a lot of questions – relating to the artist’s mental health and wellbeing, the economic and environmental impact, together with the way a Pop live show has changed through the years. At the end of it all, we must salute Taylor Swift! Such a phenomenal artist who is giving her fans a memory and experience they will never forget, she truly is…
AN icon and pioneer.