Drunk in the back of the car. Tired of waiting for Romeo on the balcony. Trying to find her old self after a breakup. Imploring her ex not to call her again: they will never get back together. Confronted by those who swear she dates too many times. Coming to terms with becoming an antiheroine. From being America’s sweetheart to the vilest of snakes, Taylor Swift went through all her incarnations this Thursday at the start of the European stage of The Eras Tour, the most lucrative tour in history, with a euphoric concert in Paris, the first of four he will give in the French capital. The tour, with a total of 50 dates on the continent, will then continue through other European countries, such as Italy, Portugal, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland and Austria, and will pass through the Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid on the 29th and 30th of May.
In the audience, an army of 40,000 spectators with an overwhelming majority of young women, there was an abundance of clothing in pastel tones and abundant shine-shine, recycled prom dresses and friendship bracelets with the titles of their songs. “What era have you dressed as?” they asked each other. If they were dyed mauve, their disc was Speak Nowfrom the stage country-pop. If they had chosen pink, it was Lover, colorful and bittersweet. If they preferred black, it was Reputation, her bad girl album. And if they sported sequins on their outfits or accessories (or, at worst, everywhere), from the recent Midnights. They sang their songs as if they were religious hymns, without missing a single verse, alongside a less fundamentalist audience that barely knew a couple of the choruses. They were part of that second group who had gone to the Arena of La Défense, the business district at the gates of Paris —Marc Augé called them not places— just like others went to see Michael Jackson in their time: because of the fascination that mass phenomena usually arouse.
The first of her concerts in “the most romantic city in the world,” as the 34-year-old American singer expressed, made it clear that, in this long European stretch, there will be things that will change and others that will remain the same. The concept remains unchanged: a musical journey, stage by stage, through all her albums (with the exception of the first, signed when she was 18 and rustic in the worst sense of the word: Swift invites us to embrace all our previous identities, except the ones that make us blush when we discover an old photo). The duration does not change either – 46 songs over three and a half hours – but part of the repertoire, costumes, scenery and choreography, which continues to be in charge of Mandy Moore, who previously signed the La La Land.
In this show timed like clockwork, well oiled after 83 concerts around the world (at the end of the tour, there will be 152), the readjustments are designed to make room for their latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, published at the end of April. Up to eight songs from the album, received lukewarmly by critics, were played in Paris, from the single Fortnight a But Daddy I Love Him, Down Bad o Who’s Afraid of Little Old Mein addition to loml, chosen as one of the two acoustic songs that Swift proposes as a surprise every night. The other was Parispasable bonus track that had never played live, chosen for its geolocation.
If some enter, others leave: Swift eliminated songs like The Archer, The Last Great American Dynasty, The 1, ‘Tis the Damn Season, Tolerate It, Mirrorball y Long Live. Most of them belong to his two folk albums recorded during confinement, Folklore y Evermore, which Swift will merge into a single chapter at her European concerts. “I always said that those two works were like sisters,” she justified herself on stage. The segments dedicated to her most successful albums, such as Red o 1989, do not suffer major alterations. AND Midnightsa work that has grown over time, will continue to serve as the end of the party.
Tickets to see Swift in Europe cost, on average, 87% less than in the United States. A fifth of the spectators at the concert in Paris came from that country, according to the organization
In the Parisian audience, no one asked anyone to marry him, as happens in his concerts in the United States, despite the fact that American accents were abundant among the audience. In this tour In Europe, tickets to see Swift cost, on average, 87% less than the nine concerts she will give this fall in her country, according to data from Billboard. It is cheaper to pay for a plane to cross the ocean than to stay to see it in Indianapolis: a fifth of the 40,000 spectators gathered in Paris last night came from the United States, according to the organization.
What was the best thing about the concert? Without a doubt, the start with Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Princewhich Sylvia Plath could have written if she had been captain of the cheerleaders, followed by the magical Cruel Summer, their surprise hit from two summers ago. The bomb-proof effectiveness of You Belong With Mestory about a crush who prefers another suitor and cornerstone of Swiftian rhetoric, so skillful that she manages to make us believe that she is a complete loser despite being white, beautiful and a millionaire (in 2023, her fortune exceeded 1 billion dollars). The staging of I Can Do It with a Broken Hearttaken from her new album—renamed by Swift in Paris as Female Rage: The Musical—, which referred to the times of art Deco and golden Hollywood. AND Watching Shitwith his burlesque chaste – it is already known that Swift’s universe always tends towards the asexual – and her semi-transparent lycra stockings that allowed us to reflect, from the stalls, on one of the great debates of our civilization: what distinguishes what kitsch of what camp?
Teresa Suarez (EFE)
A cross between an Amazon and a Disney princess, the singer was accompanied by a battalion of veteran musicians and a dozen racialized and racialized dancers. body-positive, who looked at her with the devotion that someone who distributes million-dollar bonuses on her tours deserves—in 2023 she awarded 50 million euros to her technical team—although she is never better than when she is alone on stage, tiny and vulnerable in the middle. of an immense stadium, converted into a metonym of society. The 10 minutes it lasts demonstrate it. All Too Well, of unmatched emotional intensity. Swift’s performance is so convincing that, by the end, she seems like she’s waiting for Jake Gyllenhaal to show up at her door to apologize. There was a hint of tears, or so it seemed from afar, during the three minutes of applause she raised Champagne Problemsco-written with another ex, Joe Alwyn.
Contrary to what rumors suggested, politics was not discussed at the concert. The vice president of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, had asked Swift, with 550 million followers on her social networks, to encourage voting in the European elections, just as she did successfully in the past presidential elections in the United States. “Taylor Swift “He will be in Paris on May 9, Europe Day, to give a concert, so I hope he will do the same with young Europeans,” he requested without success. Even so, the so-called Swift effect, famous for reviving the economy of the cities where her tour lands, is beginning to be noticed on the continent. According to the Expedia portal, searches for hotels in Liverpool have increased by 630% for the date of her concert. In Dublin it is 185%. And in Lyon, 54%. There has also been a record of interest in the German city of Gelsenkirchen, a non-touristy enclave in the industrial Ruhr Valley, where the singer will give three concerts in July. Perhaps only a specialist in heartbreak like Swift will be able to save the European Union.