My Depression/The Graveyard Shift — A Night in The City With Taylor Swift
Vomit.
The word is said to me unexpectedly, and I am disoriented enough by everything happening within my surroundings to not, at first, fully understand what has been said, or why.
“Vomit,” she says to me, in a quiet, calm voice. A woman—a stranger, not so much standing in front of me, or trying to actually prevent me from walking forward down the long, labyrinthine hallway, away from the restrooms, but she stands to my left, and bends her body slightly, in a way that seems surreal and unnatural, leaning towards me.
“Vomit,” she says to me, and when I stop, briefly, because she has startled me and I am trying to, in real-time, process what has been said to me, she lowers her eyes, and head, and I look down, and see a splatter of what is, in fact, vomit, on the floor below me: a puddle, and the faint splash on base of the wall to my right.
The liquid, clear, a little milky, perhaps, with a few apparent chunks of something white.
And this all happens so quickly, and unexpectedly, that because I am unable to truly process what is being said to me as a warning, or an alert of sorts, until it is entirely too late, I just keep walking—my large black boots tromping through the splatter because it just seems so unavoidable. I hear a voice to my left—a gal in the never-ending line for the women’s restroom, recoils and yells, “Ewww!”
“Vomit,” this stranger said to me, and it is, perhaps, because I have a pair of foam earplugs in that her warning was muffled, and I could not react fast enough.
“Vomit,” this stranger said to me, matter of factly—an odd word to blurt out as a warning, rather than something like, “Don’t walk there,” or “There’s puke on the floor. Watch out.”
I emerge from the long hallway where restrooms are situated, and I am grateful that I did, in fact, decide to wear my large, black, weathered boots, and as I cross from the hallway, back toward the stairs that will lead me to where I am sitting, I begin to drag the soles of my boots a little, hoping that I can leave behind any of the clear, milky splatters I may have picked up before I return to my seat for the remainder of the evening.
The muffled, cavernous sounds of the Girl in Red performing “Serotonin,” on the enormous stage below, fills the air around me.
It’s somewhere after 7 p.m. but well before 8.
Taylor Swift hasn’t even appeared on stage yet.
And someone has already had reason to puke in the hallway as they tried, perhaps in vain, to make it to a restroom stall in time.
*
Something that people probably do know about me, but often forget, because it rarely, if ever, comes up at this point, is what I studied in college.
I have a B.A. in theatre—“Drama/Speech” is what it says on the piece of paper that is somewhere within my home. The degree for a major field of study that no longer exists at the school I attended—the program effectively shuttering near the end of 2018, then limping along toward a slow death with the handful of students still within the program, attempting to graduate.
The school itself, in a way, no longer exists either. It was a “college” in the years I attended, but, at some point, rebranded itself as a “university.”
One of the things that having a background in theatre, or any kind of knowledge or opinions about theatre history and theatrical performance, makes difficult, if not sometimes impossible, is attending plays, of any kind, or any size because I am unable to separate myself from the critical eye I take everything in with—I question directorial choices of professional productions if I find myself sitting in a seat in a large theatre like the Guthrie.
I, perhaps, unfortunately, do the same with smaller, community theatre performances as well.
When most attendees of a community theatre performance are there to either support a friend in the cast, or simply be a patron of the local arts scene, I am nitpicking every detail, and wondering why so few people in the production are simply unable to find their light on stage.
And I bring this up because, at some point, during my four years in college, I learned about Aristotle’s Poetics, which is, per its Wikipedia article, efficiently described as the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory, where Aristotle more or less breaks down and ranks the parts that make a play, or performance, successful.
There are six—plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle.
Plot, being the most important; spectacle, for him, being the least.
And I bring this up because, at some point, in the nearly two decades that I have been out of college, this kind of analysis is something that I have found myself returning to. Not with any kind of regularity, and honestly, not when I am watching the performance of a play.
It doesn’t always work, but I find that I am often willing to bend the rules, or the structure, of a form of criticism or analysis intended for one art form enough so that I can use it, or borrow elements from it, to analyze something else.
I bring this up because I find that I try, as I am able, to apply ideas from the Poetics to contemporary popular music—specifically, the live performances of contemporary popular music.
*
In late October of 2022, Taylor Alison Swift asked us to meet her at midnight—the phrase itself, “Meet me at midnight,” is the first thing she says on the opening track of the album she released, aptly titled Midnights, a pseudo concept album, or song cycle if you’d rather, about the memories and regrets that keep us awake during the middle of the night.
We, as listeners, obliged.
We met Swift at midnight—or, 11 p.m. central time, when the album was released and available on digital platforms. While both of the efforts Swift released in 2020—Folklore and Evermore were announced and then available to listeners with only 24 hours’ notice, Midnights had a two-month promotional rollout that included elaborate song title reveals and vague background information about the songs themselves, but no singles issued in advance.
The album was something we, as the audience, got to experience together while we huddled around our respective laptops or mobile devices and pressed play on the album when Thursday, October 20th became Friday, October 21st.
It was, like so many things involving Taylor Swift at this point in her career, an event.
In late October of 2022, Taylor Swift asks us to meet her at midnight, but as Saturday, June 24th becomes Sunday, June 25th, we had already met Swift hours earlier, and have spent a great deal of time with her, and as one day ends and another begins, Alyssa and I are sitting on a train that is heading further and further away from the congestion and cacophony of downtown Minneapolis, and closer toward the quiet of her neighborhood in St. Paul.
Both of us are absolutely, comically drenched from having been outside at what ultimately proved to be the wrong moment, and were caught in a surprising downpour.
In the morning, my boots will still be soaked on the inside, as are her black Converse sneakers; neither the dark gray blazer, nor the black driving cap I had been wearing will have dried at all.
*
How, or for what, will Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour be remembered?
Will it be for the show itself—a runtime, each night she performs, of roughly three and a half hours, a setlist that is more than generously packed with a handful of songs from nearly all of her full-lengths, all organized around a natural sense of tension and release in pacing, through the use of ever-changing, at times complex looking, interactive set pieces, dazzling special effects, a gaggle of backup dancers, and close to a dozen costume changes?
Or, will it be for the ferocious clamor for the tickets themselves—the tour announced on November 1st, with those that were interested in even standing a chance at getting tickets being asked to register through Ticketmaster as a “verified fan” during a two-week window before the tickets actually went on sale.
The sale itself, then, completely decimating the Ticketmaster website—just simply unable to withstand the amount of people all logging on at once with the hope they could make it all the way through, from the process of selecting their seats to the sigh of relief at the checkout.
The sale itself—at first, just a pre-sale for these verified fans, did enough damage to the Ticketmaster system that both an additional pre-sale organized by the tour’s sponsor, Capital One, and the general on-sale date for tickets were, at the time, canceled altogether, and never truly rescheduled.
Like so many things involving Taylor Swift at this point in her career, it was an event—this event, specifically, creating more suspense, and anxiety, than anyone really needed in their life.
I had filled out the registration, like so many other hopefuls, to be considered a “verified fan,” but registering did not guarantee you access to tickets—it simply offered you a chance. A faint glimmer of hope that you would receive a text notification from Ticketmaster the evening before the sale, providing you an access code to use.
I was, like so many other hopefuls, surprised to have received that text.
At the time—the middle of November, I can retrospectively say, now, that I was grateful to have been only a few weeks into what became a very short stint at a desk job where I could, like so many others, be huddled around my laptop, waiting for the moment when the sale would begin.
Waiting for the moment.
Waiting.
I think, when all was said and done, I waited in Ticketmaster’s digital queue for roughly six hours, and, a number of times throughout the course of the day, ultimately presumed the worst of outcomes, before my place in line suddenly began to move, and I was, much to my panic and surprise, given the chance to select tickets.
How, or for what, will Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour be remembered?
Will it be for the ticket prices themselves—at face value, when they were available, for the scope of the show and the size artist Swift is at this point, they were more reasonable than I was fearfully anticipating—some seats within the third level, or “nosebleeds” as they are commonly called, of U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, coming in at around $50 before accruing additional fees.
The confirmation screen that the tickets have, in fact, been purchased, had barely loaded on my computer when I’m on the phone with Alyssa, who has also been waiting in the Ticketmaster digital queue all day.
“You’re never going to believe this,” I tell her as soon as she answers.
Alyssa thinks that I am joking, at first, but I assure her that I would never, and could never, joke about something that she and I have both waiting over six hours to try to obtain. And even after sending a screenshot of the tickets themselves to her, there was still a feeling of disbelief, but also relief, from the fact that we were going to the Eras Tour.
Alyssa was mostly joking, of course, but also, perhaps partially serious when she said, “I hope we are still friends in June.”
I was never worried that we wouldn’t be friends seven months from when we got our tickets.
What I was, of course, worried about, and what I am usually concerned about to some extent, with planning, like this, for events so far into the future, is that I hope that I will still be alive.
*
Plot (Mythos)
Plot refers to the “organization of incidents.”
It should imitate an action that evokes pity and fear. The plot involves a change from bad towards good, or good towards bad. Complex plots have reversals and recognitions. These and suffering (or violence) evoke the tragic emotions. The most tragic plot pushes a good character towards undeserved misfortune because of a mistake. Plots revolving around such a mistake are more tragic than plots with two sides and an opposite outcome for the good and the bad. Violent situations are most tragic if they are between friends and family.
Threats can be resolved by being done in knowledge, done in ignorance and then discovered, or almost done in ignorance but discovered at the last moment.
*
And I have, in the past, written about all of these things before, haven’t I?
About Taylor Swift—beginning, four years ago, with a reflection on how immediately fond I was of the song “Cruel Summer,” from Lover, and most recently, with how deeply I immersed myself within the world of Midnights.
About how, during the rather bleak days throughout 2020, both Folklore and Evermore were enormous sources of comfort and solace for me—reprieves, however fleeting, from the circumstances that I found myself in at the time, or, that we all found ourselves in, in some regard.
I have, in the past, written about all of these things before—about what I often refer to as my “concert anxiety.”
About the attempts I have made in recent years to step outside of my comfort zone, or my regular routine, and experience a live performance from an artist I enjoy; about how my interest peaks when I see a tour announcement with a date in the Twin Cities listed, and about how quickly, and often too easily, my anxious, often spiraling thoughts cause me to talk myself out of going.
About how when I have gone to concerts in the past, I find it difficult to work through, or simply just not ruminate on the situational anxieties or the inconveniences of the evening—the commute of 30 miles from our front door to the concert itself, the parking, the crowds, the late night (often on a weekday evening when I have to work the following day), the congestion of the downtown city streets as I try to navigate back toward the highway, well beyond my bedtime, for the 30-mile commute back home.
And I have, in the past, written about all these things before, haven’t I?
About my mental health, and in more recent years, how terribly fragile it has become, or at least, how much more aware of that fragility I am.
About a darkness that follows me around literally everywhere; about the intrusive thoughts that fill my mind shortly after my eyes open in the morning; about an emptiness, and a visceral sadness that has a literal stranglehold on me, and has for years—the grip seemingly tightening more and more with each year that passes.
About how I have, in a sense, whether I wanted them to or not, allowed the darkness, and the intrusive thoughts, and the emptiness, and the visceral sadness control a majority of my life, and often negatively impact my relationships with others.
I joked, before going to see Taylor Swift perform on a Saturday night in late June in Minneapolis, that the Eras Tour was going to cure my depression—and an acquaintance, who was at the same show that I was, mentioned to me, mostly in jest, that they were suffering from “post-Eras depression,” and were trying to chase the feeling that the show provides at least one more time by looking into any ticket availability as the tour continued toward the west coast.
The Eras Tour did not cure my depression—not really, but the show itself having come to an end and now only existing, really, in memories and in the photos and short video clips I felt compelled to try taking with my phone, has not caused me to feel any more depressed, or any worse of a sadness, than I am usually operating with.
It is an experience—one that is three and a half hours long.
Taylor Alison Swift, from the moment she emerges in the center of the stage and begins to sing a few lines of the Lover, track “Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince,” to the moment that the final notes of the Midnights song “Karma” play during her bow, and slow saunter off stage, gives literally everything she has, and then gives some more, and in return, we, as the audience, many of us standing during the entirety of the show, singing or screaming along to the words of nearly every song, give her as much of ourselves back as we are able.
It is an experience—one that does have a beginning and an end, and in capturing this well-choreographed, dazzling moment in time that all of us share, what it leaves you, or at least me, with is something you can carry with you.
The Eras Tour did not cure my depression—not really, but even as the literal euphoric high of the show begins to fade in the days after the concert, there is, of course, a feeling that remains, and that remains a part of you to return to, now, or days, months, or years later, as a small, good thing—a moment of comfort, of unabashed jubilance, and, perhaps, this might be the most important, or imperative thing, certainly for me, but it allowed me to simply just let go, even for just a few hours on a Saturday night.
*
Character (ethos)
Character is the moral or ethical character of the agents.
It is revealed when the agent makes moral choices. In a perfect tragedy, the character will support the plot, which means personal motivations and traits will somehow connect parts of the cause-and-effect chain of actions producing pity and fear.
The main character should be, among other things, good. Audiences do not like, for example, villains "making fortune from misery" in the end. It might happen, though, and might make the play interesting.
Nevertheless, the moral is at stake here, and morals are important to make people happy.
*
From when it began in March, through when it concludes in August, there are 20 North American cities on The Eras Tour—adding up to 53 performances total, with every city on the schedule getting at the very least, two dates; many received three, and as the tour concludes in Los Angeles, California, Swift will be performing for six nights, with only one day off in between runs of back to back to back shows.
The tour dates themselves are spaced out so that Swift, more or less, performs on the weekends—Fridays and Saturdays, with the occasional Thursday evening show in cities where a third date was included. This gives the set-up itself—the semi-trucks hauling her stage, props, lighting, costumes, and equipment, time to load out of one location before venturing off to the next.
It is, perhaps, a kindness extended to the audiences who, presumably, on a Friday or Saturday night after leaving a concert that concludes at 11:30 p.m., do not have to get up for work the following morning.
And it is, obviously, necessary for Swift herself in terms of recuperation before she has to do it all again. Three and a half hours, over 40 songs, dancing, singing, playing the guitar or piano, and relatively quick costume changes, is a lot to ask of her—she, of course, is the one night after night who asks this of herself, and then asks everyone in attendance to come along with her.
Around nine different opening acts were drafted to support Swift throughout The Eras Tour—tagging along, every weekend, from major city to major city, is quite possibly too much to expect from one or two different artists to commit to for 53 nights over five months, and I am uncertain about how the logistics of which supporting artists were selected to play at which shows were determined.
Some of the acts, or artists, selected do not seem so totally different, genre-wise, or audience-wise, from Taylor Swift, but I am not entirely sure about how much of an overlap there is, at times, in listenership, and some of the artists providing support are marquee names in their own right, and an opening stint for Swift does not seem out of place, exactly, but came as a bit of a surprise, like Paramore—returning from a hiatus with a new album, they were the supporting act on the tour’s opening night in Glendale, Arizona, or Phoebe Bridgers, who is still technically supporting her 2020 release, Punisher, as well as her recently issued full-length with Boygenius.
Bridgers’ Boygenius bandmates, Lucy Dacus and Julian Baker, did join her on stage for a few shows early on in The Eras Tour—and as I was lamenting to, Wendy, my wife about this, and how Bridgers was not scheduled to be performing on the Minneapolis tour date, she patiently pointed out to me that it was, perhaps, for the best, because my sad little heart could probably not take seeing them both in the same place, on the same night.
A number of dates on the tour featured Gracie Abrams—yes, she is more or less a nepo-baby, but her full-length debut, Good Riddance, entirely co-written and produced by Swift’s Folklore and Evermore collaborator and member of The National, Aaron Dessner, is a surprisingly thoughtful and gorgeous amalgamation of glitchy, skittering, acoustic sad girl pop.
Several dates on the tour featured Gracie Abrams—including the additional date in Minneapolis, on Friday, June 23rd, included due to “high demand.”
On Saturday, June 24th, though, The Eras Tour featured support from Owenn and the Girl in Red.
In November, when The Eras Tour was announced, Christopher Owens—who performs under the name Owenn, had only, like, two or three singles available to stream. Since then, he has released more music, but in the roughly 30 minutes of stage time Owens receives, coming out on stage around 10 minutes earlier than anticipated, he tears through what little material he does have with an admirable kind of confidence and charisma—enough to impress the members of the audience who either arrived early, or are slowly finding their way to their seats.
Owens was, initially, a backup dancer for Swift’s massive Reputation tour in 2018, and then he was cast opposite Swift as her love interest in the music video for “Lover” the following year—in 2021, he released his debut single, “Baby Girl,” followed by the energetic and rapturous “Rest of My Life,” in 2022—both of which are the songs he respectively bookends his time on stage with.
And it has to be intimidating, for any of the artists selected to open for Swift on The Eras Tour, to perform in stadiums that are still filling up, to an audience that might be disinterested or distracted, to be given just a little bit of a stage time and to need, every night, to make the most of it and hopefully turn a few audience members into fans by the time you’re walking off, and to take command of the stage itself because it is fucking enormous.
There is, of course, what could best be described as a regular stage—perhaps a little narrower than normal, with an enormous light rig surrounding it, and a majority of the space is, truthfully, taken up by a gigantic screen that also acts as a curtain, of sorts, with an opening where Swift’s dancers, and Swift herself, will go in and out of throughout her time on stage.
There is the ramp down off of the stage, which leads to an elongated catwalk, with two different smaller stages, or platforms—one at the very end, which pushes Swift, when she wanders all the way out there, toward the back of the house, and another, shaped like a diamond, positioned in the center.
Owens’ band does not attempt it, but Owens himself does, occasionally during his five or six-song set, strut down off the stage onto the catwalk, and into the center diamond, where he would shuffle, or gyrate for a few moments, continuing to exude a kind of confidence and attitude that, even as Alyssa and I are just getting settled into our seats in section 229 of U.S. Bank Stadium, is sending me—wearing what appears to be a skirt, or kilt, of some kind with skinny black pants underneath it, what has me reeling, and honestly a little envious that he can pull it off so effortlessly, is a Vale State sweater that he has cut into what is more or less a crop top.
After he finishes the final jubilant moments of “Rest of My Life,” reminds us that he is “Owenn with two Ns,” thanks the audience once again, and then departs the stage, I pull out my phone to begin frantically searching for a Vale State sweater, and wondering if I, too, would be able to pull that off with the physique and sliver of charisma I have at this point in my life.
I wonder how serious I’d have to get about doing a more intense exercise routine in the mornings to achieve the kind of abdomen that you would, perhaps, want to show a small glimpse of, peeking out from the cropped top that covers the rest of you.
Alyssa asks me what I am looking for, and I blurt out, “That sweater he was wearing! Do you think I can pull that off!??!”
She laughs—jokingly and affectionately rolling her eyes at the apparent emergent nature with which I am trying to figure this out, at this moment.
*
Thought (dianoia)
The usually spoken reasoning of human characters can explain the characters or story background.
Diction (lexis)—
Refers to the quality of speech in tragedy. Speeches should reflect character: the moral qualities of those on the stage. The expression of the meaning of the words.
*
She opens her set with a song called “You Stupid Bitch,” and while she is screaming the titular expression into the microphone from the stage, there is a pained look of unhappiness coming from my eyes that I am simply unable to hide, and I turn my head and look at Alyssa who, also, at least at this point, so early into the Girl in Red’s set, seems displeased with what is occurring.
I remember being introduced to Marie Ringheim—the Girl in Red—in 2021, shortly after her debut full-length, If I Could Make it Go Quiet, was released. She, if I remember this correctly, even received a co-sign from Taylor Swift shortly after that, with Swift hyping the album in an Instagram story.
And what I remember about If I Could Make it Go Quiet, is that I tried—but it didn’t work.
I tried—on more than one occasion. But it didn’t work. Not even within the weeks leading up to when I would be asked to humor her as one of the supporting acts before Swift took to the stage.
What I ultimately liked, of all things, was a Justin Bieber cover, “Stay,” she had recorded as a Spotify exclusive, perhaps because it was so different from the compressed kind of bombast of the album.
Perhaps I just wanted everything to sound like that cover. But, of course, that is not the kind of music Ringheim is making.
Alyssa describes Ringheim’s music, at least how it comes off on the record, along with her overall aesthetic during the first half of her performance as an “Avril wannabe.” And there is, of course, a new generation of performers who were not exactly raised on Avril Lavigne’s landmark debut, Let Go, but the meticulous blend of balladry, alternative snark, and pop songwriting has had an influence, or an impact, on what you are hearing today. Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour comes to mind as perhaps the best execution of this—a kind of post-Lavigne brattiness that, yes, sure, you can hear strains of within the Girl in Red, though Ringheim is, unfortunately, not doing it as well, or with as much razor-sharp wit and precision.
Ringheim and her band get a bit more stage time than Owens did—closer to 45 minutes, performing eight songs, four pulled from If I Could Make it Go Quiet, along with three singles she released in the early part of her career before issuing a full-length, and one newer song, “October Passed Me By,” which is a bit of a companion, or “sequel” of sorts, to her song “We Fell in Love in October.”
“October Passed Me By” was co-written and produced by, as you might have guessed, Aaron Dessner—the quickly plucked acoustic guitar strings of the studio recording of the song that Ringheim released in the autumn of last year give his hand in it away, and the more gentle approach he takes to production and co-writing does make the song, and at least this kind of iteration of the Girl in Red as a project a little more palatable when compared to the songs included on her full length, though the issue I found with this song, as well as its predecessor, which operates from a much more hazy, disaffected place sonically, is that they do not translate well to a stage as gigantic as the one found on The Eras Tour.
As a band, the Girl in Red might work in a much smaller, or even more intimate setting—not shortly after 7 p.m. while people are still meandering their way through an enormous stadium. The quieter, or less energetic songs, like both tracks with October in their titles, I think struggled to make the connection Ringheim would have wanted them to with the audience, and her earnest, anxious in-between-song banter had a youthful, awkward charm to it, but it, again, is a difficult feat, if not insurmountable, to try and make some kind of real, human connection with a partially distracted audience of this size who are, by all accounts, just waiting for the clock to strike 8 p.m.
I stepped away during Ringheim’s set to use the bathroom—and because I was not familiar with the layout of U.S Bank Stadium, and because our seats were near a merchandise table, a number of food and beverage vendors, and restrooms, there were just, like, a lot of fucking people everywhere. Anecdotally, I am not sure what the ratio was within the attendance of the concert, but the line for the women’s restroom snaked out unsettlingly far into the main hallway for our portion of the stadium. And what it took me a few moments to realize was that there was, really, no line for the men’s restroom at all—an observation that was not lost on a few women who, growing impatient, had line hopped and walked quickly through the men’s room into one of the stalls.
Perhaps it is because I am wandering around the labyrinthine hallways to where the restrooms are tucked away, and then trying to navigate my way through the crowd to get back to my seat; perhaps it is because I d have small, foam earplugs wedged into my ears to muffle the sound of the Girl in Red’s brashness down to a dull roar; perhaps it is because I have temporarily stepped away from the confidence that Alyssa has from being someone who goes to exponentially more concerts than I can fathom, and is better at handling crowds than could ever be; or, perhaps it is because I have wandered through a small puddle of vomit on my way back to section 229—but there is a disorienting feeling that comes over me from having just gone the short distance of the restroom and back. Not dizzying, but a little overwhelming—like when you are so far out of your element, or comfort zone, that everything around you just feels strange, or off in such a way that is unsettling.
I trudge back up the steps to our section, and in sitting back down, mention to Alyssa that if she is going to go to the bathroom soon, to watch out, because someone already barfed in the hallway.
Ridgheim’s set comes to a raucous conclusion, and as she and her band are running off stage, Alyssa tells me that, during the second half of the set, she actually kind of came around on the Girl in Red.
I am still nonplussed.
I wonder what it is I am exactly missing.
The cacophony within the stadium continues to grow.
We wait for Taylor to arrive.
*
And I have, in the past, written about all of these things—what I often refer to, out of ease, though it, perhaps, does not explain it in as great of emotional detail as it could, as my “concert anxiety.”
The first concert I went to, when I was all of, like, seven years old, was the New Kids on The Block. I remember so few things about it—the most vivid thing, I think, I can recall from that evening, was that our seats were behind the stage at the Metro Centre in Rockford, Illinois. And in the early 1990s, it was a time well before the idea of a video screen, or some sort, on the sides of, or even on the back of the stage in larger venues such as this in an effort to provide any kind of visual indicators at all to audience members who happened upon these less fortunate tickets.
I cannot recall anything about feeling either fine, or at ease, or overwhelmed, by the sheer size of the crowd.
Within the podcast I co-host with my friend Alyssa, we put together an episode about concerts—first concert, our respective favorites, our worst experiences, etc., and our guest on the episode was a childhood friend of hers, Bre, who regularly—at times it seems like once a week—goes to shows.
In preparation for the conversation, I began putting together a list of the artists I had seen, because I had, up until that moment, presumed I had not been to all that many live performances in my lifetime. Comparatively, to both Bre and Alyssa, I hadn’t. But I had been to more than I had anticipated, and prior to walking into U.S. Bank Stadium, I had only attended three inherently large, indoor shows in the past—Stevie Wonder performing Songs in The Key of Life, and Phil Collins on his “retirement tour,” both of which were at the Target Center, and The Cure, at the Xcel Energy Center.
It should not come as a surprise that the vibe at a Phil Collins show in late 2018 is not the same as the sheer ferocity coursing through the venue at a Taylor Swift concert in 2023.
It should not come as a surprise that the size of a relatively recently built football stadium (U.S. Bank Stadium, after three years of construction, opened in 2016) is much, much larger, and at times more intimidating if you stop for even a second to overthink it, when compared to the layout of an indoor venue like the Target Center.
In the past, when I have been able to push myself out the door to a concert, something that I struggle with, and it does ultimately play a large role in how poorly I might be doing by the end of the night, is ruminating on the situational anxieties or the temporary inconveniences I find myself facing.
We live close to the Twin Cities, but close does ultimately mean 45 minutes in the car, give or take, traveling from our small town, up the highway, and into either Minneapolis or St. Paul. It means trying to find a place to park that is nearby the venue and isn’t going to cost a small fortune for the few hours we will be there. It means navigating a crowd of people, many of whom are seemingly oblivious to the notion of personal space and common courtesies—navigating a crowd of people now, in 2023, is something that makes me uneasy, but even before the pandemic, I was more heightened in my awareness my proximity to others and how they may or may not impact my evening.
It means being out late, it means scrambling out of the venue and heading in the direction you parked, and hoping you can zip out of the garage and not get caught up in any traffic as you merge onto the highway for another 45 minutes in the car, in the dark, back to our small town.
And there is often, at least for me, an additional layer of guilt, or anxiety, when Wendy and I go to something together, because that will mean we have left our companion animal at home alone—for roughly the last two years, we have lived with a whimsical dog who, despite his whimsy and best intentions, can be mischievous and somewhat destructive, so for his safety and our own piece of mind, we do put him in a crate before leaving.
It is, and honestly always has, ever since we started adopting and living with different companion animals, extremely difficult for me to let go of whatever guilt or sadness I might have about leaving them home for a few hours without my presence. I worry that they are, perhaps, as sad as I am, though I also understand that is certainly a projection I am putting upon them.
I keep joking that The Eras Tour cured my depression—it didn’t. Not really. And I was able to sidestep nearly all of these situational anxieties and inconveniences before and after our time with Taylor Swift at U.S Bank Stadium, and as the train pulled away from the stadium, sitting in the garish overhead light surrounded by dozens of other Swifties who had also, like Alyssa and myself, gotten caught in the torrential downpour, I realized that trying my hardest to avoid the things that usually create undue anxiety for me at a concert, or performance, contributed to the good, or positive, experience I had.
I keep joking that The Eras Tour cured my depression—I don’t think it did. Not really. But what I found was that I could set myself up for as much success as I could before and after the show—even with the contention from the city of Minneapolis stating they did not have enough staff to keep the train system running beyond 11:30 p.m., they did ultimately find a way how, and we parked near a train platform just outside of Alyssa’s neighborhood, and did not have to worry about navigating the congested streets of the city, or finding a reasonably priced place to park the car.
The guilt, or sadness that I usually feel about leaving our companion animals at home while we are out was mostly alleviated,Wendy was home for a majority of the evening with our dog, and Alyssa offered the guest room in her home, so I could avoid the 45-minute drive home, well after midnight.
I have, in the past, written about all of these things before, haven’t I?
About what I often refer to, out of ease, though it, perhaps, does not explain it in as great of emotional detail as it could, as my “concert anxiety.”
About my mental health and how, in more recent years, about how terribly fragile it has become, or, at the very least, how much more aware of that fragility I am.
About a darkness that follows me around everywhere and the intrusive thoughts that arrive shortly after I open my eyes in the morning, and the emptiness—the visceral sadness that has a literal stranglehold on me and has for years.
About how I have, whether I wanted them to or not, allowed this darkness and those thoughts and that emptiness and the visceral sadness to control a majority of my life, and allow it to often negatively impact my relationship with others.
To allow it to control how much I can give or receive within a social situation.
In passing, while Alyssa and I were recording an episode of our podcast about The Eras Tour, prior to going, she, having some idea of what it can be like if I am not doing well, was admittedly worried about having to more or less babysit my emotions.
I assured her that she wouldn’t.
What happens when you take a severely depressed person to a Taylor Swift concert?
Will they be able to have a good time, or at least just let go for a few hours? Or will they remain in the depressive patterns, and state, they are almost always in?
I keep joking that The Eras Tour cured my depression—it didn’t. Not really. And there was a moment once we arrived within U.S. Bank Stadium where I did worry, briefly, about the very real possibility that I was in over my head with coming to an event of this size.
I have, of course, stood in a line before. And the idea of standing in a line usually implies some kind of end goal, and some kind of organizational element to the line itself. Upon entering U.S. Bank Stadium, what we found wasn’t a line exactly, but just an enormous ocean of bodies.
And within that ocean of bodies, there was the implication of movement, or direction—if you, perhaps, wedged yourself closer into one side, you might have a better chance of heading in one direction than the other. But the movement was only an implication—a suggestion. A hope.
We can hope that the crowd will, eventually, figure its shit out and start moving with a little more efficiency. It does, but it takes time—perhaps more time than I would like it to, and as we try to hop ahead, as much as we can, before arriving at a total standstill again. I keep craning my neck and head around to make sure we are heading in roughly the “right” direction, or a direction that might lead us to our seats.
It is only 6 p.m.—a half hour before Owenn goes on, and two hours before Taylor Swift will emerge from underneath the center of the stage, but the part of me that gives in very quickly to anxious spiraling begins to wonder, and worry, if we will be stuck in this directionless, unorganized mass of people until after 8 p.m.
The problem, I realize after we have begun to come around a corner where there is a little less congestion, is that there are just entirely too many things happening at once in too small of a space—too many entrances from the outside of the stadium with too many people pouring through the doors and then, like Alyssa and I were, being a little uncertain which direction to go. There were the countless people all swarming to the right, after we made it inside, and just as many, if not more, people, trying to head in the opposite direction.
It certainly doesn’t help that there is a vast merchandise table near the entryway.
Alyssa was admittedly worried about having to more or less babysit my emotions during our evening out, and even in assuring her that she wouldn’t, I think she did sense that, within the crowd—unmoving, tightly packed together—that it could set the tone for the rest of the night, and she, thankfully, did what she has done in the past when there the potential for my panicking is high.
She distracts me—quickly shooting glances at me, and smirking, when we see couples walking by us that are decked out in full costumes. We see a lot of people wearing capes, which, eventually, later on in the evening, kind of make sense, but it is also a bit of a surprise to see people dressed like they are heading off to play Dungeons and Dragons in the crowd at a Taylor Swift concert.
A man and woman walk by me, both wearing crowns, and both wearing what appear to be homemade heart costumes—at least from behind, that is the best I can surmise, presuming it is a reference to the song “King of My Heart,” from Reputation.
What I imagine is a large foam vena cava dangling off of the back of the woman thwacks against me as they pass by.
A young child, dressed entirely in white, walks by nervously, holding two pieces of greasy pizza on a very flimsy paper plate.
I keep joking that The Eras Tour cured my depression—I don’t think it did. Not really. But when we, eventually find our way to section 229, and in sitting down in the plastic, purple chair that I have assigned to myself, I find that, even in gazing out into the vastness of U.S Bank Stadium, and seeing just how many people it can, and will, hold in less than two hours, it can be overwhelming, sure, if I think about it too much, but I also find, to my surprise, an unfamiliar kind of calm.
*
Melody (melos)—
Melos can mean “music-dance.” The Chorus of the production should be regarded as one of the actors—integral t the part of the whole and share in the action, contributing to the unity of the plot.
It is a factor in the pleasure of the drama.
*
It doesn’t always work—this bending of the rules, or the structure, of a form of criticism or analysis, intended for one form of art so that I can use it, or borrow elements from it, to analyze something else entirely.
Trying to apply The Bechdel Test to pop music, for example, is difficult, and a lot of pop music simply does not pass.
And I do not regularly try to use Aristotle’s Poetics as a means of critiquing a concert. The notion of doing so, really, only comes to mind when I find myself at a show of a specific size—size of venue, sure, and of course, the size of the artist, but there are acts out there operating on a much smaller scale, comparatively, to Taylor Swift, who are relying very heavily, or seem to depend on an element of spectacle to carry them through in a live setting1.
And in relying on that element, or even depending on it, I wonder how much it helps, or assists, the music reach the audience with the intended impact, or emotional gravity, or how unnecessary it might be—perhaps getting in the way, or simply becoming too much stimulation on the stage, creating a distraction.
It is difficult to explain what it is like seeing Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour.
It is an experience, certainly—one that is three and a half hours long, and during those three and a half hours, I had to continually shift my perception of Swift. I understand that someone of her caliber, at this point in her career, can be considered a “performer,” among other things, like a singer, or a musician. And yes, she sings, and on stage, she occasionally plays the guitar and the piano, but how I had framed Swift, at least when writing about the last three studio albums she’s released, was as a songwriter, and about her lyricism, and the narratives that she’s able to create—at times fictional, or rooted in a story not her own, and famously, at times, autobiographical.
It’s difficult to explain what it is like seeing Taylor Swift on stage at The Eras Tour because I continued to think about Swift, the songwriter, and some of her most devastating or vivid phrase turns, and her uncanny capability to write the hell out of a bridge, but the further into the three and a half hours we got, the more I had to think about Swift as not just a performer, but an entertainer.
And it is because of this—these lines that she, often effortlessly, blurs between performing and entertaining, and being the person responsible for writing these songs, that it becomes difficult, or more complicated than it, perhaps, I should be making things, to try and use The Poetics as a metric, of any kind, to analyze my time with Taylor Alison Swift.
It makes sense that of the albums Swift has released throughout her career, she spends most of her time on stage during The Eras Tour, with her most recent—opening with five songs from Lover, another five from Evermore, and then seven from Folklore, before concluding with seven from Midnights. She, perhaps mercifully (for some), has opted not to include a dedicated “era” to her self-titled debut from 2006, and in Minneapolis, on a Saturday night in June, she played only one song from Speak Now—her 2010 full-length, which is the next to be receiving the “Taylor’s Version” reissue treatment this summer.
The setlist, nearly every night, is 44 songs total—42 of them being more or less identical night to night, though audiences have taken note that following her well-publicized breakup with her longtime partner Joe Alwyn, she cut “Invisible String” from the Folklore section of the evening. And how is Swift able, night after night, to power through 42 songs within the three-and-a-half hour running time, leaving room for the audience’s response, for some in-between song banter, and for her off-stage costume changes?
There are moments when this technique works, or does not feel awkward in how one song transitions into another, or when Swift is not short-changing the audience by giving them just a small taste of something they may, in fact, want a lot of.
It worked well as a means of introduction for the show itself, with Swift singing just the smallest amount of the pulsating “Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince” as she rose from underneath the stage—and honestly, at that moment, I could barely hear her, or the music, over the absolutely deafening sound of the audience’s cheers and applause.
It worked well in the “era” dedicated to her second album, Fearless, where the abbreviated version of the titular track then carried the momentum through to the album’s other gigantic singles, ‘You Belong With Me” and “Love Story.”
Where it didn’t work, or perhaps felt the most out of place, was later in the show: in the Folklore portion, where the band exited the swooning, longing “August” and rushed right into the dramatic build-up of the, “Don’t call me kid—don’t call me baby,” potion of “Illicit Affairs,” than doing something similar with the “era” for her hard, head-first pivot into glossy pop, 1989, which was one of the more disappointing turns for me, specifically when she skipped the entire second verse of the coursing, lusty “Wildest Dreams,” pulling the song from its first verse and chorus right into the bridge.
*
Of the roughly 10 “eras” Swift guides us through during the show, there are none that were inherently less successful, or just flat-out worse than the others—however, with it being such a long performance from beginning to end, with so much happening at literally every moment and with so much riding on Swift, herself, to carry a lot of the load, there were moments throughout where comparatively things worked, or landed better than elsewhere.
The pacing of the show itself is meticulous—certainly, something that was labored over during the development of the tour, in terms of opening on an exhilarating high before entering into the balance of tension and release. It would be impossible for anyone, let alone Swift, to carry such energy and such enthusiasm for the performance’s running time—that level of bombast would also be, I think, just simply too much for the audience. We, as listeners, do need a small reprieve offered by the more quiet, or more introspective moments woven in.
The first and most obvious shifts in pacing comes within the show’s initial “era,” dedicated to Lover—with Swift slowing things down to a woozy shuffle through the album’s title track, then heading into the restraint of “The Archer.”
“The Archer” is the last song of that collection, and after the night’s first change in set pieces, Swift does bring the energy right back up to a breakneck speed with the songs pulled from Fearless—specifically “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story” which are arguably two of her most well known, early singles, that even if you were not a fan of Swift’s output in the late 2000s, you certainly know the words to the chorus, and cannot help but feel compelled to scream along to them as she saunters up and down the length of the stage.
She does pull things even more inward, then forcefully pushes them out again with the juxtaposition of the next two “eras”—Evermore, and then Reputation. And it was, truthfully, the material from both Folklore and Evermore, the two albums Swift put together during the pandemic, collaborating from afar with both her go-to producer and co-writer Jack Antonoff, as well as her first time working with Aaron Dessner, was what I was most curious about to see how it translated from the record to the stage.
It is one thing to release two relatively pensive, and some might say experimental (by Swift’s standards, perhaps) records when pensive and experimental is how you are feeling; it’s another thing to take those songs—often slower, and moodier, and try to extract them from the context of the respective albums they were written for, and place them within the constraints of something that is supposed to entertain and dazzle.
And it is within both the Evermore and Folklore “eras” during the show when Swift relies the most heavily on intricate set pieces—an entire piano covered in moss and flowers is wheeled out for her to play the emotionally stirring “Champagne Problems”—it is one of the songs where she also, usually, takes time to address the audience at length before introducing the song. The piano is then used, in part, by a member of her band, for the dramatic rendition of the smoldering “Tolerate It,” which takes its lyricism—depicting a frustrated and ultimately depressed woman stuck in what appears to be a loveless, controlling marriage—literally in how it is played out on the stage, with a large dinner table arriving in the center, and one of Swift’s dancers sitting at one end, playing the role of the male antagonist in the song, while Swift herself, eventually and cathartically, takes the fine dinnerware she describes in the song (“Lay the table with the fancy shit,” she sings) and hurls it onto the floor.
A number of years ago, during the Grammy Awards, Swift, joined by both Antonoff and Dessner, performed a medley of songs from both Folklore and Evermore, and she did so from a large set piece that was designed to look like a cabin of sorts—albeit one steeped in more magic realism than realism itself. That cabin and its design join Swift on stage during the Folklore “era,” where the members of her band gather around on the front steps for a rousing and kind of self-aware version of the twangy, “Betty,” and the cabin is then flanked by dancers in period piece costumes for the glitchy story song, “The Last Great American Dynasty.”
And these songs—exponentially more inward than the shimmering country-pop of the songs from Fearless, or the scuzzy writhing of the tracks from Reputation, and even songs like “Trouble,” from Red, did surprisingly well within their inclusion in the set, though because they are paced deliberately much slower, it did kind of noticeably pull the momentum of the show down—not to a screeching halt, but there were certainly a few times during the extended performance of “Tolerated It” when I began to wonder how much longer I would have to watch her dancer, sitting at such a large table, pantomiming looking at fancy dishes and silverware, while Swift pleaded with him to save their relationship.
Not everything can, of course, land the way it is intended, or connect with every member of the audience with a show of this size, performing to the number of people in attendance every night—the most polarizing, at least between myself and Alyssa, even before the stepping into U.S Bank Stadium, is the inclusion of the “10 Minute Version” of the song “All Too Well.”
Originally included on Red, for a decade, there was a mythologized early draft of the song that just more or less is unrelenting right until the end—never really taking an instrumental break of any kind, and quietly shifting from a bold, though heartbroken, anthem into something gentle and pensive near the end, Swift recorded this extended version of the song and included it among the “vault” material for the Red reissue from the end of 2021.
Is 10 minutes too long for a song?
It all depends on who you ask.
For Alyssa, it is just simply too long—she, admittedly, has reminded me a number of times during the course of our friendship that after a song reaches a certain minute mark, it is too much of an ask for her. For me, I don’t believe 10 minutes of “All Too Well” is too much—I think, if anything, it is impressive that Swift as a songwriter and performer, can sustain the song that long, both on the record, and within a live setting, though I understand, and can appreciate the threshold that other listeners might have for it.
“All Too Well” arriving at the end of the “era” dedicated to Red—one of the shorter portions of the show, surprisingly, given how big of an album it was for her career in terms of pivoting toward glossy pop music and away from the country she came up performing—is one of the moments in the evening when it isn’t just my friend who is in need of a break. As Swift begins to quietly strum her acoustic guitar (which, honestly, serves as more of a prop hanging off of her body than anything else), it did provide a moment for the several people to have a seat, or at least take a small break from dancing, and to use the restroom with little if any wait.
Before beginning “All Too Well,” Swift took another moment to address the crowd—something that, I presume, she does at this part of the show every evening because it was one of the places where the banter, or asides, to the audience, felt a little scripted, or built-in, to the structure of the show itself, mostly because of the knowing wink within the song’s introduction, saying something to the effect of, “If you’ve got ten minutes….”
A similarly built-in moment that did produce a smaller eye-roll out of me occurred early on in the set, when Swift was working her way through the material from Lover, and began flexing her biceps much to the fanatical delight of the crowd, as a means of introducing “The Man.”
*
Spectacle (opsis)—
Refers to the visual apparatus of the play, including set, costumes, and props. The “least artistic” element of tragedy, and the "least connected with the work of the playwright.”
*
Swift is never off stage for more than a few minutes—and the further we got into the night, the more I began to, perhaps, fall into the habit that I cannot seem to break of analyzing something happening in front of me, rather than just being completely in the moment.
And I think what I became fixated on, at times, was how quickly she must change out of one costume into another, and hitting her mark to return to the stage—usually through a small hydraulic lift that would place her within various portions of the stage.
How quickly she must change, and how chaotic or frantic those changes must be happening, possibly in the dark, or someplace off-stage where there is little light.
I wondered if Swift was kind, or at least accommodating, to any wardrobe assistants who were helping her out of one thing and into the next, or if there was some kind of undercurrent of tension that ripples between her and members of her assuredly enormous team on the road.
Prior to stepping into U.S Bank Stadium, I had only attended three inherently large, indoor shows in the past, and none of them were to the scale of this in terms of the kind of palpable excitement for the artist on stage, or the heights that the show itself effortlessly soared to. From photos that Swift shares on Instagram after each city on The Eras Tour is complete (or whoever runs her Instagram account for her), I was aware that there were going to be elaborate set pieces and myriad costume changes, but I was just not sure how it all came together, or how it was woven within to the rhythm of the show.
The transitions between “eras” are, at times, fascinating to watch unfold—and if you haven’t memorized the setlist from the previous nights on the tour, or don’t have the setlist.fm page from the previous night pulled up on your phone to follow along, there is a feeling of suspense once one “era” concludes and the next is going to begin, because some of the transitions are not immediately obvious to what material they are introducing.
The bizarre, futuristic shapes that spiraled across the enormous screen on the stage, and the warm, vintage-sounding synthesizer pulsating that pumped through the speakers that ushered in the short set from 1989 was, I thought, the most genuinely interesting to watch and feel the anticipation building; and the quick cuts of a snake, and flashes of lightning across the screen, setting the darker, sultrier tone for Reputation, created the most visceral excitement in Alyssa, who, in cheering wildly throughout the entire evening, screamed the loudest, and with the most abandon, when she knew we’d be hearing “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Ready For It.”
There were other transitional moments, though, that I felt were a little forced, or a bit heavy-handed in some regard—the slow, dramatic spoken word reading of the lyrics to “Seven” that played while the Folklore cabin was pushed into place generated an unintended laugh from me, and the magic show act from one of Swift’s back up dancers that occurred before the selections from Red was, I think, supposed to be fun, or light-hearted, but it wore out its welcome quickly and became, for lack of a better description, dorky.
The Eras Tour does rely almost entirely on sight as much as it relies on the sounds of Swift’s voice—there literally is not a minute that goes by when something isn’t happening behind or below her on the video screen on the stage, or the interactive screens that serve as the floor of the lengthy catwalk that she spends most of the three and a half hours walking the length of.
There were not, at least not to my knowledge, any noticeable technical difficulties during night two in Minneapolis—I know that in recent performances in Cincinnati suffered some challenges in terms of an exit Swift was anticipating not occurring, and a video beginning to play on the screen earlier than anticipated. It cannot be easy to keep a show like this running in terms of lighting and the additional special effects it requires, and near the end of the night, as my mind continued not so much to wander but to begin to wonder about specific elements that make The Eras Tour possible, the reliance on so many things happening on the screen behind her began to seem a little forced–like that it was simply expected, or “needed” for the show.
I am thinking specifically of the video pieces that play in portions of the Midnights “era”—“Lavender Haze” for sure, as well as “Anti-Hero,” with the former relying on layered clips of Swift, in slow motion, swirling around in purple smoke (a motif from the song’s music video) as well as quick shots of her writhing around amongst colorful flowers; the latter, perhaps the night’s least successfully executed effect, included a slow motion, computer-generated Swift, slowly lumbering through a major city, then silently screaming, and destroying the buildings.
Never the sexy baby.
Always the monster on the hill.
*
Because this was the first time I saw Taylor Alison Swift performing live, and because I made my hard pivot into pop music—and her canonical works—like, only four-ish years ago, there are a lot of things about her mythology that I am just simply not familiar with, and have never bothered to spend a lot of time researching, or looking for larger meaning within.
Swift, of course, has become the kind of artist that hides clues to larger reveals throughout a lot of what she does. Most recently, in a promotional video discussing the reissue of Speak Now, she is wearing a specific shade of light blue fingernail polish, which, the internet, as a collective, has surmised it to be a hint that the next “Taylor’s Version” collection she will release is of 1989.
Part of the ferocity amongst her fanbase, specifically with The Eras Tour, is the night-to-night speculation (and often disappointment or frustration) at what two acoustic, solo songs Swift will perform near the very end of the catwalk, toward the end of the show. I had, up until recently, though this was something specifically developed for this tour as a means to break up the routine of the same songs, more or less, every night, and to step away from the spectacle of it all for just a few moments in a more intimate (as intimate as one can be in a room with however many thousands of people) setting.
This is, I guess, not the first time she’s done something like this, but perhaps because there is such a heightened state of urgency and excitement from audiences for the tour alone, the anticipation and speculation around these surprise, acoustic songs are difficult to escape, or avoid entirely in an effort to simply go to the show and enjoy, without hope and emotions riding high, whatever she decides to perform.
On night one in Minneapolis, on Friday, June 23rd, Swift performed “If This Was A Movie,” which was a previously unreleased track that was issued earlier this year, somewhat unceremoniously given how almost everything Swift does becomes such an event; the other song she performed for night one was the jaunty, infectious “Paper Rings,” pulled from Lover, which is one of Alyssa’s favorite Swift songs because she danced with her husband to it at their wedding reception shortly after the album came out in the autumn of 2019.
Another part of the excitement and anticipation surrounding this part of the show, outside of the songs themselves, is if she will bring out a guest to perform with her—Aaron Dessner has made a number of appearances on the tour, as has Marin Morris in Chicago, Marcus Mumford, and Phoebe Bridgers.
Heading into night two in Minneapolis, I was not the only person, I learned, who was speculating that Swift might bring out Justin Vernon—Bon Iver himself, to sing possibly one of three songs that the two had worked together on: the titular track from Evermore, the jittery, rollicking “Renegade,” which Vernon and Dessner released with Swift’s vocals as part of their project Big Red Machine, and what I have come to describe as “toxic masculinity in a song,” “Exile,” the smoldering ballad from Folklore.
I was not the only person, I learned, who was speculating that Swift might bring out Justin Vernon, simply because of the proximity of his beloved Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to the Twin Cities.
Justin Vernon did not join her on stage.
For the second of the two secret songs, Swift, without little introduction, sat down at a small upright piano and played “Daylight,” the closing track from Lover—allegedly due to a fan tweeting to Swift and requesting the song be played because the date of the concert was the fifth anniversary of her brother’s death, and hearing the song would help her through the grief that she’s been carrying with her.
And this sentiment, if this is, in fact, why she chose to play the song, is fine, and like a very kind gesture on the part of Swift to step out from behind the barrier between an artist of this size and members of her audience—I learned about this apparent request the following morning, but Swift, sitting down at the piano to plunk out “Daylight,” did signify that I was not, in fact, getting my wish, or hope, granted, of Justin Vernon rising up from below the stage to howl with his otherworldly falsetto the wordless singing that occurs between the chorus and the second verse of “Exile.”
I cross my arms, which doesn’t always mean I am displeased—but in this situation, it does. Or at the very least, that I am disappointed, or a little frustrated.
Disappointed and frustrated that, yes, I am a baby who won’t get to hear the song or see the guest performer I had partially set my heart on, but also that I let myself fall into the swirling frenzy surrounding this portion of The Eras Tour.
She watches me cross my arms, and, later, laughs about recalling the moment she watched it happen. “I knew that you were unhappy,” she says.
The first song, though, that Swift performed as part of this show, donning an acoustic guitar, was one that she had not played in well over a decade, and due to its apparent sensitive nature, a lot of people have speculated it was a song she would not return to—“Dear John,” from Speak Now.
Allegedly about her short-lived and ultimately ill-fated romance with John Mayer when she was all of 19, Swift introduced “Dear John” with a bit of a rambling monologue where she first thanked everyone for being so supportive of her “Taylor’s Version” reissue project—that she didn’t expect that the fans would “choose”2 her newly re-recorded versions of the songs over the originals that had been released when she was stills signed to Big Machine, and in a deal that made it impossible for her to own her master recordings.
Roughly two weeks out from the arrival of the Speak Now reissue, of which “Dear John” is a part of, the conceit of what Swift was saying is, more or less, that she would love it if her fans stopped cyberbullying John Mayer—she, as she spoke, still played the identity of the “John” in the song very close, but explained that the song was penned when she wasn’t even 20, and that everyone has grown up and moved on and she no longer shares the sentiments that she wrote into the lyrics.
She implored the audience to “extend kindness,” and not to “go after anyone because you think I wrote a song about them a billion years ago.”
And perhaps it is a moment of earnestness on her part, because there is no way she cannot be aware of how rabid and passionate her fanbase is when it comes to her defense—I am, of course, thinking about how quickly the Swifties came for Jake Gyllenhaal when the short film to accompany the ten-minute version of “All Too Well” was released in 2021.
But I am also thinking about how, within one of the myriad special editions of Midnights, there is a song she worked on with Aaron Dessner called “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” which, based on the lyricism, is presumed to also be about Mayer, so I was perplexed by why she would tell an entire stadium of people to extend kindness when she wrote a song with a key phrase in it being “I regret you all the time.”
*
There is a kind of escapism in entertainment that my instinct is to, initially, scoff at—it’s what prevents me from watching a lot of big movies, or reading a lot of widely available best-selling novels. I think there was a time when I was younger, and much more arrogant about taste, that I believed myself to be above a lot of things when it came to film or the written word.
I might still, in part, be that person, but I am trying hard not to be, or to be, much less so than I was when I was in my early 20s.
The thing about The Poetics, or one of the things I recall about the discussion surrounding them when I was in college, was that Aristotle places “spectacle” last, and part of the conversation was about why big musicals rely so heavily on spectacle as a means to get them through from the time the curtain rises until the final bow—which implies, and often rightly so, that every other element, like plot, or character, are either far less important, or nonexistent.
The argument then becomes if a big musical is “bad” or insipid, or something to be scoffed at because of this.
There is a kind of escapism in entertainment, and I while a lot of it is simply not of interest to me, I have come to understand more and more why people are drawn toward it.
And it doesn’t always work—this ending of the rules, or the structure, of a form of criticism or analysis that is intended for one form of art, and y attempt to use it, or borrow elements from it, to analyze something else entirely.
It is difficult to explain what it is like seeing Taylor Swift on stage at The Eras Tour.
It is an experience, certainly. It is three and a half hours long, and during the time we spent with her on a Saturday night in late June, I found I had to continually shift my perception of Swift. She is, at this point in her career, with all she has achieved, a “performer,” among other things, like a singer, or a musician.
And how I had framed Swift, specifically during the time when I was writing about the last three albums she released, was as a songwriter—focusing on her lyricism, and the narratives that she is able to create that are, of course, at times, autobiographical, but also the kind of fictional worlds that she pulls us into.
It’s difficult to explain what it is like seeing Taylor Swift on stage at The Eras Tour because I continued to think about Swift, the songwriter, and some of her most devastating or vivid phrase turns, and her uncanny capability to write the hell out of a bridge, but the further into the three and a half hours we got, the more I had to think about Swift as not just a performer, but an entertainer.
And it is because of Swift as entertainer, in direct contrast with Swift the songwriter, where these lines begin to blur, and it becomes difficult to accurately use something like The Poetics to describe The Eras Tour—it does rely so heavily on spectacle (how could it not), but within that spectacle, within the songs, there is often plot, thought, and diction, with Swift herself, of course, as a character supporting the plot.
The spectacle, in a weird way, is the thing that obviously propels The Eras Tour to the towering heights it reaches almost immediately and somehow manages to remain there and sustain itself there all night, but it is also the thing that doesn’t exactly hold it back, because in a show like this, nothing is ultimately held back, but everything—almost every moment of the time spent with Swift does literally hinge on the sheer theatricality of it all.
The songs, of course, could exist without trap doors on the stage, or platforms that, with precision, raise and lower, throughout, or with dazzling, intricate imagery that appears behind Swift on an enormous screen, or the confetti that falls from the ceiling, or the pyrotechnics that are set off, filling an indoor stadium with a cloud of smoke—but it is all these elements that bring the songs to a level that you receive them at. A level that is simply like nothing else.
There is a part of me that wants to make the case that the sheer amount of spectacle might simply be too much—too much stimulation, for too long, distracting entirely too much, because, at times, I was uncertain where I should be focusing my attention.
One can make that case, but the truth is that it is almost impossible to imagine these songs without the spectacle—regardless of how bombastic or pensive of a song Swift might be singing. The spectacle is what makes the night as thrilling and, dare I say, as fun as it is.
For three and a half hours, night after night, Swift gives us so much of herself, and even as the show reaches its final act, she really shows very little, if any, signs of just how exhausted she might be feeling from the stamina it must require to make it through until the end. She gives so much, and in the act of giving, as a form of entertainment, or performance, what I wonder is if we, as the audience, have come to expect, if not demand, that the show itself must be this big—I wonder if we, as the audience, would perhaps feel slighted somehow if the scale was not nearly as enormous as The Eras Tour is.
Do we ask it to be this big, or powerful, or captivating, or theatrical, because of just how big, powerful, captivating, and theatrical Swift, as a person, and a persona, often is?
Taylor Swift gives us literally everything on stage, and yes, she did take a moment early on during night two in Minneapolis where she did seem genuinely moved by the volume of the applause and cheering from the audience at U.S. Bank Stadium—taking her in-ear monitors out and really hearing the cavernous roar echoing through the venue. But are we asking entirely too much of her where she feels like she does, in fact, have to give everything?
And are we, in the end, really providing her with enough in return?
*
I have, of course, written about all of these things before—what I refer to out of ease, though it certainly does not explain it in terms more emotionally detailed terms as it could, as my “concert anxiety.”
I have written about the attempts I have made to step out of my comfort zone, or the regular routine I live by, and leave the house to experience live music from an artist I like enough, or admire enough, to pay money to see.
About how I will see a Twin Cities tour date announced for a band or artist, and will feel a fleeting moment of excitement, and interest, before I quickly fall back into my anxious, spiraling thoughts—what causes me to talk myself out of even buying a ticket.
Or, unfortunately, in a handful of situations within the last year, didn’t successfully stop me from buying a ticket but did talk me out of following through and attending the show3.
About how I struggle with trying to navigate situational anxieties or inconveniences within a concert setting—the logistics of getting there and getting back when you live close by, but not close enough by that you can take public transportation and be home at a reasonable time.
About my fragile mental health, which does, with each year that passes, seem to be growing more and more breakable—almost always on the verge of shattering from the hairline fractures that are on the surface.
About the darkness that follows me around literally everywhere and the terrible, intrusive thoughts that descend upon me the moment I open my eyes in the morning, and the visceral sadness and emptiness that has a stranglehold on me, and has for years.
About how I have, despite my best efforts, allowed the all of those things to control such a majority of my life and how they often negatively impact my relationship with others close to me.
When I had bought tickets to The Eras Tour, in November, my friend Alyssa was mostly joking, but also partially serious when she said, “I hope we are still friends in June.”
I was never worried that we wouldn’t be friends seven months from when we got tickets, but what I was worried about, and what I am usually concerned with, to some extent, with planning for something so far in advance, is that I hoped I would still be alive.
I had joked that going to see The Eras Tour was going to cure my depression—it didn’t. Not really. Because there is no cure for depression. There is treatment, certainly, but what I have learned from the last three years of often challenging therapy is that with there not being a “cure,” what you have to do is figure out how to manage it.
It’s raining on the train ride away from the city—slowly moving out of the congestion of downtown Minneapolis toward the train stop in St. Paul, near Alyssa’s neighborhood, where we had left the car hours prior.
We get caught in the rain on our way out of U.S. Bank Stadium as we, in the surging of the crowd, try to figure out which train platform we are supposed to wait on—the rain, at first just a refreshing mist hanging in the air while we walked away from the venue.
It, then, begins raining just a little bit harder.
Then, harder still. Laughable, actually, the torrential downpour we find ourselves standing in with no real place to take any kind of shelter.
When thunder rumbles through the sky, there are people standing among us in the dispersing crowd that let out startled, and perhaps exaggerated screams.
On the train, Alyssa and I find an open seat, the cold, uncomfortable plastic pressing the sopping wet denim of my jeans into my skin. I take my hat off, and water comes rolling off my head, and the hat, pooling onto the floor.
The train itself is packed with other “soggy Swifties,” as I call them, and us, too, I suppose. There is a camaraderie, but also a quiet—perhaps exhaustion from the concert and the kind of marathon it ends up being, or, perhaps everyone coming down from the brief frenzy of trying to navigate which train to take while the sky opened up.
“The rain,” Alyssa says later when we are walking back through our evening at The Eras Tour, “was a third character.”
I had joked that going to see The Eras Tour was going to cure my depression—it didn’t. Not really. But within the moment that we shared with Taylor Alison Swift on a Saturday night in late June in Minneapolis, what I found was that I could, or was able, or willing, to give in to the spectacle, and the escapism provided, and be granted a slight reprieve.
In thinking about how this ends, or why it ends the way it does, I am reminded of the idea of “feral joy,” and what I wrote about last summer after sitting down with Surrender, from Maggie Rogers. There’s this short “mission statement” of sorts on the back cover of the album, where she talks about “finding peace in the distortion.”
“Break the numbness,” she continues. “Let the bright lights drag me out.”
It’s difficult to explain what it’s like seeing Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour, and it’s even more challenging, I have found, to articulate how, and why, I was able to make it through the entire evening without truly falling back into my anxious, depressive patterns, and, in perhaps the biggest surprise, and playing against how I usually feel, I legitimately had fun within the world that Swift creates—one that dazzles, one that we all get to share in, and one leaves us with something, both tangible and not, that we can carry with us.
Near the end of the statement from Rogers, on the back cover of Surrender, she writes, “This is the story of what happened when I finally gave in,” before adding, “Can you let go? Can you feel it all?”
On stage, Swift is giving literally everything to the audience, and from my seat in section 229, even with all of my shortcomings, I am giving all that I am able in return.
You surrender into the moment.
1- There was really no good way to force this into the actual piece, but who I am talking about here is the Icelandic group, Sigur Ros. I have seen the band themselves twice, once in 2008, and once in 2021, and their frontman, Jonsi, once in 2010, shortly after he released a solo album. The group has, and still does, rely heavily on spectacle as a part of their live show in terms of lighting, set pieces, the use of different scrims and backdrops, and visuals projected behind them. I could, and have, written about my misgivings about Sigur Ros within the last ten years, and I think that something that has made me feel a specific way about the group is that I had a depressive episode/panic attack at their performance in St. Paul in April of 2012—regardless of how I feel about them, as a band, in 2023, their incorporation of spectacle is impressive, sure, but because they lean into it, and on it, I wonder if the kind of music they make could sustain itself without those elements.
2. Given how passionate Taylor Swift’s fans are, I am honestly surprised that Swift would doubt that listeners would literally abandon the earlier iterations of Fearless, Red, and now, Speak Now, and exclusively listen to these reissues.
3. Last year, and into this year, I did make several efforts to try and put myself out there, going so far as to buy tickets to at least five different concerts, and ultimately not attending any of them. Perhaps the largest regret I have from the shows I did this for was around a year ago, when Camp Cope was touring the United States in support of Running With The Hurricane. It was a late show (they wouldn’t have gone on until after 10 p.m., if I remember correctly), and I had no concert companion to accompany me, so I ultimately chose not to go—the band announced earlier this year that they were splitting up, and their final show is this fall in their native Australia. In the podcast episode Alyssa and I recorded about The Eras Tour, she talks about how she doesn’t believe in the notion of “living without regrets,” and that one of her biggest regrets is not going to see Taylor Swift supporting 1989; one of my biggest regrets would be opting not to see Camp Cope.
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