Jessica Bucharan is a makeup artist from Toronto. In April of last year, she posted a video on TikTok that began with the words: “My boyfriend broke up with me. Today was supposed to be my wedding day so I decided to get on a plane and go see Taylor Swift»In the clip you can see Jessica on the plane, then at the concert while she sings Cruel Summerthen on the plane back, then in a taxi on the way home. All with the count of times she burst into tears: nine. Posted again this year, the video went viral, garnering millions of views, likes and newspaper articles. And becoming, in the comments section, a kind of gigantic, global, variegated group therapywhere everyone told their own story of abandonment and betrayal, where strangers from opposite sides of the planet consoled each other, where, for once, social media really seemed to unite, rather than divide.
This is just one example, there are others, and they all serve to answer the question that we still hear from time to time, usually offered in a snobbish and condescending tone: but what is so special about Taylor Swift? Even ignoring everything else – the Grammy won, the records sold, the years on the scene, the impact on popular culture – the answer is to look at his publicbecause that’s where you can understand a lot of things. A middle-aged straight white man – certainly not the ideal target audience for Swift’s music – told me this a while ago, in response to an article that talked about the love that fans have for her and the sacrifices and healthy crazy things they are willing to do to be present at one of her concerts: «The only comparison that comes to mind is with the fans of Bruce Springsteen». Since the man in question has seen more than 30 concerts of the Boss around the world, he obviously knows what he’s talking about. And he’s hit the nail on the head: there is no one, in this historical moment, capable of doing what Taylor Swift does, which is not only bringing millions of people to her concerts, but making them feel part of a community, a tribe with its own rituals, with a specific language, with codes and behaviors.
L’Eras Tour that arrives in Italy at the stadium San Siro of Milan the July 13th and 14th It began on March 17, 2023 in Glendale, Arizona. It was originally supposed to include 27 dates, then extended to 66 in the first year and 86 in the second. When it ends, on December 8, 2024 in Vancouver, Canada, it will have collected 152 shows spread across two dozen countries. On June 13, in Liverpool, Swift celebrated her 100th show with these words: “I’m speechless. It doesn’t seem like a real statistic, because this tour has been the most exhausting, all-encompassing, but also joyful, rewarding, and wonderful thing that has happened to me in my life.” It’s not an exaggeration: in Taylor Swift’s life there is a before and after Eras Tour, but this watershed It also exists in entertainment, in popular culture, in ticket sales, in the economy, even in politics – any area that has been touched more or less directly by its impact. In these two years it has become the tour with the highest grossing film in historybeing the first ever to surpass $1 billion in revenue. It promoted tourism, boosted local economies, saved governments, and led government leaders to change laws in the hopes of having it in their country. It received critical acclaim for every aspect of its production, and even when it received criticism – for its length, for example: more than three hours for 40 songs – has managed to get people talking. It has registered an unprecedented demand for tickets, a resale that has reached absurd figures so much so that in the US there has been a congressional questioning against Ticketmaster, accused of Monopoly and if the law that regulates ticket sales were to change, it could be called Swift law. Even the film derived from the live, released last October on Disney+, has quickly become the concert film with the highest grossing film of all time.
Above all, he dominated the news cycle obsessively and continuously, he produced endless newspaper articles, conspiracy theories on the part of the Republicans, Internet traffic, university courses dedicated to her including one to Harvard: the professor who teaches it, Stephanie Burt, said she intends to compare Swift’s work with that of poet William Wordsworth. It helped to strengthen the American soft powerthat ability to influence the dominant culture that the US has always had, but which has never been in such crisis as it is now and if it weren’t for her and Beyoncé it would have completely disappeared. She helped to consecrate Taylor Swift person of the year 2023 for Timean honor usually bestowed on presidents, heads of state and popes, and never on a woman alone. At 34, Swift is experiencing what she herself has called the decisive moment in his career“and for the first time in my life, I’m mentally strong enough to accept what comes with it,” she added. The reference is to past controversies – too many boyfriends, the story of Kanye West that interrupts her at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards and all its aftermath – events that if they ever seemed important, today disappear, transformed into footnotes. Criticisms that if in the past hurt her, today are scaled down.
Today’s Taylor also doubles down on this, instead of giving up, raises the bar, increases the stakes: for eight months she has been paired with Travis KelceAmerican football player for the Kansas City Chiefs, winner of three Super Bowls and already extraordinarily famous in his own right. Once the tour is over, it is possible that he will concentrate there, on his private life. Maybe getting married and having children, in any case taking a break from public life. In recent years his production has been incredible, with albums like Folklore And Evermore released in July and December of the same year, 2020: while the world was stuck at home making bread and singing from the balconies, she was putting into action the biggest musical turn of her career, releasing two albums one after the other that were very different from the pop and country sounds of her previous ones and collaborating with musicians such as Aaron Dessner of The National and Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver). Two albums that like the last one – The Tortured Poets Department, published on April 19 – they arrived suddenly, without any particular launch campaigns, alternating with the new recordings of his old albums. A quantity of material, both old and new, that for some is even excessive, so much so as to wonder if there is not the risk of a «Taylor Swift fatigue» as defined by the New York Timesa question that no one has ever asked Bruce Springsteen, who knows why.
The truth is that Taylor’s is a unrepeatable successespecially in a world with such fragmented tastes and consumption. A stubborn, desired, curated success that is based on the talent and fortune of having grown together with its fans, hand in hand, experience by experience, never abandoning them, but rather making them always feel important and part of a community. Whatever happens once the Eras Tour stage is dismantled, one thing remains true: this is the moment. Anyone who has already seen or is going to see Taylor Swift live in the immediate future feels part of a magical, historical, unrepeatable ritualwhich is also thanks to her presence. A moment of communion where no one is indispensable, but everyone is necessary, in Milan as in Los Angeles, in Paris, in London or Tokyo. This is Taylor Swift’s world, we are just living in it.
Source: Vanity Fair
I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.
