Taylor Swift
Wembley Stadium, London, August 16, 2024
For all her gifts as a communicator, even Taylor Swift is struggling to explain exactly what it feels like to walk out on stage before 92000 ecstatic fans. Standing in front of the fairytale log cabin that backdrops the part of her set dedicated to the Folklore and Evermore albums, Swift describes the “love system overload” she experienced as she returned to Wembley Stadium for this five-show sequel to her June concerts. “We just adore you; I hope you know that,” she tells the audience, their special wristbands lighting them up like fireflies around her. “Woah, feelings! Feelings and emotions. That I didn’t think about before talking about them in front of 92000 people.”
-
READ MORE: Taylor Swift: “Female artists have to reinvent themselves so many more times than male artists...”
It's not an entirely plausible statement: as tonight’s flawless performance heavily underlines, it’s hard to imagine Swift has ever had a feeling she that she hasn’t rigorously analysed, assessed, turned into a song. As she says with charming guile: “I tend to be a bit personal and autobiographical in my songwriting. Has anybody noticed that?”
Yet the opening show on The Eras Tour’s last stretch of European dates is happening in an inescapably heightened atmosphere. After three girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29, Swift wrote the “horror” of the attack was “washing over me continuously”. On August 7, the discovery of a plot to attack fans outside shows in Vienna led to the cancellation of three concerts.
It would be overly sentimental to describe this show as defiance, but to see such a formidable display of female power on stage undoubtedly bears an additional charge tonight. Her songs might be “a bit personal” – the diary-ripped songs of this year’s The Tortured Poets Department proved that again - but Swift is never going to let you see her crumble. As with her best revenge songs, living well is the key.
When she materialises in her spangled leotard and boots, a tiny Tinkerbell in this vast crowd, it hits home just what a wild act of will this show is, the whole Eras concept an impressive flex, a demand to be taken seriously. By compressing her career into three and a half hours, it also illustrates her nimble shapeshifting. There are the literal changes - the princess chiffon of the Speak Now era gives way to the serpentine jumpsuit and finger-crushing heels of the Reputation era – but she also understands how to capture life’s pivotal moments, stick them in the amber of a song, then move on.
During the segment dedicated to 2012’s Red, complete with the customary distribution of her hat to a child in the audience, she plays 22, a song that mythologises being 22 with the same vicious poignancy as Abba’s Dancing Queen caught being 17. In The Tortured Poets’ Department era – dress code: My Chemical Romance’ The Black Parade x Les Miserables – there’s a comic segment where Swift has to be goaded into performance by two top-hat wearing Svengalis before the excellent I Can Do It With A Broken Heart. It’s a real-time, pull-yourself-together pep talk, transforming sadness into something noble, main-character dramatic, worthy of being accompanied by a whole Busby Berkeley dance routine. The show must go on, on the micro and macro levels.
Despite the hard edges of the Eras format, none of it divides up that easily. The sequinned young fans sing along just as enthusiastically to Champagne Problems or Anti-Hero as older fans turned Tay-curious by 2020’s Evermore or Midnights in 2022; the men in the “it’s me, hi, I’m the dad it’s me” T-shirts dance with the same intensity to the pop glories of Style and Blank Space from 1989 as their cowboy-hatted-offspring. Swift herself leaps from Kate Bush to Stevie Nicks to Dolly Parton to Freddie Mercury. A ten-minute version of All Too Well wouldn’t scare any Bruce Springsteen fans still lost after last month’s Wembley shows.
The essential “surprise songs” section arrives with Swift on acoustic guitar, fretting she’s not doing Everything Has Changed justice. The jet-plane roar turns intergalactic as Swift’s “second brother” Ed Sheeran strolls out, adding a jolly, fraternal take on End Game and his Thinking Out Loud. Swift then sits at the piano, merging King Of My Heart with The Alchemy, the screens showing a genuine ease and pleasure on her face.
It’s one thing to hit all the marks in the martially organised main set; this artful but still genuine digression still suggests a joy in her work, a tiny admirable spark of adventure that her juggernaut career can’t squash. She’s a formidable machine and this show is – as she hints before the bicep-kissing version of The Man – a crazy display of power. But as she says, woah, feelings. Feelings and emotions. They’re still all here.
Setlist:
Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince
Cruel Summer
The Man
You Need To Calm Down
Lover
Fearless
You Belong With Me
Love Story
22
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
I Knew You Were Trouble
All Too Well
Enchanted
…Ready For It
Delicate
Don’t Blame Me
Look What You Made Me Do
Cardigan
Betty
Champagne Problems
August
Illicit Affairs
My Tears Riccochet
Marjorie
Willow
Style
Blank Space
Shake It Off
Wildest Dreams
Bad Blood
But Daddy I Love Him / So High School
Whose Afraid Of Little Old Me?
Down Bad
Fortnight
The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
I Can Do It With A Broken Heart
Everything Has Changed / End Game / Thinking Out Loud
King Of My Heart / The Alchemy
Lavender Haze
Anti-Hero
Midnight Rain
Vigilante Shit
Bejeweled
Mastermind
Karma
The latest issue of MOJO is on sale now! Featuring Bob Dylan, Motown, The The, Neil Young, Arthur Lee, Nick Lowe, Gillian Welch, Galaxie 500, Laurie Anderson, John Mayall and more. More info and to order a copy HERE!
Photos: Kate Green/Gareth Cattermole/Getty