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How Did This Feel So Intimate?
On her 149-stop Eras Tour, Taylor Swift made gigantic stadiums seem impressively small.
It saw masses of “ Taylor-gaters ” congregating globally; stoked Beatles-caliber mania(neurologists were called upon to explain Swifties’ widespread “post-concert amnesia,” in which fans were forgetting the details due to the sensory overload from their “heightened emotional states”); and, on the first of two nights I attended at MetLife Stadium, at least one leather jacket bedazzled with the instructive “FUCK THE PATRIARCHY.” Yet amid the glittering seas of cowboy boots and Taylor-tailored fits and lyric-driven friendship bracelets (how is the bead industry doing? The alchemy of Eras came as much from its individual performances as how it staged the whole mythos of her songbook, narrating the arc of her 18-year journey from the twangy infatuations of Fearless to (as she titled the Tortured Poets Department segment in 2024) “Female Rage.” Storytelling is what drew Swift to country music, and she’s been obsessed with the trajectories of the pop greats forever. That felt true observing thousands of young women screaming “When everyone believes ya, what’s that like?” during “ The Man,” at the very front of the setlist; when Taylor introduced “Betty” by explaining her fantasy of writing a song that narrates a teenage boy’s rigorous apology to his girlfriend; after the extended outro of “The Archer,” another anthem simmering on unresolved feelings and how the conventions of adulthood can haunt us.
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