Being relatable has long been Swift’s calling card. Even as her fame and wealth has soared (she joined the Forbes World’s Billionaires List earlier this year), she’s continued to keep fans believing that she’s not really all that different from them. This starts with her songs: universal experiences – heartache, betrayal, loss, revenge, regret – written about with remarkable specificity. But she’s also carefully cultivated that feeling of inclusivity at her live shows.
From the stage, which extends two-thirds of the way into the stadium so that Swift spends most of the show in the middle of the crowd, to her use of “we” and “us” (“We’re about to go on a little adventure together…”) to the LED wristbands that turn the crowd into part of the show (Coldplay pioneered this at their gigs), the whole thing is designed to feel like a collective experience. Swift first emerges from a puff of pastel parachutes to ecstatic, ear-piercing screams. For a few minutes, up on a raised platform, she seems celestial. Then she smiles, utters “Oh hi!” as if she’s greeting old friends, and the untouchable suddenly becomes attainable.
The show runs like clockwork, but Swift changes just enough to make each night feel unique for the audience. In her short acoustic set she’s never repeated the same combination of surprise songs and deep-cut mash-ups. She has greeted the crowds in languages including Welsh, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. In every city, one of her backing dancers, Kameron Saunders, utters a locally-tailored put down during We Are Never Getting Back Together (in Ireland: “the neck of ye”, London: “up yours…”, Edinburgh: “bolt ya rocket”). In May, Swift added a new segment to the setlist, featuring songs from this year’s The Tortured Poet’s Department, including the single I Can Do It with a Broken Heart, a track written about performing on the Eras Tour with a broken heart.
A ‘communal belonging’
The tour has been a rolling stone, gathering not moss, but new traditions and meaning along the way. Fans have created their own rituals that have become baked into the show – an ecstatic, extended applause after the song Champagne Problems (which Swift dutifully pretends to be surprised by every time), chanting Kendrick Lamar’s lines from his remix to Bad Blood, and, of course, the friendship bracelets – a tradition sparked by a lyric in her song You’re On Your Own Kid. In every stadium thousands of forearms are weighed down by stacks of hand-crafted bracelets that are traded with strangers, security guards and even, at one London show, Sir Paul McCartney. For fans, taking part in these moments are as much a part of the experience as the music.
Another customis for fans to scream “take us to church” as Swift hits the high notes of Reputation-era track Don’t Blame Me. Philosopher Simon Critchley, whose recent Book On Mysticism explores the transcendent power of music and art, argues that they might already be there. “I think her fans are going to church, or the closest they can get to church,” he tells the . Critchley, who sees music as “maybe the last bastion of something like religious transcendence” thinks Swift is scratching a metaphysical itch for fans. “They don’t think she’s God, but to them she’s someone very special, and she mediates a form of communal belonging that is lacking in other areas of their lives.”
