GLENDALE, United States — The most meaningful Taylor
Swift recording of the past few years is almost certainly “All Too Well (10
Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)”, as layered and
provocative as its title is unwieldy. A revision and expansion of one of her
most gutting songs — the original appears on her 2011 breakthrough pop album,
“Red” — it dissects a problematic, lopsided, and ultimately scarring
relationship with forensic detail. It is a scathing commentary on the ex who
inspired the track, and it also has something to say about the version of Swift
who first committed this story to song over a decade ago: Swift now understands
things that Swift then could not possibly have known.
اضافة اعلان
About halfway through Swift’s three-hour performance at
State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on Friday — the opening night of the
Eras Tour, her first roadshow in five years — she was at the center of the long
runway stage, elevated on a platform, holding 70,000 people rapt with this tale
of righteous fury and anguish. Plenty were singing along with her, but somehow,
the accumulated voices sounded like one huge hush, students in awe of the
master class.
There were plenty of peaks during this concert drawn from
the full arc of Swift’s career — the first of a sold-out 52-date national tour
that made news for its disastrous rollout of ticket sales — but none quite like
this. Throughout the night, she zigzagged between stretches of high-octane hits
from older albums and mixed-bag selections from more recent ones — celebration
with splashes of duty. What this ambitious and energetic if sometimes
scattershot performance underscored, however, was just how many pivots Swift
has undertaken in her career, and how the accompanying risks can have wildly
different consequences.
She was at the center of the long runway stage, elevated on a platform, holding 70,000 people rapt with this tale of righteous fury and anguish… somehow, the accumulated voices sounded like one huge hush, students in awe of the master class.
Through the years, across the genresIn modern-pop parlance, album rollouts are often described
as eras, but Swift’s career has not always been that cleanly delineated. She
has made a few key turns over the years, though — on “Red”, when she divebombed
into gleaming, centrist pop; on “Reputation”, when she made some of her
sleekest and most au courant music; and on “Folklore” and “Evermore”, when she
transformed into a woodland fairy.
Songs from “Red”, one of Swift’s most acclaimed albums,
arrived mid-show, and they were potent wallops — a jubilant and cheeky “22”,
followed by the indignant “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew
You Were Trouble”. And when Swift, in a one-legged bodysuit embroidered with a snake
motif, performed selections from “Reputation”, she showed just how wrongly
maligned that album was upon its release. “Don’t Blame Me” was husky and
alluring, while “Look What You Made Me Do”, performed in front of dancers
trapped in glass boxes dressed as old versions of Swift, brimmed with attitude.
Swift was cheerily, proactively defensive about “Evermore” —
“an album I absolutely love despite what some of you say on TikTok” — but that
segment of the show was particularly limp, especially the gloomy and spare
“Marjorie” and “’Tis the Damn Season”. And the jolt from the melancholia of
that restrained singer-songwriter release to the brazen stomp of “Reputation”
was awkward. Songs from “Folklore” fared slightly better, especially “Cardigan”
and “Betty”, but this section teetered toward melodrama, as if compensating for
the less-assured production on those songs.
In modern-pop parlance, album rollouts are often described as eras, but Swift’s career has not always been that cleanly delineated.
The set list overindexed on the four albums Swift released
after her last major tour, supporting “Reputation” in 2018 — the chipper and
jaunty “Lover”, the one-two bucolic swaddle of “Folklore” and “Evermore”, and
“Midnights”, released in October. But the Eras conceit also meant that Swift
would not have to exclusively lean on songs from these albums, which have, in
general, been less popular, consistent, and ambitious than her earlier ones.
Highs, lows, and production pointsShe opened the show with a run of songs from “Lover”, a
hit-or-miss album that still yielded some excellent tracks. “The Man”,
performed in full office cosplay, was biting and hilarious, and “Cruel Summer”
had an almost ecstatic chill to it. From there, she jumped back to “Fearless”,
her second album, and the first one made with an understanding that her
relationship with country music might only be a dalliance. The earnest pleas in
“You Belong With Me” and “Love Story” still had their old bite.
She concluded with a selection of songs from “Midnights”, a
challenging album to wrap a show of this magnitude — it is more an amalgam of
old Swift ideas than a harbinger of a new direction. During “Anti-Hero”, the
screen behind Swift showed a version of her as a kind of King Kong, bigger than
everyone and unfairly besieged, and on “Lavender Haze”, she was surrounded by
dancers hoisting huge cloudy puffs.
There was a distinct shimmer that ran through the night’s
final three selections, the tinny “Bejeweled”, the spacey “Mastermind”, and the
needling “Karma”. All of those songs, which can be brittle from a lyrical
perspective, benefited from the scale of the production here.
But something far more meaningful had come just before that
show-closing run. During an acoustic segment, she came out to the very farthest
point of the stage, sat at a small piano and played her very first single, “Tim
McGraw” (the only song she performed from her self-titled 2006 debut album).
Unlike “All Too Well”, which now benefits from the wisdom that time affords, “Tim McGraw” remained as raw as the day it was recorded.
In addition to “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”, it was
the night’s other pillar performance. It is a song about memory and the ways in
which people fail one another, and she sang it heavy with regret and tinged
with sweetness.
But unlike “All Too Well”, which now benefits from the
wisdom that time affords, “Tim McGraw” remained as raw as the day it was
recorded. No real tweaks, no rejoinder from the new Swift to the old one — just
a searing take on the sort of love that makes for a better song than
relationship. There are some things Swift simply has understood all along.
Read more Trending
Jordan News