‘No dad dancing, okay?’ instructed my 12-year-old daughter firmly when we arrived at Wembley Stadium on Sunday evening.
Elise will put up with a lot of things from her father, but it turns out I’m not going to get away with making some frantic moves for Taylor Swift like Prince William did in front of his kids last Friday.
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I wasn’t even allowed to wear “boring” clothes.
Nor could we miss a single second of the entire six-hour extravaganza, including incredible warm-up acts from Benson Boone and Paramore, and extensive – and expensive! – time spent in the merchandise area.
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I’ve barely been to any shows since I ran The Sun’s Bizarre column from 1989 to 1994, and I’ve seen so many shows that I’ve developed an allergy to them.
But when you have a young daughter, not going to a Taylor concert isn’t an option, so I came out of retirement.
And I was genuinely curious to experience pop music’s biggest phenomenon since the peak of Madonna and Michael Jackson, and possibly even the peak of the Beatles.
I saw Madge and Jacko at Wembley during my Bizarre days, and they were both sensational.
Could Taylor measure up to them, or even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the Fab Four?
She certainly does so commercially.
His 152-date Eras tour will raise more than £1.5 billion from ticket sales alone when it ends in December.
Merch grosses another £1.5 million PER NIGHT, adding £228 million to the pot, and the show’s film grossed another £204 million, taking the overall revenue to almost £2 billion.
These are staggering statistics, surpassing anything any other musician has ever earned from a tour.
And that’s before we get into the huge global boost to the Taylor economy, which has seen cities around the world, including London, enjoy soaring Swift-related spending in hotels, restaurants, taxis, shops, car rentals and sightseeing.
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So, Taylor Swift is arguably a big, gigantic deal.
And his record sales are equally sensational, with his latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, selling 2.6 million copies in its first week and becoming his eighth No. 1 album on the US Billboard chart in the last four years alone.
Added to this, one in every 78 songs streamed in America in 2023 was by Swift.
These, again, are insane numbers.
But is it worth it?
How good is she?
The Eras tour is a perfect way to evaluate this, as it covers her entire 19-year career, like a Greatest Hits from each stage of her life, and she sings more than 40 songs in three and a half hours.
My first impression upon entering Wembley was the palpable joy and excitement on everyone’s faces.
Most of the audience came dressed to play (even I took Elise’s advice and wore my most colorful shirt), and the stadium was filled with glitter, cowboy hats, and the legendary friendship bracelets that Swifties have embraced on this tour to share. . her love of all things Taylor.
Wembley was buzzing and when a countdown clock on the stage suddenly appeared to indicate the seconds remaining until take-off, 89,000 people went wild.
So here she was, blasting onto the stage like a silver, white-booted, heat-seeking missile, and soon exploding into one of her biggest bangers, Cruel Summer, as gigantic towers of smoke erupted all around her.
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Big stars don’t usually bring out their biggest weapons this early in a show, but it was a genius move, like firing off a Catherine Wheel seconds into a fireworks display.
“Do you know how amazing YOU are making me feel right now?’” Taylor exclaimed.
I looked at Elise and her friend, both singing and dancing with delirious joy.
And then I looked around and saw everyone else doing the same.
“I have my ways of knowing what kind of crowd it is before I even go out,” Taylor said. “My dad barged into my dressing room earlier and said Tay, if the first night was here (raises hand), the second night was here (raises louder), then the third night is out of the question!”
True or not, she made us believe.
The subliminal theme of the entire show was “We’re in this together” and she never stopped reminding her fans of that.
And therein lies the magic of Taylor Swift.
“Thanks to you, I’m feeling immediately and extremely powerful,” she said, feeding on their energy as voraciously as they fed on hers.
The hits come thick and fast, from The Man and You Need To Calm Down to Midnight Rain and Shake It Off, and I was surprised by how many I remembered.
It’s also remarkable to think that she wrote them all herself.
Of course, they’re mostly about love, romance, heartbreak, and pain.
And her fans know they’re based on Taylor’s own relationships, good, bad and ugly, which adds to the visceral support they feel for her.
There is no denying his incredible talent; she sings, plays guitar and piano, dances, acts and changes dresses faster than a catwalk model.
And she talks to you about her life.
I found the most moving moment when she talked about the pandemic and how she feared we would never do this together again.
Ironically, given that Taylor sings a lot about suffering, it feels like a much-needed antidote to all the suffering everyone has endured in recent years from deadly viruses, wars, and cost-of-living crises.
The show is a spectacular cavalcade of raunchy, flame-fueled fun intertwined with very real and heartfelt honesty about love lost and gained, life endured and enjoyed, hopes dashed and reborn.
But ultimately it’s about being happy; how to find it, how to keep it, how to rescue it from the depths of despair.
And who doesn’t want a little happiness right now amidst all the horror?
Towards the end, I looked down and saw Sir Paul McCartney and his daughter Mary dancing with some Swifties to ‘But Daddy, I Love Him’.
Everyone, including the ex-Beatle, seemed very happy.
Just like Prince William did when his father danced like a whirling dervish to Shake It Off in the happiest moment anyone has seen him since his wife and father were diagnosed with cancer.
To emphasize how happy she is now, Taylor even brought out her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, in a top hat and tails for a funny skit as she sang I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.
As he carried her in his burly arms, to tumultuous cheers from the crowd, Taylor’s message to his former lovers was clear: “I have the last laugh, idiots.”
In my time at Bizarre, I’ve seen better live singers (Freddie Mercury), better dancers (Jacko), and better all-around musicians (Prince), but I’ve never seen anyone with a stronger connection to their audience than Taylor Swift.
As for their songs, they are the purest form of pop music, each telling its own little story, each tugging at the heartstrings in its own way.
She writes great pop because she understands what people go through on the relentless emotional rollercoaster of life, having experienced it herself.
The last time I came to Wembley was three years ago for the Euro final, when 10,000 drunk idiots stormed in without tickets to cause mayhem, England lost their biggest match in 57 years and I got covid.
Suffice it to say, this was a most pleasurable experience.
I didn’t need to ask Elise if she had fun.
His beatific face said it all.
The only buffer for me came when we left, and the flight attendants handed us a free friendship bracelet.
Every other member of our group received uplifting and loving messages.
Mine simply said, “Do you have to be so mean?”
There’s no hiding place for Taylor Swift.
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
