She wore a gossamer gown, a faux fur coat, a one-legged, one-armed bodysuit and too many shimmering sequins for a costumer to count. We counted 17 or so different looks for Taylor Swift Friday night at U.S. Bank Stadium.
And 44 songs, 14 dancers, six musicians, four professional backup vocalists, 64,287 volunteer backup singers, three stages connected by a runway, multiple set pieces and giant video screens.
The concert was Taylor Swift on steroids.
And it was wow-inspiringly spectacular at times, wonderfully intimate at other times. Not to mention longer than a major league baseball game (no pitch clock necessary) or any other concert these days. A super-generous 3¼ hours, not including the two opening acts.
Swift's current Eras Tour — 64 stadium gigs this year in North and South America with 38 additional overseas performances in 2024 — will go down as an extraordinary landmark in popular music and not just because of the massive ticket demand (and record-setting prices and grosses) that literally broke the Ticketmaster system.
Swift's conceit is bold and brilliant: grouping songs album by album, nonchronologically, from throughout her 10-LP recording career, which began in 2006. She started Friday with two deep tracks from 2019's "Lover," the first of four new albums she's released since her last tour in 2018, and ended with a set of selections from last year's "Midnights."
When it comes to marathon concerts, Bruce Springsteen, who set a record of 4 hours and 6 minutes (38 songs), may be more impassioned and urgent, Paul McCartney (38 songs) may be more blissfully nostalgic, and we won't experience Beyoncé (34 songs) until July 20 but she's devoting nearly half of her current tour to material from her latest album. In other words, those legends invariably leave fans wanting more — this favorite song or that one.
Not Tay Tay. Her show Friday may be the most fan-fulfilling show I've ever seen in 48 years of reviewing. It's rivaled only by Barbra Streisand's 1994 tour, her first in 28 years, that left her fans verklempt.