FEATURE:
Renaissance in a New Era
IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift onstage at the MetLife Stadium on 26th May in East Rutherford, New Jersey/PHOTO CREDIT: Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
Looking Inside Incredible and Career-Best Tours from Beyoncé and Taylor Swift
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AS I write this (31st May)…
PHOTO CREDIT: Mason Poole for Parkwood Entertainment
the iconic Beyoncé is in London. Here as part of her RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR. I will come to that tour in a bit and write why it is a career-high for an artist who is in a league of her own. Before coming to Taylor Swift, it is worth thinking about the rigours of a world tour. Madonna embarks on The Celebration Tour very soon. Someone who has helped change the nature of live music in terms of set and spectacle, she is looking ahead to a tour that will see her through to next year. It is a gruelling and long tour that will see her embark on her toughest challenge yet. It is something she is excited about, but you hope that she gets enough time to recharge between dates! One of the most important artists ever, this is going to be one of the biggest and most attended tours ever. She is undoubtably the Queen of Pop. Two other music queens are currently touring huge shows. Even though Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have different sounds and sets, they are both thrilling audiences and critics. Not to say there are not epic sets from male artists at the moment – Arctic Monkeys and Harry Styles are both getting incredible reviews for their tours -, but I think it is women leading the charge. From Self Esteem to Caroline Polachek, I think they are at the top of the tree in terms of the energy, passion and intensity coming from the stage!
I have been looking online and seeing the reviews Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are getting. As is the case with Madonna, I hope that these two artists get chance to rest and find some sort of calm amidst this gigantic tour. They are going to be going from place to place, so there is going to be that tiredness. It is not showing when you look at what they are delivering on the stage. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour looks like it is staying in the U.S. for the rest of the year. She has broken records with this tour. As you can see here, the reaction she has received has been immense! Following the opening shows of the Eras Tour, five of Taylor Swift's albums entered the top 40 of the U.K. chart. Billboard reported that Swift's entire discography rose in daily streams, especially the songs on the set list. She subsequently had seven albums in the top 40 region of the U.S. Billboard 200 chart – that made her the first living artist to do so. Several weeks later, she became the first artist to chart eight albums in the top 40 and nine albums in the top 50. It is mind-boggling when you consider it! Already such a seasoned professional, Swift has been going on stage night after night and giving these incredible shows! The fact that she is performing typically forty-four songs or so a night and she has so many dates in the diary makes it even more impressive. Mere mortals would have problems with their voice or find it too intense. Swift seems to have this phenomenal resolve and strength that means she can perform such a long set each night and give it her all. No surprise that this Eras Tour has been making the news!
I want to come to a live review from Rolling Stone. Rob Sheffield was in attendance when Taylor Swift played the MetLife Stadium on 26th May, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It does seem that this is a career-best tour from one of the world’s biggest artists. Given every element her absolute all, Swift is going to go down as one of the mist exciting and finest live artists ever! It is clear that she has such an incredible connection with her audiences – who, in turn, show her so much love and passion:
“One of the central paradoxes of Taylor Swift — and this woman is nothing BUT paradoxes — is how she writes songs about the tiniest, most secretive agonies, the kind you wouldn’t even confess to your friends, except the only way she knows how to process these moments is turning them into louder-than-life stadium scream-alongs. It is so weird to sing “My Tears Ricochet” in a stadium with 80,000 people, with Taylor swirling in a goth-priestess gown, leading a funeral procession of black-hooded mourners. For most of us, Folklore and Evermore are albums we learned to sing along with by ourselves, at a moment of quarantine, fear, and isolation. Hearing other voices sing these songs with us completely changes how they feel. The moment when Taylor gets to the almost-hidden line “when I’m screaming at the sky” — and she really does scream it at the sky — was cathartic on a level that’s totally new for a Taylor show.
Over the show, she celebrates every part of her career, except her 2006 country debut, which surprisingly doesn’t even make a token appearance, though she’s done some of the songs as acoustic one-offs. (There’s no other career where such a great debut could turn out to be Not Era Enough.) Some of the eras turned into full-blown dance parties, like 1989, Reputation, and Midnights. Fearless was the one era where she flashed her early twangy side — she made such a statement by stepping out on the catwalk after the first verse for a triumphant power twirl. It was pandemonium when she introduced “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story” by asking, “Jersey, are you ready to go back to high school with me?”
PHOTO CREDIT: Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
Evermore really loomed large — it might be the most Era of the Eras, the one that transforms most in a live setting. It’s startling how her moodiest, most introspective songs translate as stadium bangers, from the U2 guitar pulse of “’Tis the Damn Season” to the heartache of “Champagne Problems.” “Willow” became a goth ritual — the fans next to me said, “This is where she has a seance.” “Marjorie” had Taylor singing along with the voice of her late grandmother Marjorie Finlay — almost exactly 20 years to the day after she passed away. “She would have loved to sing at MetLife Stadium,” Taylor said on Sunday night. “I guess technically, she just did.”
“All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)” was the coup de grace, filling up the enormous space with the sound of just Taylor and her thousands of confidantes. It couldn’t help but evoke the moment when she sang it the first time she played MetLife Stadium — 10 summers ago, in July 2013. That night, it already seemed incredibly to think of how far she’d come so fast. But 10 ears later, hearing “All Too Well” in that same venue, it seemed to sum up everywhere she’s traveled in those past 10 years. Like the rest of the Eras Tour, it was a celebration of all the holy ground she and her audience has covered.
Phoebe Bridgers played all three nights with a fantastic guitar-hero set — what a kick to see “Kyoto” and “Garden Song” take on their rightful grandeur as stadium bangers. These were her final Eras shows, and unsurprisingly, she and Taylor got sentimental about it. When she came out on Sunday to duet on “Nothing New,” Phoebe confessed, “You are my hero,” making Taylor groan, “What are you doing right now?” Tay told her her, “Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for making the best music ever.” Then she apologized to the crowd. “Sorry you had to see that. It was like the last day of summer camp for us.” (We’re Taylor fans. We’re used to seeing “that,” whatever “that” happens to be at the moment.) Taylor also lavished love on her openers Gayle, Gracie Abrams, and her “Lover” video co-star Owenn. She also went onstage to a brilliant old-school feminist anthem: Lesley Gore’s 1963 classic “You Don’t Own Me,” a song Taylor could have written.
She ended all three nights with a very special guest: Ice Spice doing her guest verse on “Karma.” Friday night she debuted their “Karma” video during the show, sitting on the stage with her dancers to view it on the screen along with the crowd. “Karma” was a high note to end on, but the amazing thing about the Eras Tour is that it’s so forward-facing, a complex pop history that’s so rich and deep and multilayered, but one that’s still being rewritten right before our eyes, week after week. And there’s no doubt this mastermind is at the absolute peak of her creative powers, after 17 fairly relentless years. This show makes an excellent case that in so many ways, Taylor Swift’s era is really just beginning. (And oh yeah — over the weekend she also released a new song with the hook, “I wouldn’t marry me either.” Yeah, she’s got a lot going on at the moment.)”.
Madonna will shortly achieve the same high, but I don’t think it is a coincidence that both Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are touring at their absolute best right now. Both artists released career high albums last year. Swift put out the pheromonal Midnights; Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE was a critical triumph. After the pandemic put a stop to any touring, both have sort of got this new determination and focus. To give these fans – many of whom will be going to their first gig in a few years – something they will remember for the rest of their lives. I guess neither Beyoncé or Taylor Swift could commit to festivals this year, as they have this set of tour dates that cannot be changed. It would have been awesome to see Swift or Beyoncé at Glastonbury this year! I will come to another review of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. What makes it so special?! The Guardian posted their theory when talking about how the Eras Tour is taking over America right now:
“The national takeover by The Eras Tour owes in part to the show itself, which is a stunning showcase of pop’s most prolific songwriter’s ridiculously prodigious catalog. I reviewed the opening show in Glendale, Arizona, and found it stupefying – a concert the length of the movie Titanic, covering 17 years worth of potent nostalgia, turbocharged by the screaming of 70,000 people. It was the loudest place I’ve ever been. Especially considering the hoops people jumped through to obtain tickets, it is fan service at its most bombastic and virtuosic – a flex and a celebration, tying together years of growth and hype.
It’s also the culmination of years of world-building and Swiftian mythology. Ever since her debut in 2006, Swift has cultivated a uniquely close relationship with her fans, posting on MySpace, commenting on their Instagrams, embedding secret messages in the liner notes of her CDs. With each album cycle, she has expanded on Easter eggs and clues playing on color coding, numerology and of course her lyrics. The result is a very loyal (and enormous) fan base primed to close-read Swifts every move, on-stage or off, as an all-consuming search for clues with personal ties to the star. As Swift told Entertainment Weekly in 2019 of her fans’ detective work: “I’ve trained them to be that way.”
The fixation on details reached a fever pitch last October, during the rollout for Swift’s tenth album, Midnights. Swift teased track titles in a TikTok video series called “Midnights Mayhem With Me”, and published a full cross-platform release schedule on Instagram. The ever-bubbling Swift online ecosystem was at full boil and, as one expert put it to the Atlantic, had almost all the hallmarks of a true metaverse: a huge virtual community unmoored from a single platform, based on a world around Taylor Swift, missing only the 3D virtual space to hang out in.
The Eras Tour offers a physical space for many of her fans to coalesce and a tangible hold on the real world. It has also provided ample material for fans to dissect, at a crucial time in Swift’s personal life. In April, it was revealed that she had split with her partner of six years, the British actor Joe Alwyn, an unnamed figure in many of her songs since 2017. (If you know a Swiftie, you know this was a very big deal.) Weeks later, she was rumored to be dating Matty Healy, the lead singer of the band The 1975, who has since appeared at several of her shows (and dueted with opener Phoebe Bridgers) and whose history of controversial comments has thrown some of the fandom into turmoil. (As one Twitter user put it, the gossip around Swift-Healy is like “the inner workings of the Catholic Church … worth keeping tabs on since it effects the wellbeing of millions and has tremendous financial influence”. On the financial point – the Eras Tour will likely gross anywhere from $500m to over $1bn, counting international dates.)”.
Before moving on, I want to quote from a review by The New York Times. They were there when Swift opened the Eras Tour in Glendale, Arizona. It seemed like the show was heavy on material post-Reputation (2018). It was the opening night of a tour that will go down as one of the biggest and most extraordinary in music history:
“Fans did not appear to be playing favorites — many of them were dressed as Swift from various eras, or as song titles or specific lyrics, or as Swiftie inside jokes. And Swift herself tackled each period of her career — the dynamic ones and the flaccid ones alike — with real gusto, in outfits covered in glitter, or fringe or glittery fringe. Her stage was set up for both big-tent power and maximum intimacy; it jutted out into the crowd for almost the entire length of the floor. Sometimes, she joined her dozen-plus dancers in crisp choreography, like on “ … Ready for It?” “Bad Blood” and, most vividly, “Vigilante ___,” for which she performed an enthusiastic chair routine.
She concluded with a selection of songs from “Midnights,” a challenging album to wrap a show of this magnitude — it’s 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).
In addition to “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” it was the night’s other pillar performance. It’s a song about memory and the ways in which people fail each other, 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”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift kicked off her Eras Tour at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on 17th March, performing a set list heavy on the four albums she has released since her 2018 tour for Reputation/PHOTO CREDIT: Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times
There are several reasons why one could argue that Taylor Swift is among the greatest live performers you will see. Her Eras Tour is a spectacle where you can feel and sense every last detail! She has put everything into it. Someone who has a very powerful connection with her fans, Swift is a music icon for sure. Someone who will be mentioned alongside the all-time greats. TIME reviewed the first night of Beyoncé RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR in Stockholm, Sweden on 10th May. They wrote about what they learned from that set. I have selected a few highlights:
“Beyoncé said not to rush a queen for music videos
If we haven’t learned by now, Beyoncé releases things when she is good and ready. This is her first solo album since 2016’s Lemonade, so we can’t act surprised that she told her fans to be patient and stop asking about the music videos. Her last solo albums, Lemonade, Beyoncé, and The Gift (a concept album for The Lion King), all had visual components that included music videos for each song. This built up the expectation that RENAISSANCE would get the same treatment.
Beyoncé is online and knows her fans have been hounding her, and she has finally responded. During a break on the first night, a disembodied voice addressed the crowd as the words it spoke were displayed on stage: “Aww, you mad? Well, there’s no remedy for that, bitches… I know you’ve asked for the visuals. You’ve called for the Queen. But a Queen moves at her own pace, bitch. Decides when she wants to give you a f-cking taste. So get your fork and your spoon if you got one.”
She is cutting out some of her biggest hits to make room for the new album and deep cuts
Attendees at the concert in Stockholm filmed every moment for the world to see on social media, and many of Beyoncé’s fans were quite surprised by some of the songs she decided to perform. She opened the show with “Dangerously In Love” from her debut album of the same name and ran through a string of popular songs, both mainstream hits and fan favorites. At the opening night show, she also performed songs like “Rather Die Young,” “Flaws and All,” and “Black Parade,” which have not gotten much attention from Beyoncé in recent memory.
Some of Beyoncé’s most popular songs, many of which she has made a point to perform on past tours, are notably missing from the set list. “Run The World” fans, do not worry: she still performs the song. But those who are fans of “If I Were a Boy,” “Single Ladies,” and “Halo,” a notorious closer for Beyoncé—as evidenced by the Homecoming concert film and her Formation World Tour—may be disappointed.
Beyoncé brought back the Les Twins, who have accompanied her on multiple tours and performances
The Les Twins, Laurent and Larry, were approached by Beyoncé years ago after a video of them dancing went viral and they appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. They were invited to perform with Beyoncé at the Billboard Music Awards in 2011, and she took them on the road with her for the Mrs. Carter World Tour, her joint On The Run Tour with Jay-Z, and her Coachella performance in 2018. Her fans were excited to see the Les Twins back on stage with her for this new tour.
It was gay as hell: An unabashed celebration of the LGBTQ+ community
In the lead-up to the album, Beyoncé dedicated the project to her Uncle Johnny, who battled HIV when she was young. He is referenced in the song “HEATED,” and in the outro of the song, Beyoncé takes on the role of MC at a ball (a queer dance party) where she starts “reading.” All of these influences took center stage at the Renaissance World Tour and will make a strong statement when it comes stateside in July, given the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being introduced across the country.
One of the biggest displays of affection for her queer fans came even before the concert started. As concertgoers poured into the stadium, they were greeted with a fake TV error screen, but if you look closely, some of the colors are different. This error screen has the colors of the progress pride flag, which includes colors from the transgender pride flag, as well as brown and black to indicate the greater discrimination experienced by those members of the community. Twitter users joked, “Nashville is gonna be ready to arrest Beyoncé for this, lord Jesus,” referencing the state’s attempt to ban drag shows and broader attempts across the US to infringe on trans people’s rights”.
I am going to finish with a review from The Line of Best Fit regarding a set this week at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. Like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé has a large L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ fanbase. The sets are celebrating them, but it is clear that it is essential for Beyoncé to salute this community. Showing so much love to the Black queer community, we have an artist who has this objective and noble aim. Rather than it being an ordinary tour, at a time when the trans and L.G.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community are being vilified and marginalised in many parts of America, the RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR seems like a celebration and spotlighting that the world needs to see – and one that many people need to learn from and take to hear. Like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé has this wonderful love of her fans. Someone who has produced a set that is her absolute best:
“Of course, the show’s visuals are overtly impressive, with each section receiving its own deepfake set on screen in an interlude before melting away into oblivion, making room for the next. The physical sets are similarly excessive as well, and the fact that a 20-foot tall disco-ball horse coming out of the giant screen just for a three-minute song seems… over the top?
We see endless montages of music videos from Beyoncé's past, present and seemingly her future – as we’re teased with shots from RENAISSANCE’s unreleased and highly sought-after visual counterpart – “I know you hear me, you’ve asked for the visuals,” says the screen in one interlude. “You've called for the queen, but a queen moves at her own pace, bitch.” It’s these parts of the show that maintain Beyoncé's unattainable, unreachable air about her – it wouldn’t be a Beyoncé show without it.
There are moments that bring Bey down to earth too, with an unmistakeable teleprompter at the back of the arena for her to read off when the lyrics get a little too much to handle. It’s only at select moments that she uses this though, as it’s easy to notice when her gaze locks in, her choreo eases up, and she focusses on delivering the show of a lifetime. What this reminds us is that no; Beyoncé isn’t a god, she’s a human just like us, but my god is she a professional. “Sometimes I mess up the words,” she announces to the crowd before her ‘favourite song to sing’ “HEATED,” “can you help me?”
IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé during the RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 29th May in London/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood Entertainment
The show’s high point was one of these human moments. After “Love On Top” ran its (short) course, the crowd kept it going – key changes and all. Beyoncé joins in for a moment that feels authentic and genuine (unlike her trademark canned politeness we got earlier in the show), going higher and higher until needed to stop them for time. Then as we’re thrown straight into “Crazy In Love,” the moment is over just a fast as it began. “PURE / HONEY” was up there too, with stage cameras akin to ROSALIA’s tour rotating around her to create engaging visuals on screen.
Similarly, there were questionable moments too. Opening with six slow songs was certainly a choice, and the final number “SUMMER RENAISSANCE” felt a little like an afterthought in comparison to the high-concept vision of the rest of the show. But even after the final song, Beyoncé is lifted up via cables and paraded over the crowd as she thanks her band and tries to communicate with the crowd from a 12 foot height – it’s a surreal moment that could’ve been utilised better at a different time, but if that’s the worst thing that happened then it’s safe to say the show was pretty spectacular.
This show is, undoubtedly, Beyoncé’s best. With massive budgets, joyful queer representation, undeniable talent and impressive showmanship, it’s impossible to say that she hasn’t perfected her formula. Yes, she may be toning down her robotic nature from tours past and easing up on her dancing, but this actually feels like a good thing. We’re seeing Beyoncé at her most personable and honest – by admitting her flaws to us, that simply makes her even more flawless.
PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood Entertainment
Setlist
Dangerously in Love
Flaws and All
1+1
I'm Goin Down (Mary J. Blige cover) (shortened)
I Care
River Deep, Mountain High
I'M THAT GIRL
COZY
ALIEN SUPERSTAR
Lift Off
CUFF IT
ENERGY
BREAK MY SOUL
Formation
Diva
Run the World (Girls)
MY POWER
BLACK PARADE
Partition
Savage (Remix)
CHURCH GIRL
Get Me Bodied
Before I Let Go
Rather Die Young
Love On Top
Crazy In Love
PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA
VIRGO'S GROOVE
Naughty Girl
MOVE
HEATED
Already (dancers interlude)
AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM
PURE/HONEY
SUMMER RENAISSANCE”.
I wanted to celebrate two amazing women in music who are both touring career-best sets. They are queens that are at the top of their games! Powerful, intimate and spectacular in equal measures, the Eras Tour and RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR are thrilling people! The fact that articles are being dedicated to how groundbreaking and history-making these tours are shows that we have among us two of the greatest artists ever. Maybe at different stages in their career, it would be tantalising if Beyoncé and Taylor Swift crossed paths and performed together. As Swift prepares to play Chicago’s Soldier Field tomorrow (2nd June), Beyoncé plays at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium tonight. We are very lucky to have Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. They have both proven, with their current tours, that they are…
LEGENDS and icons.