The football stadium is where rock megastars go to show off their muscle and might. It’s no place for the small, the slight or the meek.
So when Taylor Swift announced that some of the dates in her Speak Now Tour would be at football stadiums, including our own Arrowhead, some of us wondered how her pop anthems, her stage personae and her somewhat infamous voice would translate.
Saturday night, we got our answer: Just fine. For more than two hours, she rained spectacle and hit songs on nearly 50,000 fans, most of them fawning teen and preteen girls with mothers in tow.
The show was a manic rush of sights and sounds: fashion/wardrobe changes, dancing (including ballet and tap), aerial feats, the usual visual treats (confetti, fireworks, flash pots) and 17 songs performed by Swift and her nine-piece band, all presented before a towering, lavish and garish stage (big red curtain, balcony, ramps, trap doors) that rivaled one or two of U2’s stadium showcases.
At times, the circus going on around her threatened to overwhelm Swift and her songs.
The stage was flanked by two large, high-definition video screens that broadcast all the action and energy to those in the upper deck of Arrowhead. It also projected close-ups of Swift singing and playing instruments (guitar, banjo, piano, ukulele).
If she was getting any vocal “help,” it wasn’t obvious. In fact, it was obvious many times, especially when the cameras zoomed in on her, that she was singing live — and more than adequately.
She would give the folks in back some personal attention about halfway through the show, when she left the main stage, skipped to the other end of the stadium and performed solo-acoustic on a satellite stage, under another prop: A glowing, lighted tree. If anything, all the skits and interludes, which made time for all the wardrobe changes, interrupted the flow of the show.
Do the math: 17 songs in two hours and 10 minutes means there were plenty of breaks.
All the gowns and glitter and dancing and props and drama skits were icing on the cupcakes, which were the songs.
The night was one long sing-along, even when she slipped into a few verses of One Republic’s “Apologize.”
She opened with “Sparks Fly” from her “Speak Now” album, which has gone triple-platinum since its release a year ago, then two more from that album: “Mine” and “Story of Us.” But it didn’t matter much which album she pulled a song from, her fans sang along with her all night.
The show was one long highlight but a few songs ignited louder responses, such as “You Belong With Me,” “Fearless” on the ukulele, “Dear John” and the closer, “Love Story.”
Swift turns 22 in December, but she still has some of the mannerisms of a girl in her teens (the skipping, the hair flinging, some facial expressions), which suit some of her material. She ended with one of her best songs, “Fifteen,” a parable about young love that seems to resonate hard with the adolescents and with the mothers who brought them.
She can probably do that song until she retires, but it will be interesting to see how she evolves, as a songwriter and stage performer, away from the teen themes that have made her so popular. I suppose she needn’t worry about that for a bit. Right now, she’s one of the biggest things in popular music, and she has the stadium show to prove it.
