By Alexander Allen
July 14 – The first of Taylor Swift’s three concerts from her Eras Tour tri-state Memorial Day weekend takeover took place on May 26th.
Taylor’s love for New York goes back nine or so years. In 2014, she released her single, “Welcome To New York,” on her 1989 album. Taylor’s neighborhood of choice, the West Village, of course. She used to rent 23 Cornelia Street, while her Tribeca apartment was being renovated. Taylor’s love of the neighborhood and apartment resulted in the track, “Cornelia Street,” on her “Lover” album.
New York loves Taylor, as witnessed by the crowd of fans who waited outside to get a glimpse of the superstar, as she slipped in and slipped out of Electric Lady Studio, in the Greenwich Village, during and after her tour’s holiday weekend takeover.
Ever since she made the tour announcement, it has consistently been in all of the news cycles. It all started when Taylor’s fans crashed the Ticketmaster servers during her pre-sale. I’ve been attending concerts since 1993 and I’ve never seen this level of anticipation and excitement. Not even for Prince, Madonna, nor Janet Jackson. A first indeed. A lot of artists claim that their tours are sold out, but you can still obtain tickets from resell sites. However, for Taylor Swift’s concert tours, the few tickets that were available on the resell sites were in the thousands of dollars for nosebleed seating. She is undoubtedly, the most in-demand artist today. The tickets are so hard to come by, that during her Philadelphia tour stop, fans without tickets remained outside and created a parking lot concert, by singing along to Taylor, while she was inside of the stadium. Prior to the start of the concert fans started “Taylor-gating”, where they passed out handmade friendship bracelets. This was my first concert where the headliner performed longer two and half hours. Taylor Swift changed the game and performed for three hours and forty minutes at this particular show. Her set list included 44 songs, along with 16 costume changes. Another first. Taylor’s fashionable costumes came from designer labels such as: Versace, Roberto Cavalli, Oscar De La Renta, Alberta Ferretti, Etro, and Christian Louboutin, just to name a few. Some of the highlights from this concert were all exclusives. Taylor debuted the premiere of her “Karma” remix music video featuring Ice Spice; and to close out the concert, they performed the song together for the first time. What an awesome concert experience that I will not soon forget. Here are some more numbers for you. It is expected that Taylor Swift will make 1.6 billion dollars from this tour. She is truly living out her wildest dreams this summer.
