Taylor Swift’s Reputation Tour…Ready For It?
Swift ends with a bang as she creates a mashup of two popular songs “We Are Never Getting Back Together” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” with bringing out a three-level fountain that spits out water. Swift and her backup dancers stomp around the fountain, splashing water everywhere as fireworks shoot out at the top of the stage and confetti shoots out to the crowd.
August 20, 2018
Ending a musical hiatus that started in 2014, singer/songwriter Taylor Swift released Reputation, an eerie album revolving around love, revenge, and her rebirth, on November 10, 2017. She announced to her fans three days after the album’s release that she would tour for this album globally. “Swifties,” sold out stadiums and arenas in the span of hours, trembling with excitement to see a new and improved Taylor Swift at the peak of her career.
Swift rocked the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta with her thrilling, vengeful music, on August 10th and 11th. Her opening acts, British pop-star Charli XCX and former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello, showcasing their stunning vocals and pumping up the crowd with their top-selling hits, “Boom Clap,” and “Havana.”
The electric atmosphere caused the concert to play out like a movie, showing Swift’s impressive musicianship. The stage changed colors to embody what each song looked and felt like as it played, and Swift used props to further enhance her performance.
“I loved how the different stage settings contradicted the dark, ominous theme of the tour. In my opinion, this new Taylor is my favorite Taylor. I feel like she has opened up a side of herself that she has been concealing,” all-time fan Daniela Duron said.
To connect the crowd, each concert attendee grabbed a bracelet at the entrance of the stadium that synchronized with each song and glowed in time with the music.
For her first performance, the stage consisted of two, giant screens that read “rep,” the abbreviation of reputation, while Swift stood in between the letters. Smoke, along with red and black colors, made way for Swift to appear as a ghost, symbolizing the death of the old Taylor Swift. Screams commenced as Swift opened the night and walked onto the main stage, asking the crowd “…Ready For It?”
The crowd becomes crazy as Swift starts the concert with her hit single “…Ready for It?”. The opener song included mini fireworks which went off at the end of the song making her concert start off with a bang.
The “Delicate” singer created a new revelation for herself after bitter exes and backstabbing friends caused drama, alerting the media to believe in Swift’s ruined reputation. Her apparent exile revealed a more powerful persona—one ready to fight back the haters. While she sang her first single from the album “Look What You Made Me Do,” large, inanimate red-eyed snakes rose from the main stage as the lyrics “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trust me, I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams,” played, alluding to the venomous people she battled through all the drama.
Swift’s song “Look What You Made Me Do”, which hit the radio first from her newest album, made the crowd become ecstatic when a gigantic inflatable snake popped up in the middle of her song. The inflatable snake resembles the people who spoke horribly about Swift behind her back. This made her reputation come off a way which she did not intend to come off as.
After floating on a light-up bubble while singing “Delicate,” Swift joined Charli XCX and Cabelo on one of the extra stages to perform the hit “Shake It Off,” before picking up her guitar to play “This Love,” a fan favorite off the 1989 album. Other tunes performed on the extra stages included “Blank Space,” “Style,” and “Dress.”
To return to the main stage, Swift rode in a skeleton of a python while performing “Bad Blood.” The performance of “You Belong With Me,” an iconic song about highschool love, excited fans as they bopped to the pop-country harmony. The mixture of old and new music kept the crowd happy, but also showed Swift’s true sound and vision.
Swift hops in a golden bubble during her performance while singing “Delicate.” She moves from one side of the Mercedes Benz stadium to other stages set up on the other side. On the other side, Swift sings five songs so she can visit the rest of her fans.
Settling down the pop-rock, Swift played the piano to perform a melody of “Long Live,” and “New Year’s Day,” two songs about living in the present and never mourning the past. The crowd instantly brought out their phone flashlights as they happily sang along to the lyrics. The moment brought fans to tears as a spotlight lit down onto the singer while the synchronized bracelets showed a sea of purple and blue colors.
Swift slows down the tone of the concert and plays “Long Live” and “New Year’s Day” on the piano. Before singing, she talks to her fans to try and get to know a little more about them by asking questions and waiting on the crowd to cheer back their answers. Swift also talks to the crowd creating a heart to heart conversation leading into “Long Live”. This creates the songs to have more meaning behind them.
To end the show, the revenge-seeking popstar fused “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” into a harmonic mashup. The stage captured the feel of “The Great Gatsby,” emphasizing parties and drama. Fireworks and a rainbow sky of colors beautifully lit up the stadium as the concert gracefully ended with a final “Thank you, I love you all so much,” from Swift.
The Reputation Stadium tour sets high expectations for musicians on tours, as Swift revealed her true power and talent. Before fading to black, the giant stage screens showed the phrase “and in the death of her reputation, she felt truly alive,” declaring that Swift truly feels pure happiness, even after all of the messy incidents she endured. Swift’s stadium tour opened a way for herself to showcase her tough, yet sassy identity, and turned the whole show into her revenge plot.
