Taylor Swift 1989 Tour

Yes, I went to her stop at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara last Sat, with my daughter of course. And this was the first time ever I have been to an American pop-star's concert. (Depeche Mode was close but they were not American :P) We bought the tix in the morning of the first day it went on sale and we could only get the "top-level" tix (which still costs $100+ each) We estimated she probably makes between 1-9mil that night. Well, according to this article, she made 2.5mil per stop on average recently. And this tour will push her 2015 earning over 100mil.

Enough about the business aspect, let's talk about the music! So, the format of a pop concert is actually similar to a rock concert: both started with some lesser opening acts (I mean, usually, once in a while you find the likes of Alice Cooper opening for the likes of Motley Crue) The openers for Swift were Shawn Mendes and Vance Joy. Mendes played all by himself with only his guitar (and his voice) which was tough (but also less people to share his money :P) Apparently he has lots of teen female fans and didn't mind. Personally I don't care too much of his songs (sounded like a lesser Ed Sheeren) The music of the Australian Vance Joy was more enjoyable to me as there were traces of influence by English bands like Oasis (according to Wikipedia, he's inspired by George Harrison, so that's in the ballpark)

The wait for TayTay's appearance was finally over ~9pm (oh yeah, that's a long wait. My daughter was a huge fan of Swift for several years. It peaked around the time of the release of "1989" last year though. You know a girl could only like the same artist with the same level of dedication for so long! She has already "moved on" to One Direction. I guess our constant reminding of how expensive the tickets were made her appreciate it a bit more. In fact, glad to see her enjoying the concert a lot that night) The setlist could be found on the Wikipedia. As expected, she started with several hits from 1989, which represented her transition from pop-country to "simply" pop. I was on the fence about this transition. I mean, I like to see musicians sticking with their roots. However, Swift has been more pop than country already so she might as well cross the line completely. Anyway, the new songs are kinda enjoyable. I just think the country elements made her more stand out from the other run-of-the-mill pop stars. I admire the efforts in rearranging her old and new songs to make them coherent in one concert though, for example, Trouble was rearranged and sounded more mysterious. The other highlights include her playing acoustic guitar/piano to accompany her singing, and she played a white Johnny Marr Fender Jaguar on the song We are never ever getting back together (You know how much I love Jaguar :) Last but not least, the production was top-notch: the sound system was loud and clear and the "run-way" stage that split, elevate and rotate was cool (and seemed safe for TayTay and the dancers) I wonder what concert I would go with my daughter next.