Concert review
If Taylor Swift stays in Seattle any longer, she’s going to break more Lumen Field records than Russell Wilson.
For the second afternoon in a row, Occidental Avenue was awash with pink and blue on Sunday as Swifties converged with Toronto Blue Jays fans still lingering around Sodo like invasive pigeons. Inside, the excitement was just as palpable as it was a day earlier when the pop megastar settled in for a two-night stand as her ballyhooed Eras Tour took over the city.
Swift made a little Seattle history during Night 1, as the 72,171 fans who packed the stadium made up the largest concert crowd the venue has ever held. U2 set the previous record in 2011 when the pop rockers’ 360 Tour drew more than 70,000. After prancing through her hit “Cruel Summer” just two songs into her Sunday set, Swift pointed out another piece of Lumen Field history being made: With Sunday’s show, Swift became the first artist to play two consecutive nights at the stadium, the back-to-back sellouts that drew 144,000 fans combined a testament to her massive draw.
As expected, there was little deviation in Swift’s 3 ½-hour performance, and even the fans’ response) from the first night, save for two “surprise” songs (more on that below). Romping through her hater-repelling fan favorite (aren’t they all “fan favorites” at this point?) “You Need to Calm Down,” fans once again shouted the ally-affirming line “shade never made anybody less gay!” loud enough for the hellfire street preachers who swarmed the stadium district this weekend to hear them outside.
In a perfect world, people on the internet would stop being mean and Swift’s romantic partners would be emotionally mature puppy rescuers who are also amazing chefs. But then the world would be deprived of one of the most beloved genres in modern American song: the Taylor Swift dismissal banger.
During the “1989” portion of Sunday’s career-spanning show, Swift and her battalion of dancers who stormed the catwalk shimmied away bringers of bad vibes with a gleeful “Shake It Off,” flicking them into the dustbin with an unbothered jazz hand. About a dozen songs earlier, Swift bid a permanent farewell to an unredeemable lover with a reveling “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” — one of her first great kiss-off jams.
One of the high points in both Seattle shows came with a pair of surprise acoustic songs Swift plays each night, selections unique to each show amid an otherwise locked-in set list.
“I really wanted to do something new on this tour and really just challenge myself to explore every corner of the catalog of music that I’ve made, and songs that I haven’t ever played live before,” Swift explained on Sunday. “That sounds exciting to me, playing something that just wouldn’t occur to me to do acoustically.”
On Sunday, Swift seemed to dig a little deeper for her “surprise” songs, starting with “Message in a Bottle,” a bonus track off the star’s rerecorded “Red (Taylor’s Version)” album, which she’d never before played live. Stripping away the synthesizers and propulsive kick drum from the Max Martin co-write made the hopeful tune cut deeper in the live setting, though the elated 70,000-person choir who backed her on Sunday may have helped.
For surprise No. 2, Swift pulled out the oldest oldie of the night, dipping into her self-titled 2006 debut for the only time this weekend. Moving to a piano at the end of the runway, Swift launched into “Tied Together With a Smile,” delighting the die-hards who joined her for a stadium-sized singalong, as they did most every song she played. Gone was the twang from Swift’s teenage country days, as she subtly morphed the track into an anthemic piano ballad on Sunday.
As fireworks and confetti cannons blasted off around Lumen Field during a closing “Karma,” Taylor Swift Week — the concert event of the summer — came to an end. It might take another week or more for fans to come back down.
More Taylor Swift
More
