Member Since: 4/9/2012
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Taylor Swift left 14,000 fans seeing red Monday night at Scottrade Center during the first of her two sold-out concerts (the second concert is tonight).
But fortunately it wasn’t that kind of red.
Superstar Swift brought her very new “Red” tour to town, only the third stop on the singer’s trek. And it was everything Swift’s mostly glow-stick-waving young girl fans and their moms expected from a Taylor Swift extravaganza.
From ballerinas emerging from oversized music boxes to Swift in various contraptions that allowed her to hover over the audience, this was a crowd-pleasing affair.
Say what you will about Swift as a singer (it has been said) or how much country is left in her (this may be her least country-sounding tour ever). But when it comes to younger artists, she’s among those leading the charge for splashy spectacles.
Her busily produced two-hour show was one of those kitchen-sink-and-more affairs where everything was thrown against the wall in hopes of it sticking, as is necessary for young attention spans.
Fans don’t come to a Swift concert looking for her to stand still at a microphone on a bare stage, and this evolving stage was anything but bare. Witnessed were several staircases, video screens, video walls, a roving band, male and female dancers, a satellite stage at the far end of the arena floor, more than half a dozen costume changes, and lots and lots of red.
Everything from streaming pyro to “Stomp”-like drummers hoisted above the stage greeted the singer during opening song, “State of Grace.” She wasted no time venturing out onto the half-circle ramp that extended into the audience, which also enclosed fans down front into a pit (Bon Jovi’s new tour has the exact set up).
There, she stood staring and smiling at her fans as she soaked in all the applause, still looking amazed by her success, though that can’t still be the case.
“Thank you for coming. This is unbelievable,” said Swift. She thanked St. Louis, where much of her family lives, for always showing up, always being loud and always dancing.
“I’m Taylor. I like to write songs about my feelings. I’m told I have a lot of feelings,” she said, tongue in cheek.
She said the red that was everywhere on her set, from her electric guitar to her lipstick to sequined flats, was partially because of the St. Louis Cardinals. But the color also represents the emotions she said she feels in songs, emotions including love, heartbreak, anger and frustration, leading to the song “Red” from the album of the same name.
Swift and her backing singers morphed into a ‘60s girl group during “You Belong With Me,” performing on an elevated platform anchored to a video wall. She went old Hollywood on “The Lucky One,” portraying a glamorous star hounded by paparazzi. The song was preceded by a clip of her reminiscing of her childhood dreaming of being a star, only to learn she’ll be built up to be knocked down.
“Mean” offered the set’s most stripped down production — simply Swift on banjo lined up in a row with band members strumming various acoustic instruments. It felt like a quick nod to country days gone by.
Video clips of her singing over the years from the age of 2 naturally led to “22,” when she fell backward into the crowd mosh-pit style. But it was her dancers, not fans, who caught her and carried her through the floor to the satellite stage for songs such as “Should’ve Said No,” “Begin Again” and “Everything Has Changed,” performed with support act Ed Sheeran. She joked that Sheeran, who is British, can be hard to understand sometimes.
During “Sparks Fly,” she flew, taking off in a small lighted platform from the satellite stage back to the main stage for “I Know You Were Trouble” and “All Too Well.”
Swift wrapped the encore-free concert with “Red” single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” performed amid a circus motif with stilt walker and confetti as Swift hovered over the crowd, yet again, on the extended catwalk that this time rotated out.
Sheeran, who performed with Elton John on the Grammy Awards, opened for Swift in what was an excellent but still a bit of a head-scratching choice considering Swift’s audience (though he did co-write “Everything Has Changed”).
Was Sheeran being ironic when he asked the crowd if they knew soul legend Nina Simone before performing her “Be My Husband,” or did he just not care?
Sheeran, playing guitar furiously over a partial backing track, performed “Lego House,” “Give Me Love” and of course “The A Team,” at one point using his cell phone to take a picture of the crowd while singing.
Brett Eldredge opened the show.
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http://www.stltoday.com/entertainmen...e3d45401d.html
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