Celeb News: RED Tour | Reviews: "At the top of her or anyone's game"

boodytay

I'll be posting all the Red Tour NA leg reviews I can find on the web, until Taylor starts the Oceanian leg in December. The NA leg ran from March to September, so I'll be starting with the March reviews.

Rolling Stone

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Best fan sign at last night's Taylor Swift show in Newark, New Jersey: "I Newark Were Trouble." Second best: "Don't Listen to Poehler & Fay [sic], You're Great in Every Way!" Bonus points to the two girls shaking booty outside the venue, hoping for tickets, waving giant cardboard 2's (because they're feelin' 22) and wearing homemade "Not a Lot Going On at the Moment" T-shirts, dancing around the parking lot to a boombox blasting Red. I hope they got in. Because what a massively excellent show.

Seeing Taylor Swift live in 2013 is seeing a maestro at the top of her or anyone's game. No other pop auteur can touch her right now for emotional excess or musical reach – her punk is so punk, her disco is so disco. The red sequins on her guitar match the ones on her microphone, her shoes and 80 percent of the crowd. Her set is mostly new songs from Red, the slickest, smartest and just plain best mega-pop statement of our time. She's a master of every rock-star move, except the one about dialing it down a notch. But who would ever want that? (Besides the whiny exes she keeps writing songs about?) "Hi, I'm Taylor," she said by way of an introduction. "I write songs about my feelings. I'm told I have a lot of feelings." You are told this accurately, Taylor.

Nobody can touch her for fan hysteria, either – when Taylor announced, "Thirteen thousand of you opted into hearing about my feelings for the next two hours!," she set off the loudest screaming I've heard since the last time I saw her, at the end of her 2011 tour, reaching ungodly levels of girl-shriek saturation. The audience is part of the show, with their homemade red costumes, placards, Lite Brite codes and more glowsticks than an Inspiral Carpets reunion. For most of them, Taylor is the first girl they've seen play a guitar, a signifier that cannot be denied. When she said, "I look into this audience and I see a lot of creativity," it got one of the loudest cheers of the night. She also explained to the younger fans what a 12-string guitar is. "It has twice as many strings as a regular guitar. So that's your math for the night." Educational!

On her last tour, she took the stage to Tom Petty's "American Girl"; this time it was Lenny Kravitz's version of "American Woman," a neat contrast. Right before she went on, her mom was escorted down the aisle near my section, causing a major fan commotion. (I haven't seen so much love for a rock parent since Springsteen brought his mama onstage for "Dancing in the Dark.") But the coolest pre-show moment was seeing the crowd go ballistic for Icona Pop's hipster-disco club hit "I Love It." If you wondered how it would sound to hear several thousand tweens chant "You're from the Seventies, but I'm a Nineties bitch," now you know. Nineties bitches, consider yourselves warned.

Once the lights went out, the screaming never flagged, and neither did the star. Taylor came out belting "State of Grace" in the same kind of black hat the Edge wore on the Joshua Tree tour (which makes sense, since Bono also had a red guitar). For "Holy Ground" she banged the drum solo on a giant glowing cylinder ("She's rocking out!" the little kid behind me informed her mom. "She's rocking ooouuut!") "Mean" began with a rustic interlude, just Tay plucking her banjo center stage, and Ed Sheeran held his own in "Everything Has Changed," while "22" got a breakdance and a snippet of the "Paid in Full" beat until everyone felt so 22 it hurt.

But the best moment was the double-shot of "I Knew You Were Trouble" into "All Too Well." She turned "Trouble" into a blast of razzle-dazzle choreography in fancy-dress masquerade-ball mode. Then she sat alone to play "All Too Well," her most majestic ballad, just a girl and her piano and several thousand other girls singing along. It was the highlight of a show that was nothing but highlights.

Seeing Taylor onstage now is just like seeing Morrissey in 1992 – that same level of total commitment, total fan fervor, total connection between audience and performer. I've compared Taylor to Morrissey many times, but no other performer really hits that same pitch of happy/free/confused/lonely hormonal anguish with so much wit and empathy. Moz sang "the sun shines out of our behinds," Tay sings "people throw rocks at things that shine," but they're coming from the same place. (People said lovin' you was red, and they were half right.) They share the conviction that their moods are the universe and expressing them is the reason the universe exists. This is a useful conviction for a singer to have, even if it's more dangerous for the rest of us. But Taylor wears it like a true arena-rock goddess at an amazing peak.

The New York Times

Review by Jon Caramanica

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NEWARK — An arena show, for all the planning that goes into it, is still a tightrope walk — there is nowhere to hide once the lights go up. So when things began to go wrong for Taylor Swift about midway through her Wednesday night concert at the Prudential Center here, the question wasn’t whether she’d sweat, but if it would show.

She’d just begun to perform “Everything Has Changed” with Ed Sheeran, the cheeky British singer-songwriter who is also one of her opening acts, when the sound slowly began to unravel: Ms. Swift melting in one direction; Mr. Sheeran in another; the band, all the way at the other end of the arena, in a third. Technology, the kind that lets performers hear one another in loud rooms, was failing them.

For his part, Mr. Sheeran looked despondent, or distracted, or just dopey. Ms. Swift was having none of that. She leaned in to him, whispering encouragement or direction or both, and steadied the performance, keeping it afloat amid the warring scores until the song ended, and Mr. Sheeran ambled off with a shrug.

It was a mishap on a scale you don’t often see at a show of this size, choreographed down to the last flurry of confetti. But it was reassuring to learn that Taylor Swift off script is very much like Taylor Swift on script: not just the brains of the operation, but the brawn too, the unflappable force that ensures stuck landings.

She is 23 now, and she doesn’t do the hand-to-gasping-mouth thing she used to every time a roomful of people clapped for her. She soaks in her adulation more honestly, as she did at the beginning and end of this two-hour show, regarding the small girls with the homemade, flashing LED signs and the bigger girls with the blossoming confidence (and also all the parents) with wonder but also certainty, seeming to nod contentedly even when her head was perfectly still.

She is on tour to promote “Red” (Big Machine), her fourth album, which sold 1.2 million copies in its first week of release last October, and has already been certified four times platinum. It’s a strong album, but also her most scattered, with the widest range of moods.

On record, that range was distracting, but in a king-size spectacle the juxtapositions have power, one theatrical scene after the next. Visually, the themes are still drawn from a young person’s fantasy: music-box figures coming to life, a gaggle of floating percussionists that suggests Cirque du Taylor, the Mad Hatter in an “Alice in Wonderland” motif.

Throughout the show, her male dancers were often chasing her but only barely touching her when they caught up. She does not return their affections. She is not yet a figure of proactive libidinal agency.

As in her songs, she is reactive. “I’m Taylor,” she said early in the night. “I write songs about my feelings.” On “Red,” those feelings run hot: a dangerous attraction on “Treacherous,” joyous resentment on “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” resparked optimism on “Begin Again.” All of those songs stood out here, as did “22,” about throwing caution to the wind. (Only a handful of songs lagged, including “Starlight” and “The Lucky One.”)

Ms. Swift’s voice is stronger than it’s ever been, and sturdier; the vocal slips of old are all but gone. Over the course of the show she played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, 12-string guitar, banjo, piano and a big floor tom. But for someone who can do so much, it can be surprising to realize just how few places there are to go. She stands atop a tall peak with potential missteps in every direction. As a young woman making mostly wholesome songs loved by young girls, Ms. Swift has to find ways to grow up that don’t leave those who follow her in a lurch.

She may use genre as a catalyst. She remade “You Belong With Me,” one of her older hits, into a 1960s girl-group harmony piece. At the end of “Stay Stay Stay” she sang a bit of “Ho Hey,” from the folk-pop crossover act the Lumineers. Like Mr. Sheeran, the Lumineers are low-hanging pop-rock fruit. But also, apart from “Mean,” a bluegrass-lite song about modesty that’s become one of her centerpieces, Ms. Swift doesn’t aspire to sound organic.

Still, it’s almost certain she won’t grow into a Madonna or a Katy Perry. It remains to be seen whether she might flower into a Natalie Maines, an Alanis Morissette, a Patty Griffin, a Kathleen Hanna. Ms. Swift isn’t ready to choose that just yet — she still has arenas to soothe, and anxieties of her own to purge. That was clear from a pair of songs near the end of the night, both laser-targeted assassinations of ne’er-do-well boys.

First was “I Knew You Were Trouble,” one of the great pop songs of recent months, and Ms. Swift’s most blatant statement about her increasingly evanescent relationship to country. It’s a ferocious, thumping song, and it’s already done more for introducing dubstep to new ears and mainstreaming it than all the Electric Daisy Carnivals put together.

That was followed, in the night’s sharpest transition, by “All Too Well,” which Ms. Swift sang vividly from behind a piano, channeling her inner Carole King. Her face was splashed across a huge video screen, and it showed credible dark emotion. When she recalled about an ex, “You tell me about your past/Thinking your future was me,” she sneered visibly.

It was the moment when the child molted her soft exterior to become an adult. No tears. No sweat.

boodytay

New York Daily News

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Taylor Swift's 'Red' tour open its 3-night stand at the Prudential Center
Swift's message has resounded with teen girls and made her the ultimate incarnation of both their frustrations and their aspirations. They'll be on hand to hear her preach her gospel over the next two nights at the Prudetial Center.

Taylor Swift wasn't kidding when she titled her new tour "Red."

At the first of three shows at the Prudential Center in Newark Wednesday, she featured that color in her shoes, lipstick, evening gown, guitar, the backup singers' dresses, as well as in various lighting schemes. Even the word itself burned across giant screens as the night began.

Clearly, we're witnessing a woman who knows the value of staying on message — a point her lyrics have driven home for years. Nearly every song last night found Swift singing about love that hurt her, only to empower her.

"Love is a ruthless game," she sang in the first song of the night, "State of Grace." "Unless you play it good and right."

It's a winking message that has resounded strongly enough to make Swift the single most identifiable figure for teen girls in modern pop. She's the ultimate incarnation of their frustrations and aspirations.

Small wonder that screamy young demo made up much of the sold-out crowd at last night's show. It likely will as well at two other shows to be held at the 18,000-seat arena tonight and tomorrow. Swift brings this same show back, in a super-sized version, to the 50,000 MetLife Stadium July 13.

Taylor Swift will bring back her 'big sister' appeal and tunes from her latest album, 'Red,' for two more shows at the Prudential Center.

The singer draws a crowd so huge, in part, by playing elder sister to them. At 23, she's too experienced for the un-nuanced cycle of love, pain and revenge represented in her rather plain songs. But that only helps her to meet her audience at eye level.

At the same time, Swift has greatly expanded both her dramatic presentation and her sound.

The "Red" tour far outdoes all her previous shows in costume changes, fireworks, and theatrical backdrops. Swift featured an elaborate and elegant set up for “The Lucky One,” where she played a vintage young Hollywood star hounded by the press. In another section, she turned her old hit "You Belong with Me” into a '60s girl group, street corner serenade.

That was one of the few older hits Swift allowed in the show. She spent most of the night singing cuts from the "Red" CD, which boasts a rockier sound than before. Last night's songs showed about as much country influence as you'd find in the music of Tibet. Some songs aimed for the anthemic quality of U2, replete with pinging guitars.

Swift personalized her broad new pieces with her usual cheeky clues about men they address. “I Knew You Were Trouble,” for one, supposedly references her fleeting romance with One Direction’s Harry Styles.

It's a smartly mixed message such songs offer. On the one hand, the coded star allusions feel elite. But they also bring her fans into an exclusive circle. That mix of privilege and candor has emboldened Swift's brand as the modern singer who best bridges high romance with every-day, teenage dreams.

The Star-Ledger

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Taylor Swift loves to play pretend. For three intriguing minutes on Wednesday night at the Prudential Center — at the first of three shows at the Newark arena — she made believe she was in the Supremes. She stood atop a broad riser in a long flame-red dress, flanked by two backing singers, and sang a revamped version of "You Belong With Me," one of her best-known songs. The country elements had been scrubbed away and replaced with a bouncy, bottom-heavy arrangement inspired by Motown and ’60s pop. Swift and her band substituted chords and played around with the world-famous melody, too.

It was a gutsy move from a performer better known for her traditionalism than her risk-taking, and another signal that Swift has cast aside genre altogether, like a robe that no longer fits her.

Swift’s first two albums introduced millions of teenagers to contemporary country music, and for that alone, Nashville will always owe her a debt of gratitude. "Fearless," her 2008 album, was a winner; it’s also immensely conservative, steeped in the conventions of modern Music City. Since then, she’s cautiously opened up her sound, incorporating more elements of mainstream pop and classic rock into her songs.

On "Red," her latest set, Swift juxtaposed roots-rock and folk-rock numbers with productions by hit-makers Max Martin, Shellback and Jeff Bhasker. These tracks are built for arenas, and they sounded terrific pumping from the Prudential Center speakers — particularly "Holy Ground," which featured a percussion ensemble hammering on glow-in-the-dark tom-tom drums, and "I Knew You Were Trouble," which was spiked by the rare dubstep breakdown that did not feel like a bizarre imposition or a computer error.

The star punctuated the second chorus of the giddy nightlife anthem "22" with a stage dive, which was something of a cheat — she fell backward into the arms of her dancers, who were waiting for her in the crowd.

That was probably wise. Swift continues to elicit a manic response from her fans, most of whom have grown up with her and identify strongly with her vulnerable, subtly tough lyrics. Swift’s narrators continue to demand fair treatment from those who purport to care about them; this makes her characters easy to pull for. Young women in the audience sang along just as passionately with the more sophisticated verses from "Red" as they did with older songs such as the fairy tale "Love Story," which could have benefited from the same sort of courageous reimagining that Swift and her band provided "You Belong With Me."

Swift is not the strongest singer on the arena circuit — some of her high notes are shrill, and her low verses still occasionally get swallowed by her band. But even when she struggles, she remains expressive, and with each tour, her singing grows more confident.

It is Swift’s sharp writing that guarantees her a future in the spotlight, and as much as she seems to enjoy participating in the big production pieces, she’s clearly most comfortable when she can grab a guitar and hammer out storytelling songs, just as she once did at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe.

"Starlight," a seaside daydream about the Kennedys, came to life in vivid color as a solo acoustic song; "Begin Again," the impeccable first-date ballad that closes "Red," was about as intimate and fragile as it is possible to be in a sports arena. Should Swift ever choose to forego the pyrotechnics, video screens and dance routines and present herself to arena crowds as an earnest, straightforward singer-songwriter with guitar in tow, I’d wager the reaction to her music would not be any less ecstatic.

The night’s only disaster took place during the acoustic segment. Opening act Ed Sheeran, her co-writer and duet partner on "Everything Has Changed," attempted to sing his part with a faulty earpiece. He was completely out of sync with the band and with Swift, too, and by the time the technical problem was corrected, the song was half over.

Swift recovered, but she was visibly bothered by the mistake, and with the breach of pop protocol. She’s loosening up and taking chances, but does not adjust quickly or smoothly when she’s forced to go off script.

boodytay

Omaha.com

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The explosion of sound that greeted Taylor Swift on Wednesday night in Omaha quickly proved how much pop superstars on tour rely on the soundtrack inside their fans' heads.

For the first four songs of Swift's kickoff concert of “The Red Tour,” screams, whistles and cheers melded with her powerful backup band to create a relentless cacophony. One suspects, though, that few in the packed CenturyLink Center crowd of 13,800 needed to make out Swift's vocals above the din. They could listen inside their brains as they reveled in the dancers, the pyrotechnics, the sexy band members and backup singers and, of course, Swift herself.

Somewhere amid all the super-spectacle, there's a 23-year-old woman who writes catchy tunes but catches many millions of young admirers with her lyrics about living on the cusp of adulthood. Those who come to tonight's second and last Omaha show hoping to hear those lyrics will have to wait a little while. But when Swift changed the mood halfway through Wednesday's two-hour opener, she gave the uninitiated in her audience a taste of why she connects with her fans.

They also can expect more than a taste of red — not to mention “Red,” her latest album, which accounted for 13 of the 17 songs in Swift's set. After blowing through “State of Grace” and “Holy Ground” to open the show, she paused before launching into the title track. Red, she said, defines “jealousy, anger, heartbreak, falling in love, falling out of love” — all feelings that keep surfacing over and over in her music and her life.

That brought to mind three 16-year-old Omaha girls who were walking the concourse before the show, carrying signs saying “Welcome to Omaha, Taylor Swift!” and “T-Swizzle — We Love You Taylor, forever and always,” in the hope of attracting enough attention to be invited into the standing-room area within the T-shaped extension of the main stage.

“We're all in high school, so we're living through relationships,” said Krista Pedersen, who joined Lillian Griffith and Gina Mavhezha to celebrate Griffith's birthday. “A lot of her songs are hating on guys, so it's kind of awesome to rock out to that.”

“And she's pretty,” Griffith added.

That has been a winning combination for Swift since she started scoring chart-toppers seven years ago at age 16. But the magic tends to run out for teen stars when they reach their 20s unless they can find a personal voice that matures along with their fans. Fortunately, Swift's concert selections from “Red” — at least the ones that could be readily heard — indicate that she recognizes the danger of staying too young as a songwriter for too long.

As she celebrated her young adulthood in “22,” she let herself be carried from the main stage through her adoring crowd to party some more on an auxiliary stage. Then Swift suddenly shifted the mood with her next song, “I Almost Do,” which she performed with only her own guitar. The song, she said, was about the temptation young people can feel to call an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend who isn't good for them. “This is a song I wrote instead of making that call,” she said. “But I almost did.”

Swift's comments about “Mean,” one of her hit songs from her “Speak Now” album of 2010, also reflected an evolving viewpoint. “I used to daydream that when you were grown up, there would be no more bullies,” she told the crowd. But no matter how old one gets, “there's always going to be somebody who picks on you.” When she started singing, the audience told her how much they related to the song: They started singing along immediately.

Eventually, the spectacle reasserted itself as Swift “flew” away from the auxiliary stage, singing “Sparks Fly” all the way. The excitement and decibel levels peaked with “I Knew You Were Trouble,” Swift's most recent single from “Red.” The choreography turned the arena into a massive dance party, with amped-up dubstep bass drops and heavy doses of strobe lights. A circus-themed “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” capped the frenzy, but hopes for an encore were dashed when the house lights immediately came up.

One is only young once. For Swift, now is the time to celebrate her ability to sing in the center ring of her own circus. If she keeps writing so skillfully about her feelings, she'll still be around when the red fires of youth fade to quieter shades.

boodytay

Miami Herald

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Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’ tour lights up AA Arena

The best revenge Taylor Swift could have against media sniping, celebrity ex-boyfriends and Kanye West-style haters would be that, after Justin Bieber and a generation of boy bands have fallen into oblivion, she makes the transition from teen prodigy to grown-up star.

Now 23, Swift was the girlish, sincere center of the Cirque du Pop extravaganza that is her RED tour, which kept thousands of girls up long past their bedtimes at a sold-out AmericanAirlines Arena Wednesday night. The show was filled with color-coded accents: glittery red shoes and microphone, red guitar, red dresses, red piano and bright red lipstick on Swift’s pale, enigmatic face.

“I write songs about my feelings,” she told the screaming crowd after taking the stage with State of Grace and Holy Ground, two of 12 songs from her latest album, Red, which dominated the show. “Heartbreak, frustration, miscommunication – ugh. But those emotions are the ones that teach us who we’re gonna be. They teach you to grow up. And in my mind, those emotions are red,” she said.

Her tween-to-teen female fan base takes those kinds of lessons to heart. Swift seems to have made an astute transition from the adolescent dreams and trials of her breakout 2008 mega-hit Fearless to her new identity of self-determined young woman. She resolutely rejected no-good boyfriends on I Knew You Were Trouble, done as a gothic fantasy, and made a joyful pop-dance declaration of self in 22, with dancers carrying her through the ecstatic crowd. There were only two songs from Fearless in her set: her underdog-girl-gets-boy hit You Belong to Me, revamped as a Motown-style girl-group number with four back-up singers, and Love Story.

Swift no longer acts the shy, awestruck girl in concert, but she still came across as sincere and open in a way that made her the modest but adored mistress of a girl-power mega church. The arena was filled with girls in red T-shirts, costumes, bows, headbands and other gear modeled on Swift videos plus glow sticks and electric lights on bobbing signs that filled the arena with light.

Their anthem was Mean, which hits a 9-year-old struggling with bullying or a 19-year-old facing peer pressure with equal force. “I used to think when you grew up there’d be no more mean kids,” Swift said. “Then I realized there’s always gonna be someone who picks on you.” She launched it alone with a banjo, backed by an ardent chorus of thousands.

Swift is not a powerhouse vocalist, and her voice, still girlish, breathy and ever so faintly nasal, occasionally got lost in the mix. But she showed herself a confidently expressive singer with none of the off-key uncertainty that has sometimes marred her performances.

In the course of the show, she played electric, acoustic and 12-string guitar, banjo and piano. In reflective ballads like Begin Again, which she did in an acoustic segment on a small platform in the middle of the audience, and the quietly wrenching All Too Well, accompanying herself on piano, she was genuinely powerful.

How she balances that creative and confessional talent with the circus-like pop extravagance of the finale, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, remains to be seen. But Swift may well yet turn out to be an artist with enough talent and substance to survive her hype.

Source

Access Atlanta

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Taylor Swift enchants at Philips Arena show

By Melissa Ruggieri

For the millions of fans who adore Taylor Swift, there are plenty of haters.

OK, so she’s a serial dater and loves to talk about her feelings. And then talk about her feelings. And then talk about her feelings some more, like a diary come to life. And she’s yet to abandon that irritating habit of tilting her head, smiling coquettishly, looking around a screaming throng of tweens and milking the moment far longer than necessary.

But here’s a memo to those who like to be, as Swift might say, “Mean,” to her: See her live show and your opinion will change.

For two hours on Thursday night – her first of two pretty much sold out shows at Philips Arena (some single seats remain for Friday’s visit) –T-Swizzle thoroughly charmed, entertained and connected with an audience filled predominantly with young girls and their patient parents.

But really, it’s hardly laborious for an adult to enjoy Swift’s gorgeous production as well as the visual trimmings provided by her fans – the FAO Schwarz-sized bows on heads, the lighted taffeta skirts, the oversized sunglasses and even football helmets all in, of course, red to honor Swift’s favorite color, as well as the name of her current album and tour.

The well-decorated audience looked like props in Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade as soon as the lights dropped and Swift appeared behind a curtain in silhouette to sing “State of Grace.”

With her mile-long legs topped off by ruby red sneakers, she strode down the catwalk leading into the audience as confidently as a runway model. But what makes Swift so appealing – especially to her impressionable fans – is her occasional awkwardness.

It was during those moments, such as when she danced a little off beat during the catchy “Holy Ground” (presented with an awesome array of drummers rising from under the stage and hanging from the ceiling to smack what looked like giant lighted votive candles) and later bumped into a mic stand when performing at the back of the arena, that Swift was unquestionably endearing.

Because she’s so earnest, it’s likely true that she meant what she told the crowd: “You guys were always one of my favorite places to play…I can tell just by looking at this audience, you’ve outdone yourselves.” But it’s also hard to believe she didn’t pull out the same script for Charlotte or Miami.

That version of Swift, the one committed to making every moment perfect, could use a few lessons in spontaneity.

But how could anyone possibly question the talent of this 23-year-old superstar?

She strapped on a glittery tomato-colored guitar for “Red” (obviously the primary color of the night – and, funny enough, the name of the arena’s restaurant perched at the back of the venue); picked an electric banjo on her I’ll-show-you back porch strummer, “Mean”; glided up a staircase to play a crimson piano for “All Too Well”; and danced admirably with her energetic dance troupe during “22.”

Maybe she isn’t the strongest singer in pop music – though she did offer dulcet tones throughout the show – but she’s a sweet role model for her adolescent worshippers and knows her way around crafting an earworm.

There is also plenty of eye candy on this slickly produced “Red” tour, which runs through September.

From the clever re-working of “You Belong to Me” as a girl group ditty performed atop a stage piece embedded with video screens to the film noir-ish clip that introduces “Lucky One,” featuring Swift in a ball gown being swarmed by photographers, to "Begin Again,” a soft acoustic ballad performed on a rotating stage that lifted her eye level with the second tier of seats, it’s impossible to look away.

And when she breaks out a dark, gothic vibe for “Trouble,” unwrapped with a new hard dance mix edge on a set that looks like remnants from “Phantom of the Opera,” Swift’s purposeful melodrama is pitch perfect.

The quiet moments worked well, too, such as her acoustic set that featured the genial Ed Sheeran popping out for their duet “Everything Has Changed” (Sheeran, now on his third visit to Atlanta in five months, opened the show with a typically impressive set that included his trademark guitar looping on “Give Me Love” and – kudos to him for breaking this out with this young audience – Nina Simone’s “Be My Husband”).

Swift, like any star of her magnitude, will always have detractors. But those unwilling to allow that she’s supremely gifted are missing out on one of the most enjoyable shows of the past few years

Source

boodytay

The Highlander News

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Taylor Swift delivers magical performance on Red Tour

As part of Taylor Swift’s Red Tour, Swift played last night at Washington DC’s Verizon Center. With a set of almost two hours, Swift did not fail to deliver an amazing and unforgettable performance

Swift had two opening acts- Brett Eldredge and Ed Sheeran. Eldredge was forgettable, but Sheeran wowed, playing songs including “The A Team” and “Lego House,” all the while showing off impressive skills on the guitar. Sheeran was so good that it would have been worth it to have just seen him perform.

Finally, Swift came onto the stage to the sound of fourteen thousand screaming fans. She opened with the song “State of Grace” and ended with “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” playing an impressive seventeen songs that include new hits such as “22” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” as well as old favorites like “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story.” Swift’s voice was perfect, showing true emotion, and she never faltered or failed to deliver on any of the notes or lines, making for a truly enjoyable listening experience.

Additionally, Swift made everyone there feel like you were one of Swift’s closest friends, and you were just hanging out together on a normal Saturday night. Swift looked truly happy to be there, and genuinely in awe of the huge crowd that had gathered to hear her sing.

Not only were her stage presence and singing performance incredible, her costumes and sets also added to the awesome experience. With several costume changes, Swift changed from black leather hot pants and a lace shirt to a glamorous red gown, to a black lace bodysuit to a circus ringleader outfit and more. Additionally, she had sets to match each song, with dancers dressed up accordingly to match the theme. For “The Lucky One” Swift had an old Hollywood theme, while the finale of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” was circus themed. These costume changes and set themes only added to the wonderful experience and made for an unforgettable performance that everyone will remember.

The stage for the finale, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together." Swift was dressed up as a ringleader for the circus theme.

Overall, Taylor Swift put on a truly magical performance that made for a magical experience.

Source

The Lantern

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Review: Taylor Swift sparkles with honest, ‘Red’ emotion at Columbus tour stop

It’s easy to be infatuated with Taylor Swift.

There’s a bubblegum pop, girl-next-door aura about her that makes you smile when she smiles. When she took the stage at Nationwide Arena Wednesday night, some 14,000 people were mesmerized by her, and in turn she was struck by them.

She looked out into the crowd, a red lipstick-stained, close-lipped smile paired with eyes crinkling with joy, and soaked it in.

Swift’s Columbus “The Red Tour” stop kicked off in dramatic fashion with a luxurious red curtain first concealing her, showing only her silhouette, then dropping to reveal the singer, who began with “State of Grace.”

Her set included the majority of the songs from her 2012 album “Red” and never
slowed down. Fireworks erupted during “Sparks Fly,” from her 2010 album “Speak Now,” and on more than one occasion the singer sailed over the crowd on raised platforms. One dreamlike scene pitted her dancers as wind-up toys wandering out of a music box.

The performance involved elaborate set changes that kept the audience concurrently hooked and guessing. Her nearly two-hour set included trips to a circus, Paris, a carousel and the red carpet. Swift played roles from Shakespeare’s Juliet to a circus ringleader to a 1960s movie star while her dancers posed as ballerinas, stilt-walkers and paparazzi.

One of the coolest moments came from a montage of Swift over the years, as told from family videos of her at nearly every age from 1 to 22, being held by her parents, receiving a guitar on Christmas, singing the National Anthem and performing old songs. When the count reached 22, Swift took the stage with her backup dancers to appropriately perform her anthem “22” from “Red.”

Throughout the show her honesty was perhaps her greatest strength. The way Swift looked at the audience with genuine wonderment, as if she couldn’t believe the sold-out crowd was there for her, personalized the show. When she took to the piano and sang “All Too Well,” passion and power resonated from her every slashing note, bang of the piano keys and thrash of her head, which sent her hair into a wild frenzy.

Moments of the show seemed to be more of an intimate look into her world — as if she was twirling around in her room or being candid with her closest friends, rather than being center stage surrounded by screaming fans

In a performance full of theatrics and drama, her shining moments came from a culmination of songs she played alone on the guitar, including “Our Song,” which she introduced as having premiered at her ninth grade talent show. The song rips at the heartstrings of older, nostalgic fans and was a worthy complement to her newer material that strays from her country roots.

But Swift sparkled — at times literally with red sequined outfits and matching glittering red guitars — throughout, showing off a range from the combination of violin introduction paired with a dubstep interlude in “I Knew You Were Trouble” to a Motown-infused version of “You Belong With Me.”

Between songs, she explained her infatuation of the color red, revealing that it encompasses her favorite emotions, the crazy ones, ranging from anger to love. This was among multiple monologues she recited, which sounded like her own way of pointing a middle finger at her critics.

“Someone is going to pick on you for something and make you feel small,” she said. “My way of dealing with it was sitting down and writing a song about it.”

Later, she admitted that she “has a lot of feelings” and that many revolve around her breakups (shocking) but that she likes it that way.

“I like writing songs about breakups because they make me feel better, OK?” Swift said to the crowd before launching into “Stay Stay Stay.”

Along those lines, she left the audience with some advice during her final song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

“Don’t get back together with your crazy ex.”

Reading the tabloids, you might call her crazy. Seeing her onstage, though, might change your mind.

Source

boodytay

DFW.com

Quote:

ARLINGTON - Taylor Swift couldn’t stop looking at the crowd.

Part of the reason was undoubtedly scale: Swift said, from the stage Saturday night, that some 55,000 people had piled into Cowboys Stadium, making this stop on her nine-month “Red” tour a sell-out (not unlike her previous gig at the House Jerry Built in 2011).

But there was something else at work, too. She was near the end of her almost two-hour set, seated at a piano and performing All Too Well, a track from last year’s multiplatinum Red. It is a song, like so much of the 23-year-old superstar’s catalog, chronicling the dissolution of romance, the end of the love affair. (“I write lots of songs about feelings,” Swift observed early on, “and 55,000 of you have opted in to hear me sing about my feelings.”)

Yet instead of investing lines like “And I know it’s long gone/And that magic’s not here no more/And I might be okay/But I’m not fine at all” with the weight and emotion likely intended, Swift kept casting glances outward, into the sea of eager, shrieking bodies, clad in shirts bearing her likeness, waving glow sticks and clutching posters. She did it so frequently it became distracting — what was she looking for?

Sympathy?

Understanding?

Acceptance?

Exactly what the young woman is searching for remains an open question, and certainly not one she seems keen on answering with her current tour (or, arguably, Red, her fourth studio album). Swift has built a formidable, awards-bedecked career as a songwriter of exposed nerves and 21st-century savvy, appearing to share everything with an audience primed for whatever she reveals.

While she first made an impression as a country artist, she has steadily migrated toward the bright plastic promise of pop.

And it’s those newer songs — buoyant confections like the show-opening State of Grace or I Knew You Were Trouble, austere backward glances like Begin Again — that stand in stark contrast to what was one of Saturday’s most human moments. Having retreated to a stage at the opposite end of the floor, Swift, holding an acoustic guitar, took a run at her first big hit, Our Song, an effervescent piece of work that sounds as fresh, innocent and hopeful as the cynical Mean sounds angry, bitter and thin-skinned.

Obviously, Swift can’t remain a teenager forever, but it’s startling how, in just five short years, she has moved from wide-eyed, wistful folk-pop to arena-dominating, hater-crushing juggernaut. Seeing the two sides of her artistic personality in such proximity gave unexpected depth to what was otherwise a fairly routine extravaganza. (Another winning moment was her Motown-inspired makeover of You Belong With Me, complete with shoop-shoop vocal harmonies and endearing dance steps that would bring a smile to Diana Ross’ face.)

The staging itself was a Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from other, similar large-scale efforts — dancers bounding through the air a la Pink, raised platforms hovering over the crowd a la Carrie Underwood, bursts of sparks and steam a la anyone who has mounted an arena tour in the past two years — and Swift’s sizable band, roughly a dozen folks, was mostly consigned to the fringes.

Multiple costume changes were deployed, and through it all, the slick video packages unfolding on the high-def screens, including the four-sided beast hanging at midfield, kept the pace lively. Swift’s vocals, thankfully live, were nevertheless often thin, and threatened to vanish entirely whenever choreography was incorporated.

It’s fair to say that few who made the pilgrimage to Arlington (although Swift repeatedly said “Dallas”) were expecting any insight into Taylor Swift — indeed, expecting nothing beyond a good time. And that Swift provided for the faithful, between the trips through the crowd, the confetti shower during We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together to close things out and the rambling stage chatter.

But looking deeper, probing for substance beneath all the style, remains no less frustrating, particularly as Swift continues to achieve success and demand to be taken seriously as a songwriter and performer. What is it that drives her? So far, chasing true love has seemed to be her sole creative focus.

Just as she peers out from the stage into the vast darkness, searching for answers, so, too, do we stare back into the glittering, glamorous glare and ask: Why can’t we stop looking at Taylor Swift?

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boodytay

The Star

Quote:

Taylor Swift Red Tour: Flawless execution at the Rogers Centre

From the very moment the curtain rose revealing the lean-and-leggy fedora-capped blond, Swift was a master of precision.

Taylor Swift is a woman who knows what she wants.

If there was anything made abundantly clear during the 22-year-old country music crossover sensation’s hour-and-45-minute shindig Friday night at the Rogers Centre it was that the Pennsylvania native is no wilting lily when it comes to the art of performance.

In fact, from the very moment the curtain rose on Swift’s Red tour, revealing the lean-and-leggy fedora-capped blond standing at the top of the staircase in a white blouse, leather hot pants and ruby shoes ensemble as she belted out “State Of Grace,” Swift was a master of precision.

With two projection screens adjacent to a massive stage that housed a small armada of support singers, dancers and an eight-piece band, the camera was not only the instrument of projection in providing her fans the clearest of vantage points throughout the program, but Swift designed her presentation around it.

Exuding a way-beyond-her-years confidence that befits a superstar, Swift was so concise in her mannerisms that every facial expression, every gesture, every dance move, even every hair on her head, it seemed, was expertly “Taylored” — if you’ll excuse the pun — to fit into the grand scheme of the show.

But what appeared as — and should have felt as — so contrived instead seemed perfectly genuine, due to Swift’s proficiency as a generous entertainer and her earthy personality. Perceived as both star and a pal — women view her more as the latter than the former — Swift has struck an unusual allegiance with the fairer sex thanks to the slice-of-life insight of her music.

And just how devoted they are to her — the audience percentage ratio of women-to-men was probably 90 to 10 — was made evident the fourth song in, when a chorus of soprano voices suddenly rose to accompany Swift for one of her familiar Fearless hits, “You Belong With Me,” reinterpreted in a glamourous ’60s-style presentation with the singer and songwriter adorned in a classy red gown and performing a coquettish dance routine.

Yes, Taylor World covered many territories, from the over-the-top melodramatic vignettes that gave the spectacle treatment to songs like “The Lucky One” and “I Knew You Were Trouble;” to the simple renditions of “Mean,” which began with Swift strumming a banjo before it erupted into theatrics, her earliest hit “Tim McGraw,” and an acoustic-guitar duet of “Everything Has Changed” with animated opener Ed Sheeran, the latter two songs performed on a small stage at the other end of the venue.

But where it differed from other big-time stadium shows — Swift threw out the figure of 45,000 in attendance for the first of her two sold-out Rogers Centre concerts — and what grounded it was the conversation.

Taylor Swift talked. A lot. This wasn’t mere “how ya doin’ Toronto” banter between songs. After completing the opening “State Of Grace,” “Holy Ground” (a heavily-percussive number that was part Blue Man Group in terms of drumming) and “Red,” she spent a good five minutes explaining how she chooses locations for her world tours.

Later in the show, she explained the concept behind her album and her show Red, revealing that she writes about either love or breakups and sees them in colours, with red representing “my crazy emotions.”

She spoke long and often, whether it was to introduce songs like “Begin Again” or “All Too Well,” and repeatedly advocated that people take up the practice of expressing their feelings, “whether it’s in a diary or in a song,” as a way to learn and grow.

The show wasn’t perfect. There were a few moments near the end of the show where Swift’s voice seemed to be lost in the din of the stadium, the music so loud that she was straining vocally, and others where so many dancers plied the stage that it was distracting.

But these were minor quibbles. By the time the three-ring circus of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” signalled the end of the show (a jubilant send-off replete with fireworks), Taylor Swift’s near-flawless execution of her triumphant vision indicates that this is only the beginning of a very, very, very long run at the top.

She’s got the chops to become scary brilliant.

Source

Vancouver Sun

Quote:

Review: Giggling, winking Taylor Swift serves up red-hot entertainment

They didn’t all come dressed in red. They did come pumped up and ready to raise the roof off BC Place Saturday night as the Taylor Swift RED Tour rolled into town.

The youngest-ever winner of Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards started in larger-than-life silhouette as the opening beats of State of Grace boomed out.

The curtain dropped and the 23 year-old Swift was on stage and three stories tall in the trio of surrounding screens acting the starring role in an immaculately shot concert film.

By the time the marching band drummers started flying through the air in Holy Ground it was pretty clear that this was going to be a hard concert to beat for all the first timers at the venue. The RED Tour has astonishingly good production values.

Swift was giggling. She was winking. She was engaging her audience like she was everyone’s best friend: “I’m Taylor. I write a lot of songs about my feelings and I just realized that 42,000 of you just signed up for two hours of hearing about them Vancouver.”

Cue deafening shouts of support.

Infatuation, flirtation, breakups and complications are the foundation of the album Red. She says the crazy emotions it is about are that colour to her. Blue was the colour of her fans’ faces as they screamed approval until they were out of breath, and then they started again.

Dancers, flag-wavers, moving stairs and runways and lightning costume changes. Every time there is a close-up, Swift is perfectly framed. The film noir red carpet re-creation for Lucky One was pure fashion theatre.

This woman has sold more than a million albums for every year she’s been alive, and for good reason. She delivers one of the best big spectacle family friendly extravaganzas touring today.

Swift was also an affordable ticket by today’s concert prices. Really the only part that didn’t totally fly was the banjo picking. It happens.

Double Brit Award-winner Ed Sheeran was a wee bit rough for the fans. With his copious permanent tattoos and cooly ironic Goonies shirt, the one man acoustic-electric band promised danger and to do his job as a warm-up act.

This included the evening’s first back and forth hands in the air moment and getting a packed pop show singing Nina Simone; unexpected that. His brand of strumming is certain to reach an enormous new audience on a tour this massive.

In keeping with the colour scheme of the night, he wore ginger hair and facial scruff.

All arena gigs have their hierarchy of opening acts. Austin Mahone is the warm-up for the warm-up Ed Sheeran at the Red Tour and he does his best to let you know that. Decked in red jacket and red Air Jordan’s he did a little dance, sang a little love song and got down. Naturally, he brought out his red guitar to strum a Jesse McCartney song people could sing along to. Then he sang his single What About Love? and left.

Fans were left with their thoughts after this existential outpouring. Perhaps some saw red as they contemplated love. Or perhaps they just cheered really loudly.

It was the evening’s dominant theme.

Source

boodytay

Westword

Quote:

Taylor Swift knows what people say about her. She's heard it all -- the rumors, the criticism, the constant derision. She knows, as she acknowledged a few times during her performance at the Pepsi Center last night, but she doesn't care. Why should she? Coming off the major success of her latest album, she no longer has anything to prove. To anyone. And the Red Tour is a celebration of that new Taylor: acutely self-aware, resolute, strong and sexy. This is Taylor 2.0, and she is one helluva force to be reckoned with.

It took less than thirteen seconds into an explosive performance of "State of Grace" -- forever the perfect show-opener, with atmospheric guitar riffs and drum hits not out of place on a U2 album -- to see that and understand why the Pepsi Center had sold out so quickly for the Red Tour.

Swift was here to deliver the show of all shows, her confidence on blast and her swagger stretching longer than her model-perfect legs as they marched in perfect time with the chugging beat. This woman was here to take us on a Technicolor journey through her diary, complete with confetti and emphatic pyrotechnics. Here we go.

During "State of Grace" Swift worked the crowd in only a way she could: graceful hand gestures that would make an envious Vanna White consider changing her name to Vanna Green; darting eyes, decorated by cat-eye makeup, that went from the left side of the arena to the right, cuing the corresponding seats to cheer at their every turn; and a pitch-perfect delivery of an otherwise technically difficult song to sing. Impressively, Swift's voice did all of the heavy lifting, as her four backing vocalists were assigned just to the "oh, oh, oh's."

Swift didn't miss a beat. Hitting with a one-two punch that couldn't have been better executed, Swift followed up with "Holy Ground" -- nine tracks removed from "State of Grace" on the album tracklist, but the perfect sister song in every way. Together these two songs, including "Holy Ground's" drum break -- I've never seen a singer beat a drum with as much ferocity as Taylor did! -- made it clear Swift deserves to be where she's at right now.

Swift worked her crowd like a rock star. Song segments were divided by costuming changes, as Swift went from more casualwear to what looked to be her take on a Victorian era dress to the bandleader costume she donned for the 2013 Grammys. There wasn't a particular tie-in between song segments and costumes -- or the staging, for that matter -- except for the surprise '60s-style revamp of "You Belong With Me."

Swift wore a red sequined dress and matching gloves up to her elbows as she and her backing vocalists offered up their best sh-bops to a crowd initially skeptical to embrace the reimagined (more interesting) version. "You Belong With Me" worked because it was different, and as we had seen so far in the show, a different Taylor is a great Taylor.

Swift's bare rendition of "Enchanted" was also a wonderful surprise. Alone, seated on the stage extension that reached to the back of the Pepsi Center, it was Taylor and her guitar (no teardrops), and it was impressive the way she strummed so effortlessly. The same could also be said for her performance on the piano later, for "All Too Well," at which point, her stream of emotional consciousness was palpable, as if teardrops were ready to decorate the keys instead.

"Red" was a lesson in what Taylor Swift 2.0 sounded like with her own guitar amp plugged in, while "I Knew You Were Trouble" showed us what Swift was like with even more of a dubstep breakdown than what you hear on the radio. (It felt a little incomplete without the goat accompaniment, though).

The song "22" was a lesson in Dr. Luke-ensian radio pop, with Swift clearly feeling young and carefree and, for the briefest moment during the entire show, going out of her head a bit and acting her age. It wasn't a change of pace, per se -- since Swift's setlist was as varied as it gets for a crossover pop star with a back catalogue like hers -- but it was a break from expectation. The "22" choreography was also a nice break from the Vanna White-style gesticulations that had grown stale up to this point.

But Swift wasn't all unpredictable rock star the entire night. She was also skilled guitarist in her own right, and she played some mean banjo on "Mean" -- an absolutely enjoyable, albeit predictable highlight. Swift's intro to the song ran on the preachy side, but the message was nonetheless a relatable one: "No matter who you are or how old you are... there are always people that are gonna be picking on you. The best way I learned to deal with it was to write a song about it." It was a cute intro for a cuter song about rising above the haters.

The synchronized dancing with the rest of the band made for a visual treat -- shoulder sways were dead-on in timing among all band members less the drummer. Ultimately, however, the best part was the way Swift delivered the middle eight with a sass unavailable on record: "All you are is a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life, and mean" -- and when Swift says pathetic in that way, all you can think is "pond scum."

"Mean" bled into another intro, this time more tongue-in-cheek, for "Stay Stay Stay": "I'm aware I have a little bit of a reputation to write break-up songs," Swift said beforehand. "I don't only write break-up songs, because sometimes people stay." The song was too cute for its own good, but it was also just barely redeemed by a brief inclusion of Swift's take on The Lumineers' "Ho Hey" on the middle eight and substituting a reference to the Broncos during the first verse (she sang "a Broncos helmet," not "a football helmet").

It would have been more noteworthy if Swift had instead taken on the similarly happy "Starlight," which has a few subtle synthesizer swoops on record that would be all too perfect to soundtrack blast from the confetti canon without coming off as cheesy. Swift closed with "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," decorated by circus staging and impressive theatrics on and off stilts.

The bombast that came off during her 2013 Grammys performance of the same song, with similar staging, didn't exist. Instead, it was pure excitement. This was Taylor's full-circle moment -- from February to the present, Swift had lost all of her performance baggage. She was lighter, more playful and much, much, much more fun. This was the Red Taylor, and we were the lucky ones.

Source

boodytay

The Salt Lake Tribune

Quote:

Taylor Swift performs to a sold out audience during The Red Tour at EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City on June 1, 2013.
Taylor Swift delivers a Red hot show in Salt Lake City

Some of the world’s finest musicians have entered the cavernous EnergySolutions Arena over the years.

These talents have ranged from one-name divas such as Cher, Wynonna and Reba to piano playing geniuses such as Billy Joel and Elton John. Mick Jagger snarled his way through several concerts here and U2 brought its socially conscious high tech show to this stage. Bob Dylan and Paul Simon performed many of their musical masterpieces not far from the spot Taylor Swift made her grand entrance Saturday night.

How did it compare?

As a musician, Swift has a long ways to go to equal those legendary performers. But, hey, she’s only 23 years old so who knows where her career will be when she is 70? Right now, she’s on top of the world, selling more records and filling more arenas than anyone.

One thing is certain. As purely an entertainer, she can hold her own with any of the greats. I’ve seen a lot of acts at the ESA over the years, and only a few could match Swift’s combination of unmistakable charisma and ability to connect with an audience.

I didn’t get the phenomenon by simply listening to Swift’s music. And I certainly didn’t understand what was perhaps the most electric pre-concert atmosphere I’ve ever experienced was all about.

As a grandfather who nervously took my 9-year-old granddaughter to her first big concert on Saturday, I also didn’t realize how well the performer relates to young women. I left appreciating the way she talked about the difficulties of growing up through break-ups, first loves, bullies and day dreams. For one so young, she imparted some wonderful wisdom by managing to turn a 14,0000-seat basketball arena into a surprisingly intimate concert venue.

"The only thing that’s predictable about life is that it is it’s unpredictable," she said at one point.

"Don’t be mean to other people," Swift advised at another point, something that a teen might buy from a superstar but not a grandfather.

From a technical standpoint, this was an amazing show filled with dancers, Blue Man Group-style drumming, numerous costume changes, two multi-level stages, stilt-wearing clowns, video screens galore, fireworks and the sound dialed in better than I’ve probably ever heard at ESA.

Swift’s fans made the show even more fun. They waved bling, flashing signs, hand-lettered signs and flickering cell phones during the entire concert. Even my nine-year-old date seemed to know the words to most of the 17-song set by heart.

Why, ultimately, do folks shell out hundreds of dollars to see a star such as Swift? They can, after all, spend $15 on her latest album and listen all the way want.

But they would miss creative staging, getting a sense of the performer’s personality and talent, and all the tricks that made this giant production of wind-up dolls, carousels, candleabras, lights and sound wonderful.

From the moment Swift strolled on the stage in tight leather black shorts, white top and red shoes clutching a red phone singing State of Grace until she disappeared in a cloud of confetti after ending with her hit We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Swift was a commanding, polite and charismatic presence

She has a wonderful voice, isn’t afraid to share the stage for a duet with talented warm-up singer Ed Sheeran, or to strut her stuff with her talented troupe of dancers.

When she introduced the song "Mean" by urging teen girls in the audience to treat others with kindness, something many teens struggle with, I could have cheered.

Being honest, there is a certain sameness to Swift’s songs, most of which she wrote herself. I’d be more inclined to stick Dylan, Brad Paisely, Paul McCartney or even Pat Benatar CDs into my player. But I am certainly not in her demographic. I can, however, appreciate a good show.

Swift has a wonderful voice, is a beautiful woman and possesses a strong, winning stage presence. I don’t imagine anyone left Saturday night disappointed. She painted Salt Lake City "Red" on a Saturday night, sending the crowd home happy.

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