What deities do I need to pray/sacrifice things to to get her to play Mary's Song on April 25th? I swear to the LORD I'll do anything. This is not exaggeration. I adore that song more than any human should love a musical composition.
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Originally posted by Ripedie254
The real question is will we ever get the iconic rain performance again?
That shocked the hell out of me when she did it on the Fearless tour. It was flawless.
ST. LOUIS, MO. (KTVI) – On Monday a 15-year-old girl fighting cystic fibrosis realized a dream at a Taylor Swift concert.
Cheyenna Ames got to meet Swift before the concert at the Scottrade Center.
It is something Ames has dreamed of for years. “I was too sick to go the last time she was performing here,” Ames said. “This time I don’t feel great, but I will be where I need to be for the concert.”
Ames already had tickets to the concert, but Monday night representatives from the Bull 93.7 gave her meet and greet tickets.
“Now I will get to actually meet her,” she said. “I am going to get as much excitement out of this as I can.”
Ames spends most of her days at Cardinal Glennon, so she said it is great to get out of the hospital.
“I have my dress, jewelry and my boots,” she said. “This is the Cheyenna I want to see.”
Swift’s managers would not allow Fox 2 to film the meeting, but Ames said it was “great.”
“She was super nice,” she said. “My favorite singer.”
Ames attended the concert with one of her nurses.
Representatives from the Bull 9.37 said that Ames inspired them and that it was a “great” use of the tickets.
Ames was very happy.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “These are my tickets.”
True to its name in a couple of ways, The Red Tour opened in Omaha last week (3/13-14) and continues in St. Louis tonight and tomorrow (3/18-19). And while most national media were credentialed for Missouri, Country Aircheck traveled to Nebraska for a first-look at the 66-date North American leg. That view, not surprisingly, was elaborate, more mature and very, very red. Like, very.
As its predecessor, the show is almost too much to absorb in one sitting. Also like the Speak Now Tour , this outing leans heavily on its namesake album, with 12 of the set’s 17 songs hailing from Taylor Swift’s most recent 16-track release (Speak Now clocked in at 11 of 17).
“It’s quite possible you’re going to see a lot of one color tonight,” Swift said while introducing the night’s third song and tour/album title track. “It’s mostly because of the [University of Nebraska] Huskers,” she joked. Cue audience mania. Throughout, the word “Red” is projected onto arena walls and the crowd is bathed in the color between acts and during the show. Sets, costumes, props and instruments are liberally swathed in the color.
A semi-circular thrust stage connects to the main stage via three walkways and creates standing-room pit areas between the stages on either side of the center thrust. A curved, five-screen wall rises into the rigging and descends to the front of the stage at various points in the show.
Speak Now attendees will find many of the production elements familiar, if reimagined. Aerialists in this show play light-emitting drums. A grand staircase (red and white) descends from the center of the rear riser rather than the side; smaller versions sit on the flanks. Pyro flies in the opening song and on “Sparks Fly.” The show closes in a blizzard of confetti.
The thematic differences are more subtle and, in a sense, the show is as well – nuanced, perhaps, in ways that show Swift’s maturation.
Few in the crowd likely noticed that Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” which was piped through the PA just prior to curtain on the Speak Now Tour, has been replaced by Lenny Kravitz’s version of “American Woman.”
Story-heavy, Broadway-esque production numbers are fewer, and more complicated. The sparkly, romantic “Love Story” has distorted a bit, with dancers now wearing patched outfits as the fairy tale fades into a more adult perspective. The last tour’s Halloween-ready “Haunted” is now a darker and more gothic “I Knew You Were Trouble” with ear-splitting dubstep beats and a smoke-blanketed stage. The long breaks for crowd scream-fests have been reduced to one 20-second interlude after the opener. The patter is tighter.
The obvious financial investment Swift makes in her show is impressive. From stages swarmed with performers to elaborate sets, she cuts no corners. As production consultant Baz Halpin said after the show, Swift’s desire to be “as close to the fans as possible” led to a menu of options early in the planning stages. She took them all.
Carried on her dancers’ shoulders through the arena, she sings several songs at the back of the house, including a duet with tour guest Ed Sheeran (“Everything Has Changed”). A rotating platform rises as high as 15 feet in the air during the segment before she boards a small basket that rises on wires and tracks back to the main stage. Later, a narrow arm of the center thrust between the pits rises several feet during “Treacherous,” as Swift engages in a fairly treacherous looking tight-rope act. During the closing “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” that thrust turns out to be an arm with a basket on the end that swings out over the center of the crowd like a cherry picker. She ends up almost dead-center in the middle of the arena space.
Backstage, the “T Party” lounge of previous tours is now Club Red – Diet Coke on tap. Display cases housing outfits from prior tours or video shoots are located on concourses throughout the arena. Swift partners Keds, Elizabeth Arden and American Greetings are also present on-site. (Aside: A backstage road-case is inexplicably labeled “goat box.” If a goat made an appearance during the show, I missed it.)
And everywhere, red. Swift’s entrance finds her silhouetted behind a curtain – red, of course –
before it rises dramatically and she descends the stairs to the main stage during the first
song (album and tour) “State Of Grace.” The first of many outfits features black shorts, a white top, black fedora and red flats. She sings “Red” while playing a red guitar. Dancers wave red banners. She sings “All Too Well” while playing a red grand piano. A horn-inflected Motown send-up of “You Belong With Me” has Swift and her backing singers in classic dresses and long gloves, all red.
Those who watched her Grammy-opening performance this year will find those images echoed in the closing number, “Never Ever.” As the song draws down and thank-yous pour forth from Swift and her screens, the performing multitudes take their bows and Taylor sinks out of sight. The lights rise quickly in the house, refreshingly ignoring the custom of trolling for an encore that in most shows is already part of the set list.
Opener Brett Eldredge started 10 minutes before the listed 7pm, backed by an acoustic guitar player, keys and an abbreviated drum kit. His muscular vocals on “One Mississippi” drew a rousing response from the crowd. Sheeran arrived with only an acoustic guitar and couple of mics, then proceeded to build song-anchoring loops as he went. Rapid-fire vocals and frantic guitar playing marked the extended “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You,” and the audience sing-along on single and closer “The A Team” was more than enthusiastic.
