I went to the Houston shows Friday and Saturday, it was an incredible show. I go to a lot of concerts and its rare you get an artist playing a venue this size who isn't a legacy act. Taylor is as relevant with her current music today as anything she has done before and it showed. The crowd was into the whole thing which is impressive for a 3 hour, 44 song set. Even during the slower more acoustic sections no one sat down, and they were singing along just as much as they were to her big singles. The apex of the show was All Too Well, which is already a slower ballad but has been expanded to a 10 minute long song. It was just her in the middle of the stage with a guitar and the crowd was hanging on every word. Even her new stuff which was her final section was just as well received as every thing else she played. The staging and production were great but also not distracting or overbearing. There wasn't a lot of sets and she spent most of the show in the middle of this long cat walk section moving around so everyone in each section got to see her. She also some of the best stage presence out there. She's able to move things along and talk to the crowd in a way that feels both natural and personal as if you aren't in a stadium with 70k other people. I was impressed she changed up her ad libs between songs both nights so it wasn't even some prepared spiel, she really was talking off the cuff.

For an event like this where anticipating and expectations were through the roof she absolutely delivered. There are only a handful of shows i've been to where the artist is at the absolute top of their game giving a performance where you tell your self this is what this person was born to do. This was one of those events and she is that performer.

emando2000 said:

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Gigem314 said:

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I wouldn't dismiss her as just another mindless pop princess. I respect her talent. She's a very gifted artist. She can write her own songs, sing, play guitar, and dance....few pop-stars can do all of those things together. If she ever did an acoustic show with just her on guitar...I would go see that (not for thousands).

She's resonated with teen girls and female 20-somethings, 30-somethings, and even 40-somethings in a way that no other pop artist or group has in the modern era. I just hope they don't listen to all of her personal opinions, but that aside, she's created quite the fan following.

Today's music is filled with so much parity...most pop and hip-hop artists all end up sounding similar. There isn't much depth to modern popular music...even by 'pop' standards. Taylor Swift has clearly carved out something unique...at least with her early music that put her on the map.

That being said, there's no way I'd pay that much for a concert...even if I were a diehard fan. I wouldn't even do that for Stapleton. But she clearly has a rabid fanbase willing to pay it...well, maybe some parents who are willing to pay it haha.

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She can sing? Does she have rangy music? I'm sure she has some talent here but c'mon. Adele can sing. She's nowhere near that level.

Can play guitar? Oooof. That's an achievement for a "singer songwriter"?

Can dance? Another groundbreaking achievement. Dancing is easy. Especially when it's choreographed for you and practiced.

Write her own songs? I struggle with this. She may write "some" lines but I'm sure it's sliced up and produced so much that it just sort of resembles the original version. It's marketing. Same as Toms and Warby Parker. And save me with the I know someone in the industry that vouches for her. I think that I've heard 5 separate times that they know someone close to the Swift's people and that it's true. That's statistically impossible.

She's some rich man's project that had a vision for her to resonate with so many young girls. All they have to do is doll her up, produce her music and market her. Now, it's come to fruition and people are spending ridiculous cash to watch her live. It's remarkable and unbelievable. Kudos to her and those involved.

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I'm not a Swiftie, but this is just a ridiculous hater take. If you're going to dismiss someone's singing, dancing, songwriting, and instrument playing, then you just have an agenda. If all you said were true, then she'd be a run of the mill musician with middling success.

It's always hilarious when someone says "that's stupid what they're charging for that....totally not worth it..." in their best snob voice.

Since her tickets are a product of supply and demand and her shows sold out in a matter of minutes/hours across the country (last I heard it was 14M requests for 3M tickets), by the very definition of the concept, it was 100% worth the price that they charged for the ticket. And that's not even counting what people were paying on the secondary market to get in. My wife and daughters went to one of the shows in Dallas and had an absolute blast. The wife has been to quite a few concerts in her life and ranks this one as the best she's seen: production, number of songs, quality of the sound, the whole thing was apparently fantastic.

I'm not nearly as versed in music as some of you guys in here but count me in the camp that's been slowly won over and impressed by her song writing. My daughters (5th - 10th grade) all listen to her stuff and over time, listening in while they have it on, I've realized that she has some really solid songs that don't always make it to the radio and are catchy as hell. It's also pretty wild to listen to her early country stuff from the mid 00's followed by more poppy stuff from 10-12 years back, followed immediately by new stuff that's perforated with F-bombs off of her new album.