I Saw Taylor Swift On Friday Night In Chicago. I’m Still Waiting For My Life To Change

NBC Chicago - As Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour" Chicago stop debuted Friday night at Soldier Field, the icon wished fans a happy Pride Month, which kicked off June 1, and celebrated those who are "living authentically and beautifully.

"One of the things that makes me feel so prideful is getting to be with you and watching you, interacting with you, being so loving, so thoughtful and so caring," she said.

At a park outside Soldier Field hundreds of ticketless fans came together Friday to create their own concert experience, despite the stadium's plea to stay away.

"We tried and tried and tried to get tickets, and earlier this week my husband said, 'you know it's going to be a once in a lifetime atmosphere,'" Kelly Kennedy, 40, said to NBC News. "You can't be inside but maybe you can go sit outside and still be part of the experience."

Country star Maren Morris took the stage in a surprise appearance Saturday leading Morris and Swift to perform their "You All Over Me" collaboration from Fearless (Taylor's Version) for the first time ever live.

During Swift's third and final Chicago performance at Soldier Field Sunday night, the singer revealed a bug flew into her mouth while she was singing -- and that she had no choice but to swallow it.

“Oh delicious… Is there any chance that none of you saw that?… It’s fine. I swallowed it," Swift says, adding "this has been fun."

Also on Sunday night, Swift found herself screaming into her "lover mic" only to find that it wasn't delivering any sound.

I went and saw our girl Taylor Swift on what turned out to be a picture-perfect early summer night in Chicago this past Friday at Soldier Field. 

I will say this right away at the top- the show was awesome. By no means was I disappointed, let down, underwhelmed, or any of that non-sense. This wasn't the first time I've seen her in concert. It won't be the last. But I had some thoughts on the experience. That doesn't mean I'm a hater or was disappointed. Just that I was expecting my life to be changed based on the thoughts and opinions of people who saw this very same tour a few weeks ago, and sadly, it didn't happen.

Let's start off with the most impressive part of the entire thing: the production. 

It was seriously incredible. In all aspects. 

The scale of it all, all the moving pieces and parts, the screens sizes and clarity, it was insane. Some know-it-alls scoffed at my $100,000,000 million estimate but for context, U2’s “360 Tour” production cost 26-30 Million PER SHOW! . And that was back in 2010 and 2011. 

The amount of bodies involved in this undertaking, from a setup and an execution standpoint, has to be in the hundreds. I can't imagine how large the fleet of trucks has got to be to transport this whole thing place to place. How much this must have cost to price out, build, and operate on a nightly basis. It's bonkers.

Also, there was this whole wristband nonsense. Sure you’ve seen or been somewhere that had those cheap plastic wristbands you pull a sticker tab on and they light up and pulse to a signal sent out before dying. Right? Made in China garbage. Yah, well these weren’t those. These things were insane.

Keegs was right about one thing in her manifesto for sure, if you are going to see one Taylor Swift show, this Era's show is a damn good one. Especially if you haven't caught her live before. She runs the gamut of all her past hits, complete with costume and set changes to coincide with that "era" so you're getting essentially multiple shows in one. 

With the 1989 tour being her best, Red being the second best, and Reputation being her worst that I've seen, this one was right up there at the top in terms of performances. 3 and a half hours for a show is no joke. And covering 17 years of music is pretty awesome I don't care who the act is. 

I don't know how you go back to doing straight up single album tours with the usual encore of greatest hits after you perform an entire tour in this fashion. Unless this just becomes the norm for her and she's essentially a legacy act from here on out?

I know, I know. This was my big knock against seeing Springsteen a couple of months back in Detroit (another ticketmaster scamjob). But maybe it just means I'm getting old now and care about shit like this, whereas I didn't when I was younger? I would have negative infinity chance of seeing a show like this 20 years ago because I had no connections and had zero money. So having those today and the privilege of getting to go to a show like this isn't lost on me. But overhearing and talking directly to people around me at that show and being told the INSANE amounts of money they spent to take their kids there was seriously mind-bottling. 

Obviously supply and demand is a real thing. I get that. She's the hottest act in the world right now. Doing a limited amount of shows in a handful of cities this summer. There's not an endless supply of opportunities to see her. That's going to drive the price sky high. But people flipping tickets for $5000 a pop in some cases and other people paying that is outrageous. We're not talking The Beatles reunion, or Led Zeppelin here. We're talking Taylor Swift's first show post-pandemic. 

(Also, I can't confirm if this was truth or not yet but if so this is wild)

Speaking of excessive, the in-your-face over the top advertising for Capital One on this thing was so cheesy and cheap.

Made the whole thing feel like such a cash grab and sell out. From the wristbands, to the screen promos, to the digital ads everywhere you looked. I was half expecting her to throw "the great folks at Capital One" a shout-out mid-song during the show.

The other excessive part was the amount of costume changes. Kelly mentioned it in her review blog but even knowing that going into this I was still surprised, not in a good way, by how many of them occurred and how long it stretched this show out. 

I get it that I'm a middle aged man, so fashion shit is lost on me whereas little girls probably eat it up. But I seriously think they could have cut the amount in half, shrunk down the run time of the show, or replaced the extended instrumental parts of the song during the changes with 3-5 additional songs and not only would people not mind, they'd welcome it. 

Keegs was surprised by this, but that had to have been because it was her first time seeing her live. (And definitely not because she's a Red hater).

Red still remains Swift's best album front to back. It came from a period where she was turning into a superstar but hadn't totally sold out to mainstream pop yet. There are still heavy country influences throughout it, as well as great radio jams.

During her performance of "Tolerate It" you would have thought they were sacrificing puppies and kittens on stage. The amount of people bawling their eyes out was 

I'm not going to sit here and rip on people for enjoying the hell out of something that brings them joy. That's lame. But I have to point out the fact that seeing this show, or anything for that matter, and saying it was worth more than $20,000,000 millions dollars is lunacy. Crazy talk.

I love Kelly to death. She's one of the few girls I know who I don't mind hanging out with shooting the shit. She's a crazy person, but she's the first to admit it. She's a good person and a fun time to hang out with. She's an awesome Dozen trivia teammate and I'm glad we have her. But she's insane.

20 million dollars is life changing money. Literally the definition of life-changing. Seeing a musician in concert is not. Unless something happened we're unaware of at this show between Kelly and Fran and Taylor, 

I have to throw a flag on this and call bullshit on the $20 million thing. Sorry Kelly.

The production man!

I can't confirm this or not yet, but this sounds like it must be the case given the grand scale of this thing…

I would seriously love to pick somebody's brain behind this thing. So many questions.

There is just something about Chicago in the summer man. 

If you know you know. And you get it. If you don't, cackle to yourself and talk shit about Chicago and the millions of us who know how special this place is from your high horse. We don't care. Once we get this place turned around crime and tax wise we'll go back to welcoming you all with open arms even though we should tell you fuck off, seats taken.

(Sidebar- I got there in time to see the tail end of Owenn's set and was honestly pretty impressed. I showed up early because I fucking love Girl In Red and wanted to see her/them live. She killed it. The openers Taylor lined up for this tour are and have been unreal. A+ Job well done on that front.)

June 2, 2023 Chicago Solider Field Night 1 - SET LIST

Lover Era

1. Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince (shortened)

2. Cruel Summer

3. The Man

4. You Need to Calm Down (shortened)

5. Lover (spoken intro)

6. The Archer (extended outro) 
   
   Fearless Era

7. Fearless (shortened)

8. You Belong With Me

9. Love Story
   
   evermore Era

10. tis the damn season (shortened)

11. willow

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