17 April 13–19, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The Faces of Taylor Taylor Swift takes fans on an unabashed tour of her life in music. BY EVA RAGGIO A house appears in the back- ground set of Taylor Swift’s new Eras tour. Throughout the show, it changes from the house seen in her “Lover” video to the moss-roofed cabin on which she performed at the 63rd Grammys, then back to an empty, skeletal “Lover” house burning in a massive inferno. The meaning of this symbolism is dividing TikTokers. What is indisputable is that with her Eras tour, which made a record-breaking three consecutive stops at Arlington’s AT&T Sta- dium last week, Swift has fully allowed fans — nearly 70,000 of them on March 31 — to get cozy once again inside the private quarters of her life, one we’ve come to know and dissect. Now 33, Swift has united listeners through these musical reference points for more than half of her life. Since her self-titled debut at age 16, she’s published with each album an anthology of lyrical memoirs, letting fans in on an inner world replete with stories of ex- traordinary strength, a surplus of famed vil- lains, heroes and even product placement. Tickets for the Arlington shows started at $500, despite Swift’s and her litigious fans’ protests, but if ever a concert was worth a splurge, it was this elaborately staged tour through Swift’s discography. Because of the pandemic, Swift is touring for her last three al- bums for the first time. She started out with the Lover portion of the setlist, with “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,“ close to 8 p.m., followed by “Cruel Summer” and “You Need to Calm Down,” though no one could. Swift is seemingly never out of the spot- light — she received a key to the city of Ar- lington and had a street renamed for her; a city in Arizona briefly renamed itself in her honor; she was name-dropped during Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski accident trial; and a security guard at one her concerts gained massive fame for dancing and singing along while on the job. Her career has long been an ascending arc, and it’s hard to imagine there are still higher strata to be conquered, especially after a year when her album streams broke records yet again. There’s hardly a bigger music star than Swift. The fact is the curly-haired kid whose dream propelled her family to move to Nash- ville now wields more clout than the pope. Few people have gone from country star to pop titan to feminist icon, and the spectacular impact of her Eras tour has been praised from The Atlantic to The New York Times. Early on in her Arlington show, she ap- peared before her constituency of Swifties with a blue acoustic guitar. “By the way, I’ll be your host this evening. My name is Tay- lor,” she said, like we were just sitting down at TGI Friday’s for some subpar onion rings. Instead she’d serve up a mouthful of un- attainable romance with “Lover.” The crowd hardly sat at all during her three-hour set. The balcony seats twinkled with fans’ light-up bracelets. Those with floor seats stood shoulder to shoulder. There was no dancing space, but women in the au- dience sang to each other with eyes closed. Swift ditched the guitar for “The Archer,” which she punctuated with a shower of smoke and a sparkling cascade of lights. As she sang the words “all of my enemies started out friends,” even the most casual Swift listener could probably think of some names — Scooter Braun, Kanye West, Karlie Kloss, who fit the description. Her hands came together in a heart sym- bol, a salute to her longtime fans. In a spar- kling dress with long fringe, she danced with her musicians, all in black leather, as she delved quickly into Fearless. “Are you ready to go back to high school?” she asked, prompting the strongest sing- along until that moment with “You Belong With Me,” as a gold-lighted platform raised her above her subjects. Naturally, the song was followed by “Love Story,” as a shower of laser lights poured off the stage and filled the air. Some- thing about Swift’s skipping and laughing seemed knowing, like she embraces her early hit songs about teenage love with pure, accepting sentimentality. Though her girl- ish-toned smash hits gave way to far more sophisticated songwriting in the last decade, Swift can reinvent herself without disavow- ing her past work. Other than the show-stopping numbers, Swift’s choreography was fairly natural. Though she’s a gifted vocalist and respectably showy showwoman, there were no wild gym- nastics to distract from her lyrics. “We have some stuff to catch up on,” she said before thanking fans for supporting her rerecorded album releases, a move she made after her masters were sold from under her. Onscreen, her custom black-and-red Christian Louboutin boots stomped along to the sound of a snake hissing, anticipating the portion dedicated to songs from Reputation. An image of a cobra appeared onscreen as she went through “Ready For it?” ending in “Look What You Made Me Do” in a black one-legged jumpsuit with an embroidered bedazzled snake, fully owning the time when Kimye fans tried to “cancel” her over a (let’s oversimplify) misunderstanding with Kanye West, by leaving snake emojis on her posts. As she moved on beat with her dancers, the stadium was flooded in red light and smoke. “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now … why? Because she’s dead,” the audience screamed out while a split screen showed Swift from three differ- ent angles. Perfect. One sequence showed a wall of dancers dressed like Swift in various stages of her ca- reer, as a cheerleader, as a circus ringleader. She would soon appear in a princess-like gown, looking like a young Nicole Kidman. Her show, like the near entirety of her work, is an exercise in self-reflection, a char- acter study of one, like a non-toxic Eminem. But there are those who still regard Swift as a vanilla pop-dispensing vending ma- chine. Some critics may have blanked out on her words somewhere around “Wee-hee are never, evur, evurr getting back togethurr,” ignoring the larger messages in her words in and out of the studio. A poised, sample-sized star singing into an expensive vintage microphone about breaking up with a movie star before moving on to another may be disconnected from the reality of most of her listeners, but her feel- ings are universal, no matter what upgrades surround their setting. Swift’s artful oversharing allows fans to learn from her example, and even her privi- leged position demonstrates the non-privi- lege faced by women always, how even the most famous star on the planet is still vul- nerable to sexual assault. That enlightened self-awareness carries through in lyrics that have become mantras in personal responsi- bility: “Hi, it’s me, I’m the problem, it’s me,” or “In my defense I have none, for never leaving well enough alone.” Natalie Perez Taylor Swift put on a spectacular show on Friday, March 31, the first of three at Arlington’s AT&T Stadium. | B-SIDES | t Music since 1978! 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