‘Taylor Swift Reputation Stadium Tour’ Is An Intimate Document Of An Impersonal Event

Of all the artists of her ilk, the Demis and Katys and Ke$has and maybe even Gagas, Taylor Swift is perhaps the only who has figured out a way to turn her music into something more than mere pop. Not to say the others aren’t talented or haven’t created moments of enduring art, but Taylor goes a little deeper, does it a little better and will stand the test of time more than her fellow early 21st century pop queens. Her sizable talents have brought her massive success, and her battle to maintain a personal connection to each and every fan in the most impersonal of settings is on full display in the new awkwardly titled Netflix concert film, Taylor Swift reputation Stadium Tour.

The tour was in support of her 2017 album, reputation, and Swift tells us from stage it is her first to consist entirely of stadium shows. Filmed on the final date of the tour’s American leg, it was the 2nd of two shows at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, which found her playing to over 210,000 people. To fill out the enormity of the venues, the 2-hour performance includes gigantic video displays, an army of backup dancers, and a backing band featuring a surprising number of guitarists. Still, there are moments where no matter how big the production, how loud the music, she seems swallowed by the vastness of the stage, like Jonah in the mouth of the whale.

Before the show starts, we hear a host of disembodied and disapproving voices discuss Taylor’s scandals, shortcomings and slights. Then a doorway opens up, looking like the Black Gate of Mordor (or perhaps the gate that keeps King Kong from eating all the inhabitants of Skull Island), and Taylor emerges in a sexy Jedi hoodie and thigh high boots. The stage is lit up in red, black and white – which, by the way, are the international colors of fascism – as a swarm of dudes that look like rejects from Dune dance around her and feel her up. I am guessing this is the “New Taylor,” not the “Old Taylor,” who a video of Tiffany Haddish later tells us is dead.

By “Old Taylor,” I assume they mean the country singer who put out her first album at 16 and charmed the world with her girl-next-door appeal. That was before the radical rethink of her career, before she dated a host of celebrities, each one supposedly inspiring a different song, and before she hooked up (not literally) with Swedish hit maker Max Martin, who found an artful balance between her personable songwriting and the machine-like modern pop hooks which powered her second act. One of Swift’s talents is how she can update her sound and image, flirt with hip hop and EDM, yet still seems fundamentally the same person she was at the start of her journey. New Taylor is still the Old Taylor, regardless of her protestations.

Over the course of the following two hours, Taylor will change her costume several times (thankfully with some color palette changes), perform massive stage productions with a bevy of dancers, travel via a giant plastic skeleton over the audience, and don an acoustic guitar to perform solo with background vocalizing from the 105,000 people in attendance. It’s interesting how young and female her audience still seems to skew, despite her attempts to update herself. She’ll be 30 next December, yet still seems like the young women in the audience who cry when she talks about personal struggles and heartbreak. After the acoustic interlude, she walks through the crowd, pressing flesh, and like Elvis and Madonna before her, is received beatifically.

At the film’s conclusion, stylized text says, “And in the death of her reputation she felt truly alive,” and allusions of her mistreatment at the hands of another have become one of the reoccurring themes of her work. It’s curious someone so successful should feel so maligned (not to mention a bit unbecoming of someone so privileged). But when she starts singing “Shake It Off” and it’s hard to stay mad at her. Her fans certainly don’t mind (and even relate to) her perceived martyrdom. “Salute to me, I’m your American queen” she sings in “King of My Heart,” and they do, from the front row to the back of the stadium, their wrists adorned with light-up bracelets so she can see them all.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Watch Taylor Swift reputation Tour on Netflix