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Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour makes its streaming debut on Disney+ Thursday, and, at first, it won’t quite measure up to the stadium experience.
In May 2023, my five closest friends and I attended Swift’s show at MetLife Stadium — and it wasn’t just a concert. For a group of single twenty-something women, it was, in many ways, our wedding, our bachelorette party and maybe even our own funeral! What I mean is, it was a ritualistic occasion — a holy sacrament.
For us, the Eras Tour wasn’t simply an after-work get-together, it was a grand, all-day affair. Brunch was had, toasts were made. Dresses were steamed, lipsticks were traded. Glitter was swiped onto eyelids, cheeks and chests. And, of course, Eras were selected and embodied in fishnet tights and gauzy purple dresses.
We took several high-speed and low-speed trains to get there — “there” being a New Jersey football arena that had metamorphosed into a mecca of girlhood. Despite MetLife Stadium being packed with thousands and thousands of individual fans, we all vaguely resembled the same person and our particulars washed away, for better or for worse. That night, we were Swifties.
When Swift finally emerged from the dramatic water-colored fans and took the stage, our brain chemistries were altered — whether by the sheer force of the vibration in the stands or the simple coming of Mother remains unclear.
Despite our position in $140 seats in the fourth-to-last row, we could feel her power and her control over the crowd. She commanded the massive stage and surrounding stadium, even while playing the notably low-key acoustic surprise songs (which were, that night, the glorious “False God” and the dubious “Holy Ground”).
But on Thursday, Disney+ subscribers will face the same hard truth as I did when I rented the concert movie on Prime Video in December: Swift’s magic was not what I thought. I felt duped! Where in concert she was huge, on TV she is small. Where on tour she spoke to hundreds of thousands, on screen she’s just talking to little old me. In all honesty, though it pains me as a Swiftie to admit, I found myself cringing at the pop icon’s just average ability to move about the stage.
But as a card-carrying member of the Swiftie Union, I kept watching and I realized I recognized the pop star’s dancing. When examined in documentary-style close-ups, I discovered that the woman isn’t dancing at all! Swift is merely hand-dancing, orchestrating a series of musical charades corresponding to actions in her lyrics.
In case you haven’t heard of the totally made-up art of hand-dancing, it’s the most common form of artistic expression among rhythmically averse young girls — it sometimes even follows us into young adulthood at school dances, weddings and holiday soirées. It’s the flip of the hair in “Shake It Off,” it’s the hand-on-the-wheel motion in “You Belong With Me,” it’s the tossing of the car keys in “All Too Well” and the finger phone in “We Are Never Getting Back Together.”
Even when Swift’s actions aren’t obviously interpretative, her upper limbs are always grooving, like in “Illicit Affairs,” when she flips her flowy, chiffon sleeves in the wind like her hands are ribbon-dancing machines. And before I knew it, I was singing along and slamming my own hands onto my coffee table, demanding some man of my yesteryear to quit calling me kid, stop calling me baby. And my red palms and stretched vocal cords were proof: I was captivated.
Swift’s moves are comprised of the kind of gestures that, for most girls, aren’t typically performed outside of the gaze of our mascara-stained mirrors. And this is no flaw — nor an accident. Swift’s stratospheric power is fueled by these pantomimes of girlhood because they express a certain girlish, interior grandiosity that, under Swift’s direction, can miraculously birth football-stadium sovereignty and on-screen intimacy.
Girlhood, when performed collectively, feels so mighty. But it becomes so small sitting on a second-hand couch in an overpriced and undersized New York City apartment. Girlhood is the contradicting sensation that we are at once important and exceptional, but also small and forgettable. And the Eras Tour understands this. Swift knows how to channel the major emotions of minor events into a performance that isn’t about singing and dancing at all, but about tapping into the collective nostalgia of particular experiences that share a common essence.
In person, these performances work because Swift feels otherworldly when surrounded by a swarm of ritualistic fans egging each other on and gassing each other up. On TV, with no one else is around, the knee-jerk response to the Eras Tour is embarrassment. She’s a little too much like us and we can’t help but think, Girl, stop playing with your hair! Quit crying over that boy! Get over it, already! But Swift’s relentless hand-dancing and straightforward lyrics ultimately invite us into a more intimate mode of introspection — something that can’t be done amid the pomp and circumstance of an in-person concert. On screen, her performances conjure images of real heartbreak and real vulnerability, and for a few hours, we get to feel cathartically small — we don’t need to arm ourselves with lipstick, glitter and cupcake-shaped dresses to prove our interior lives are worth something.
It becomes validating to watch the biggest pop star of all time prance around an enormous stage, in front of a gigantic crowd, to the beat of the loudest rhythms using the most rudimentary expressions of adolescence to actually entertain. She’s actually doing the thing we all pretended to do after school when no one was home, singing into a hairbrush or the handle of a Swiffer WetJet, lamenting about all the ways we’ve been wronged by boys and our various arch nemeses — and it’s celebrated. It’s not pathetic, or secret, or embarrassing.
Swift is us and Swift is ours, and it’s more clear than ever when viewed up close on TV from home — you just have to be willing to wait out the cringe.
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Totally agree. She’s overrated!
You’re so off point here. Who.even published this nonsense.
We never got to see her in concert, but had great fun seeing this in the theater where everyone was up on their feet, singing and dancing along.
Now my daughter is having a bunch of friends over this weekend to watch it on a 60 inch TV. I’m sure it won’t be quite the same, but I have no doubt that there will be singing and dancing in the living room.
Agreed. I was grateful for the chance to see this in the theater and it honestly was the last push I needed to unapologetically embrace how much I enjoy her music and how she performs it live.
You are not a Swiftie. A Swiftie would never write anything like this. I attend the Eras Tour twice and I rented the movie in December. Watching the movie should take one back to their experience and relive every awesome moment!!!
You mean the author is not a Swiftie because Swifties only say positive things and would not dare to be critical of a single thing TS does? OK, got it. Just wanted to be sure.
Anything–be it a concert, a ball game, a play or even an epic movie–will lose considerable impact at home. Fun test: Next time someone tells you they didn’t like “Oppenheimer,” ask them where they saw it. I can guarantee that at least 90% of the time the answer will be Peacock or the Blu-Ray.
BTW, hand-dancing goes at least as far back as the Nicholas Brothers, and is a staple in other cultures (e.g., the Hula). Swift isn’t doing anything new here.
I guess I’m that 10%, I honestly did not enjoy Oppenheimer when I watched it in the theater. Well, I did like the first half.
So you’re straddling the line. 🙂
We gave Oppenheimer an hour of our time but just couldn’t watch it anymore. I doubt we would’ve liked it any better in a theater.
I would say I’m 95% out of the door with this website and this may have pushed me a little further…
Bye bye!
Why? Is it because someone has a different opinion than your own? People can have differing honest opinions about all issues. Those differing opinions shouldn’t be triggering anyone. Things don’t get better if people don’t talk. Things don’t get better if people can’t have honest discussions without being offended.
The world was a much better place before anti-bullying campaigns were taken to an extreme, and I say that as a person who was bullied all through my grade school/ high school years. It was horrible experience after horrible experience that went on for 12 years. The one thing it did do is give me a thicker skin so that I didn’t get triggered by comments from people with whom I disagree. It also helped me deal with difficult people and learn how to deescalate situations involving volatile people.
People growing up in a bubble where they don’t have to deal with difficult situations and differing opinions leads to nothing but intolerant adults who can’t deal with anyone who doesn’t have the same belief system as their own.
I have never understood the popularity of Swift. Anyone can be popular. Popularity and pure talent aren’t the same thing. Some people thing she is talented, I don’t have a problem with that.
At the concert, you can only see her through the screens, anyway, and you can only hear screaming fans. They could have a double lip-syncing. No one would know. At home, it does feel small and unimportant, though. I felt the in-cinema experience a happy medium. Other people sang and cheered, but did not overpower her. It was big and enveloping, and, yet, I could see her.
OMG watching that concert on TV was JUST LIKE BEING THERE
– said no one ever. It’s why we pay gobs of money for a live show and a couple bucks to stream. For the unduplicatable live experience.
Taylor Swift is the best dancer on the planet!
– said no one ever
She’s a highly successful songwriter and singer who knows how BRILLIANTLY market herself. (those are compliments).
Perhaps on just not in the demo that would find an article like this on TVline interesting. Fair enough. 🙂
I find this to be so off. I went to this in the theater and I rented it when it came out, I didn’t find it cringy or embarrassing and not a single person I’ve spoken to (or experienced it with) have felt that either – several of whom went to the concert as well. Yes, the experience is different live and in person, but no one has expressed the opinion that watching it on a screen is ‘cringy’. In fact, If you were near the very last row in $140 seats, you likely watched a good portion of this concert on a screen as well.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe themselves as a ‘swiftie’ in one breath and in the next say that watching her perform on a screen made them want to tell her to ‘stop playing with your hair, quit crying over that boy’. What an inanely reductive way to look at something that brings a concert that, you were so lucky to have attended but, so many of us fell victim to the ticketmaster debacle and were unable to.
The first half of this article feels braggy in the fact that you were lucky enough to go – which is your right, you were lucky enough to go and I would have bragged about it too – and then condescending that “I went to this live and I just can’t enjoy it as much on a screen”. Check your priveledge here.
The statements of “girlhood practiced collectively is so big but at home alone is so small” is the silliest thing I’ve read, and so limiting and – again – so reductive in this. Girlhood is something that is practiced in all spheres, big and small.
🤮🤮🤮🤮
This is a hard disagree on this one. It was not meant for a small screen and the viewers know this. To go on so harshly it seems like you were going a bit too far with your criticisms and making personal jabs. Audio will not be the same, the music will not hit the same way. I am a 25-year experienced musician who was trained classically, and you cannot compare the two. Acoustics are accounted for in each venue, multiple tests are run, and I doubt they were considering when mixing the audio how it could adapt to each individual make and model of television screens that would be used to stream this concert at the highest quality.
This is the most stupid review I’ve ever read…
She’s the biggest pop star of this generation for sure. Of all time? No way.
And of course seeing a show live is 1 million times better than seeing it on TV.
She sings for 3 hours and you are complaining she is only hand dancing? You have seen her music video, you would have know she never pretends to be a good dancer. Did you even see the video for Shake it off where she made fun of herself for her lack of dancing abilities? Being uncool is kinda her thing?! The whole performance is designed for stadium size of audience, so watching it on TV screen up close is always going to be a very different experience.
You were lucky enough to see her life in concert and then rented a similar TV version on Prime and now complaining those who had missed out watching on Disney+? Your privilege is showing.
I LOVE TAYLOR SWIFT SO MUCH. I WENT TO SEE THE CONCERT MOVIE IN SAULT STE MARIE ONTARIO CANADA AND OMG IT WAS SO AMAZING!!!😃😃😃😃😃😃LOVE YOU TAYLOR SWIFT!!!I WAS DANCING AND SCREAMING AT THE CONCERT MOVIE!!!😃😃😃
“The Biggest Pop Star of All Time?” I know MJ is dead, but you don’t have to lie.
I agree with the other comments you can’t possibly be a Swiftie. I say that because anybody can see the talent here and why just about everyone agree she’s the greatest performer of all time and the most talented! This movie got us to see her brilliant work..all of it. And yes it’s up close what’s wrong with that? We know we’re watching TV. Not everyone could get to the concert, but we can see and feel even through the TV the vibrations, the energy!! .
I believe your article was too critical, trying to find something wrong with someone who has nothing but great intentions to connect with her audience. And we all think she does a phenomenal job on TV or in concert!!
Did you write TVLine’s infamous Galentine’s Day article?
Well, lucky yo, that you live in the States and got to see her. For the rest of us, who couldn’t and won’t be able to have the amazingly experience you described, heaving the opposite to watch her, do a party inviting people over for the experience, being able to see on repeat some of the songs, it’s all we got.
Please don’t talk down about us as a viewers and about the only chance to experience it.
And I do live in a first world country, think about the second or third ones… You are saying this from a very entitled position. And we don’t need that.
Yes….it is smaller in your own living room. This isn’t ground breaking information. The commentary on cringing at her moving around the stage is beyond bizarre. Most of us don’t feel this way AT ALL. We don’t watch Taylor and expect some kind of peak Britney spears vma performance. Also referring to holy ground as dubious….such a bizarre article overall.
Taylor’s great but her fans are truly scary sometimes. This is a 95% positive review that just happens to have a tiny bit of objectivity to it, and the pitchforks are out.
It goes without saying that the experience of watching it on even the best billionaire home theater can’t match that of being in the stadium… but that’s an unfair comparison. For those that weren’t able to see it in person, this is still an incredible show. Also, anyone commenting on dance can feel free to dance and sing for 3 and a half hours, with the same energy level in the first and last songs. We’ll wait.
This was a fantastic show. It’s not the same as in person – expecting that is silly. If you went to the show this is at best a great souvenir. But 99.999999% of the population didn’t go to the show.
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