Taylor Swift, a pop singer/songwriter phenomenon with over 100,500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, has started her critically acclaimed international 'Eras' stadium tour which spans almost 150 shows worldwide, some being sold out almost a year before the show. The vast demand of the shows has meant that Swift released ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie’, which is now in cinemas around the world. An opening weekend box office of $92.8 million has resulted from the craze for the film, as Swifties (Swift’s fans) dashed to nearby cinemas to watch the movie.
Swift has 10 original studio albums, spanning genres from country music to alternative/indie to pop and acoustic music. The Eras Tour consists of all these albums, as she spans all her 'Eras'. Swift is currently in the process of re-recording all her albums so that she owns the rights to her own music. We just got 'Speak Now (Taylor's Version)' and are anticipating '1989 (Taylor's Version)' which is being released this October 2023!
Watching the Eras Tour movie was truly a surreal experience. I watched it in the local Fulham Broadway Vue cinema. You would never think that just watching a 3-hour concert on a screen, in a pitch-dark room with a few other people would be compelling. Nevertheless, the experience proved this wrong. People got up and danced, sang their hearts out and clapped, as if you were part of the audience in the Los Angeles Sofi Stadium where the concert is filmed, which meant you fully plunged in the concert, forgetting you are in a shopping mall somewhere in London.
Talking to Aryanna Basu, who joined me in the concert experience, she argued that watching the concert in the cinema could be even better than going to the actual stadium as "you could see the stage and Taylor herself close up"; you had a perfect view of dancers, the set and Taylor from all divergent perspectives. As well as hearing Taylor sing, "you could clearly hear the crowd", which fully immersed you in the show.
If you are like me and unfortunately didn't get concert tickets after hours on different devices in different online queues, searching for resale tickets, just to then see the extortionate prices ranging from £600 and higher per ticket, then the movie is your chance to experience the concert for just £13.13 (an innuendo to Swift’s lucky number) as the lowest price!
So, make sure you make your beaded bracelets and get all bejewelled for the movie, as per Swift’s request, to belt out all your favourites of Swift’s songs at your nearest screening of the film.
