The “Eras” tour in the cinema: The secrets of Taylor Swift – told by herself

2023-10-14 13:13:09

Film The “Eras” tour in the cinema

The secrets of Taylor Swift – told by herself

As of: 1:13 p.m. | Reading time: 5 minutes

One era isn’t enough for her: Taylor Swift

Quelle: Getty Images for TAS Rights Mana

Taylor Swift’s gigantic “Eras” tour is filling the stadiums – and from now on it’s also filling the cinemas. In just under three hours it’s about the question of how Taylor Swift became who she is. And maybe also a little about how you manage to not feel embarrassed at all.

Of course it’s a new record: Taylor Swift’s “Eras” concert film has already grossed over $100 million in advance sales. With that, Swift knocked Justin Bieber’s “Never Say Never” ($99 million) off the pedestal and continues her steadfast march above her peers’ records. A lot has been written about the Taylor Swift phenomenon in the last few weeks and her success has been followed with amazement and sometimes astonishment. In fact, the concert film, now in cinemas worldwide, is a crash course in better understanding the pop star’s appeal.

It starts with a clock. The hands are at 13 seconds before midnight. 13 is the singer’s lucky number and her latest album is called “Midnights”. The camera first pans over and then into a brightly lit stadium in Los Angeles where thousands of fans are waiting. Dancers run along the stage with metre-high, flickering fans; the fabric is printed with blue-pink clouds. They form the compartments into a cocoon, open it and then there she is, the 33-year-old pop icon from the US state of Pennsylvania, in silver boots and a bodysuit. Swift’s costume, the stage, the audience, the light show: everything glitters.

Slipped out of the cocoon: Taylor Swift

Quelle: Emma McIntyre/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Swift shouts an eye-popping “Oh Hi” into the room, stretches her arms to all sides, is bathed in cheers and shouts: “You’re making me feel excellent right now.” She introduces herself as the evening’s tour guide, who will tour the will lead her own last ten albums, from her high school days to today. The concert is therefore a treatise of Swift’s entire musical career, told chronologically. Which not only promises a mix of genres, but also a long evening. The concert lasts three hours, the film was cut to two hours and 48 minutes. Everyone should know: This is an epochal work. A Swift album is never just an album, Swift calls it an era, a phase of her life. This is how the tour got its name. Before the eyes of the audience: the developing novel of Taylor Swift.

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Musically, the concert begins with their first album “Fearless”. With a country guitar printed with stars on her body, Swift skips across the stage. She plays “Love Story,” which tells of Romeo and Juliet. The song was released in 2008, so Swift must have been around 18 when she wrote it. This is where you start to understand the magic. While many artists are ashamed of their early work and most adults probably shudder when they look at their teenage diaries, Swift embraces every phase of herself, sees them as part of a total work of art and celebrates them as a step on the way to her current self. A way of dealing with one’s own past that every mindfulness book teaches no differently.

Stories from Yourself: Taylor Swift

What: © AMC

Taylor Swift has a talent for telling stories. This becomes clear in the concert. The backgrounds are more reminiscent of theater backdrops than stage sets. At one point there is a table with a vase full of roses. Swift pours wine into glasses and sets out plates, only to sweep everything off the plate a little later while she sings to her lover on the other side of the table. Visually, the evening fluctuates between glittering pop jackets and forest backdrops, which Swift walks through in a long hooded robe and flat shoes to arrive at a moss-covered hut.

She often sees herself, she now tells the microphone, as a Victorian woman walking through the forest wearing a cloak and holding a candle in her hand. And not something as a lonely millennial watching TV 700 hours a day. And the fans in the stadium cheer. The evening has reached the “folklore” era. As Swift sits on the moss-covered roof and sings “The One” and “Betty,” couples dance around the cottage as if at a ball, wearing tuxedos and dance dresses with long gloves.

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Now the stage has a similar attraction to that which probably gave rise to the youthful hype surrounding the Jane Austen era. Swift builds a kind of ethereal romance. Between the smoking fire in a small hut in the forest and the dream of a dance ball and great love. It is this kind of innocent youthful dream that Swift manages to embody as well as the image of a defensive, self-confident woman.

This comes into its own in the show part of the album “Reputation”. An animated snake hisses across the stage and Swift stands there in a black costume. The album includes songs like “Tilted Stage,” which fans understand as a reference to the Kanye West scandal. The singer did not grant her an award in 2009 and vented his anger on stage next to the then 19-year-old award winner. Musical allusions to personal feuds and her relationships with other pop celebrities are part of the Swift myth and fuel discussions in fan forums.

The transformation from the innocent country singer to the most successful (and business-minded) pop star in the world, who takes on record companies and colleagues, is visible here. The fact that Swift has built up such a huge fan base, which she never seems to lose despite musical changes, may also have something to do with this. Taylor Swift is a walking bildungsroman and she wrote it herself. If you want to read it again, go to the cinema now.