Taylor Swift - Fearless.. Finale!!

Next up is Speak Now, when she started transitioning to pop music! That’s the one you see everyone getting excited about at the end, there. Well, everyone but her record label, who didn’t want her to go pop and fought her the whole way. If this tier gets me two concerts or a concert and a documentary for the month, it’ll be either Speak Now (just a concert) and Miss Americana (just a documentary) or Speak Now and Reputation (also just a concert, but it’s the one I suspect you’ll most enjoy). Timeline-wise, Red and 1989 should follow Speak Now, but I can’t find anything of decent quality for Red, and you already saw 1989. Also, that random teenybopper boy was Justin Bieber, tween heartthrob of the time who grew up to be a nasty bully. He was real popular at the time, though. Well…among a younger crowd. Taylor had kids through adults, but Justin only had like…tweens. I never could get into his music even though I actually do LIKE pop music… I don’t know why. Not like I’m good at sniffing out jerks before they show their colors, or my life would be real different. Can you believe that John Mayer (32) dated her during the time period in this documentary? She was friggin 19. An age gap can be all right, but uh… I dunno, that’s some kinda line for me. Not for her, of course—what 19yo is gonna know better when one of their music idols is asking them out—but…idk. (A song about him shows up in the next tour—it starts with her sitting on some stairs in a dress. He sued her for defamation and lost.) Just some background info I think might help with the next one, since “Don’t you think 19’s too young” is the kinda line that needs context, I figure. But on the matter of THIS tour… personally giving the dancers and everybody those yearbooks… that’s so sweet. And all those moments of them hanging out on speedboats or in costumes… I don’t think I’ve seen any other solo artists doing that out here? But I suppose I haven’t looked too hard. And yeah, I figured this wouldn’t be your sound. I enjoy the country, but I know it’s not for everybody, haha. I’ll take about any genre with a compelling story, honestly. I’m pretty broad in my music tastes. Speak Now was 100% written by her. Completely solo written album. And it’s got some country, some pop, etc. That’s where the Haunted performance you saw came in—she was experimenting a lot with sounds. Also, the ‘band of thieves in ripped up jeans’ in “Long Live” harkens back to when she called the group in Fearless a band of thieves. That song is about her fans and her crew, which is why it’s a fan favorite. She wrote that one about us, haha. Man. Love how she talked about fans comforting her as she relived that sadness on stage. Squeezing their hands. And how she mentioned giving fans her bracelets. It’s a tradition to exchange friendship bracelets at Swift shows. I exchanged about twenty just at the movie! Everybody was happy to except a couple middle schoolers who seemed a little scared of me in my wheelchair. I don’t take it personal. Anyway. You can see how fans get hooked if they go to one concert. That sense of connection… She has whole stadiums in the palm of her hand. I hope they legislate the crap out of Ticketmaster and crack down on scalpers so I someday get to buy a ticket for the prices she intended instead of the literal 100x markup scalpers are charging. That’s me, though. Lamenting not going to her concert when I was healthier, haha.

Morgan Bauman