Taylor Swift shakes it off in front of 76,000-stong crowd at Sydney concert
TAYLOR Swift had 76,000 besotted fans and their parents at “Hello Sydney” when she opened her 1989 World Tour at ANZ stadium tonight.
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TAYLOR Swift had 76,000 besotted fans and their parents at “Hello Sydney” when she opened her 1989 World Tour at ANZ stadium tonight.
After a week of playing “guess where Taylor is?” there was no escaping her larger-than-life presence.
The highly choreographed, fast-paced spectacular dazzled with energy and panache, with the doe-eyed sweetheart now vamping in her incarnation as fierce pop vixen.
She knows where every camera is and just how to use them to smile, wink, hair flick or emote for the big screens conveying all the action to the cavernous stadium.
Swift is the queen of the big gesture and while they often feel automatic, she gets away with it because the young girls who make up the vast majority of her fans lap up every Taylor moment.
The venue and audience is an integral part of the show, glowing wristbands pulsing to the music alongside the plethora of glow sticks and blinking homemade signs.
Swift didn’t muck around reminding the fans who have sung these songs in their bedrooms and cars for the past year that this is the 1989 tour, drawing heavily from the record which made her seamless transition from country to pop.
Welcome To New York, New Romantics, Blank Space and I Wish You Well were only broken up by a smouldering reinvention of I Knew You Were Trouble with Swift flanked by sweaty, topless male dancers.
She became a human disco ball with blinking pink lights on her bra and skirt for How You Get The Girl, glowing like a fluorescent rainbow as the stage lights dimmed.
“I’m just taking this all in because it’s one of the biggest crowds I’ve ever played to,” she said, strumming an acoustic guitar and rising high above the catwalk during You Are In Love.
As the stadium swelled in call an response to her, it was obvious Swift sings in the key of everybody, another reason she has connected so wildly and widely around the world.
Another of her trademarks was well-exercised during the show — junior Oprah Taylor.
Her positive affirmations and motivational between song banter seeks to arm her fans against the world’s bullies and cynics.
Of course the ex-boyfriends don’t get the same speech, with their contributions to past heartbreak immortalised in her lyrics.
But there is only a smattering of those kind of songs in her set on this tour, with the more optimistic love songs, including a Lorde-esque reworking of breakthrough hit Love Story and chart hits Bad Blood, Style and Shake It Off tipping the balance.
As far as the big stadium show goes, this was one of the best, beautifully produced and executed by a 25-year-old superstar.
The proof was in the smiles of all those gorgeous little girls who had the night of their young lives.
Even if they didn’t get a special guest.
Taylor Swift plays Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane, December 5; Adelaide Entertainment Centre, December 8; AAMI Park, Melbourne, December 10, 11 and 12
Originally published as Taylor Swift shakes it off in front of 76,000-stong crowd at Sydney concert
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