She came, we saw, she conquered: What Taylor Swift taught us about ourselves

In case you missed it, the biggest concert tour ever to hit Australia wrapped up on Monday night, with Taylor Swift playing the last of her four shows at Sydney’s Accor Stadium.

The week before, she played three shows at the MCG in Melbourne. All up, an estimated 600,000 people saw her live. No one has played to that many people in Australia in a single tour before. And given more than 4 million people tried to buy tickets when they went on sale last June, it’s likely she could have played to even more (indeed, thousands without tickets stood outside the stadiums each night to experience the show at a slight remove).

Taylor Swift performs during her Eras Tour at Accor Stadium.Credit: Wolter Peeters

What that all tells is that Taylor Swift is hella popular. But we already knew that. The stuff we perhaps didn’t know until this tour is as much about us as it is about her. So, let’s take stock.

What cost-of-living crisis?

For 18 months or more, pretty much all we’ve heard about the economy is that it’s on the brink. Australia is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, we’re all gripped by fear that things could go belly up at any moment, consequently we’re not spending money, and that is, paradoxically, only increasing the risk of the thing we fear coming to pass.

Well, it turns out all we needed was a good dose of Swiftonomics to shift the narrative.

Excluding the small number available in the cheapest ($70) and most expensive ($1400) bands, the average ticket price was $235. The first tranche of tickets sold out within two hours, with each successive release moving with similar speed, and millions missing out.

Some superfans claimed they were spending as much as $10,000 on tickets, merchandise, flights and accommodation as they set out to see every show on the Australian tour. But even regular punters were shelling out liberally.

The lesson here was clear: if people want something enough, and sense it is in limited supply, they will spend, no matter which way the economic wind is blowing.

A Taylor-led recovery

How big an impact Swiftonomics has really had on Australia is, however, hard to determine. As Melbourne came down with a severe case of Tayloritis in the days leading up to her first Australian show, Lord Mayor Sally Capp claimed the city’s economy would get a $1.2 billion boost from those three shows.

An analysis by the National Australia Bank last week was more reserved, claiming spend in metropolitan Melbourne was up 33 per cent ($174 million) on the Swift weekend compared to the prior month. But that month was January, when the city was still on its summer go-slow, so who knows.

KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne, meanwhile, put the net benefit of the Tay Tay effect in Sydney and Melbourne combined at just $10 million, primarily because so much of the revenue will ultimately go offshore. And apart from spend by international visitors (about 2 per cent of ticket buyers), all that money was local, and probably would have been spent eventually anyway.

But it’s not just about the dollars

Not everything can be measured in economic terms. Taylor Swift concerts might be industrial in their scale and micromanaged in their details, but they are still cultural events. And the value of culture has to be measured in intangibles as well as dollars.

How good did it feel to walk the streets of Melbourne as it was in the grip of Swift fever a week and a half ago? Very. You didn’t need to be a fan to feel that something special was afoot; there was a joyous energy to the place that is usually reserved only for AFL grand final weekends.

Taylor Swift fans line up for merchandise outside Accor Stadium in Sydney.Credit: Steven Siewert

“More than just the music, Taylor really brings people together – from the friendship bracelet trading, fan chants, Taylor-gating, etcetera,” says fandom expert Kate Pattison. “It’s not often that a whole city [or country] will get around one concert or event in the way that we have over these last few weeks, and it’s nice for people to really feel a part of something.

“When describing Taylor’s shows to people I often use the word ‘joyful’. I think Taylor’s shows have also demonstrated that so many of us are searching for a bit of joy and lightness right now.”

Because Accor Stadium isn’t just a short stroll from the CBD, there perhaps wasn’t quite the same level of all-pervasive excitement in Sydney. But still, Taylor in Surry Hills, Taylor and Travis at the zoo (twice!), Taylor at dinner all made it feel like it was the place to be, an extension of the feel-good vibes attributable to the rom-com smash Anyone But You.

Plus, there was the centrifugal effect as Taylor seemed to sweep so many others – Katy Perry, Rita Ora, Taika Waititi, Anthony Albanese, even Blink-182 frontman Mark Hoppus, who was playing next door but still managed to find time to pop backstage – into her orbit. Talk about squad goals.

Why can’t it be like this all the time?

Just like Mussolini, Taylor Swift made the trains run on time. And for free.

OK, she didn’t. That was Transport for NSW, which made travel to the stadium free for anyone with a concert ticket, and piped Swift songs into the carriages over the sound system.

The Tay Tay Express was a runaway hit. And Melbourne benefited too, with hundreds of extra train services and an extension of the free tram zone to cater to fans getting to and from the shows.

And like so much about the past couple of weeks, it all left people wondering why their city can’t be a bit more like this all the time.

Contact the author at [e-mail], follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.

A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. Sign up to our Culture Fix newsletter here.