Friday afternoon, floral dresses, sparkly cowboy boots, sequined T-shirts, handmade friendship bracelets They headed to East Rutherford, New Jersey, and transformed MetLife Stadium’s sprawling asphalt parking lot into a pop-up performance space, fashion runway, and gathering place for friends old and new.
Two months and 25 shows into the Ellas Tour, which spanned the pop megastar’s career, the show arrived in the New York area for three weekends. It was her first concert near (but not quite) her adopted home in five years.
“I really, really missed you!” Swift told the sold-out crowd of more than 72,000.
And they missed her.
One young woman said she cried tears of joy as she strode through the tunnel leading to the parking lot. Two fans from Costa Rica with tickets to Saturday’s concert came in hopes of seeing Swift on Friday. The woman wearing the “I❤️TS” shirt declined an interview request, she admitted that she teaches at a public school and she wasn’t scheduled to be at the stadium on Friday afternoon.
Even getting into the parking lot required dedication and sometimes expensive tickets.
Six months after Ticketmaster’s presale was riddled with problems, a seat at the Friday show was available on the secondary market for over $1,000. Due to the astronomical cost, Swift’s loyal fans, known as the Swifties, have come to band together to find tickets at fair prices.
Brooklyn resident Charlie Tokieda, 39, waited online during the presale to get face value tickets to Friday’s show and distribute another ticket to a show in Denver to celebrate his birthday in July. bought at the market.
“We certainly got a great deal, and we could have bought a pretty good used car with that great deal,” he said.
On Friday afternoon, security guards in orange shirts stood near the gates surrounding the parking lot and asked for proof of entry before stepping aside. It was part of an effort to crack down on “”.taylor gating,— Hanging around the grounds and listening to a concert without a ticket — it’s MetLife Stadium Said would not be allowed.
Maria Naeem, 32, who arrived in an Uber around 9:30 a.m. and slipped unnoticed into the parking lot, remained outside as Swift prepared to take the stage. I was among a few fans and attendants. Her doctor, Naeem, asked two of her colleagues to cover her shift and drove out of Virginia in the hope that she could buy her ticket on her phone.
“It’s not selling and everything online is very expensive,” she said disappointedly.
Many of Swift’s most ardent followers dress like this. DIY costume, similar to the singer at various moments in her career. One fan wore a pink and white “Taylor Swift 2024” flag. Others wore skirts emblazoned with snakes, a nod to Swift’s 2017 album Reputation.
Long Island resident Robert Przybirski, 19, wore a floral shirt that looked like this: Swift’s 2021 Grammys Dressmore or less custom-made for concerts.
“I kept googling ‘3D embroidered floral fabric,'” he said. “From China he ordered from Etsy. It took a month to get here.”
Even those who weren’t lucky enough to get tickets found another way to attend Taylormania.
For months, ticketed and non-ticketed fans alike have been obsessed with procuring concert merchandise, sometimes camping all night to get their hands on the most coveted items first. there was.Perhaps in anticipation of the influx of salespeople, the flagship store at MetLife Stadium has We started distributing goods A full day early.
But those efforts did little to reduce Friday’s queues, and in addition to the prized blue crewneck sweatshirt, fans bought a new special edition “Midnights” CD (yes, a CD!) containing the following remixes: I was hoping to take it home. “Karma,” a song featuring up-and-coming Bronx rapper Ice Spice.
Near the show’s end, Swift premiered a remix video starring Ice Spice, announcing that while in the studio, “Not only did I fall in love with her, but I decided she was the future.” The rapper then took the stage with Swift to perform the remix and close out the show. A new cry of frenzy.
Swift has performed about 40 of the same songs in each of her three-hour-plus sets, but she also performed a few “surprise songs” to keep delighted fans on edge.
On Friday, she invited frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff to play fan-favorite Reputation track “Getaway Car,” before sitting down at the piano to explore the four albums she owns. He performed “Maroon”, the song included in the latest work “Midnight”. First release since last tour.
According to her, the LP was about “a night through my life,” “what lifted me up,” and “memories that keep coming back.”
“Maroon,” she said, is, as you’d expect, a song about memories like:
and i lost you
i used to dance with
I don’t wear shoes in New York
When I looked up at the sky, it was maroon
