Taylor Swift: A Review
This past weekend had probably the second biggest event of the year in theaters: the release of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie. The film opened to over $92.8 million domestically. That’s $10 million more than Oppenheimer on its opening weekend and just $70 million less than Barbie on its opening weekend. But it was an event with fans flocking to the theaters dressed up in Taylor Swift swag, friendship bracelets, and more with friends or family members who are also fans in tow. Because of this it was the 6th highest-grossing opening weekend of the year (beat only by Barbie, 3 Marvel movies, and Super Mario Bros.). It is already the highest-grossing concert movie of all time, earning nearly $20 million more than the lifetime gross of Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.
The release of this film was unprecedented: Swift struck a deal directly with AMC Theaters and Cinemark Theaters, cutting any studio out of any profit sharing. The announcement and promotion window was just over 7 weeks. Movie studios were so shaken by the upcoming release of this movie that they bumped their planned feature releases away from October 13th; nobody wanted to compete. Pre-sales of tickets hit $37 million domestically on the first day.
It seemed like a good time to take a look at Taylor’s other concert films and documentaries, along with this theatrical event, and see how they measure up. Swift has released a 3-part miniseries (Journey to Fearless), an Apple Music exclusive concert film (The 1989 World Tour Live - not available on AppleTV+!), and a one-hour concert special (City of Lover). We will be focusing on her three streaming-exclusive concert films and documentaries - Reputation Stadium Tour, Miss Americana, and Folklore - and her latest theatrical release.
Reputation Stadium Tour (2018)
We start off with Taylor’s first stadium tour. From the opening montage it is clear the Reputation album is about the media coverage and backlash Taylor faced the previous couple of years and all of the names she was called online. The stage design includes a giant screen with cut-outs to make the band visible, a large tilting stage for one song, giant drums, and both a chandelier and snake skeleton that carries Taylor over the crowd from one stage to smaller satellite stages. This last bit makes it so even the furthest audience members get a closer look at Taylor - and to that end she even walks through the crowd at one point to one of the satellite stages, making her accessibility that audiences love so much about her songs and social media presence physically tangible for a moment for a lucky few.
There are plenty of references in the show to Taylor’s then-recent troubles, including snake imagery, which referred to a disparaging comment Kanye West’s then-wife, Kim Kardashian, made about Taylor during the feud that occurred when West got permission to use Swift’s name in a song and then used that permission to call her a bitch and make slanderous claims about her. Also, part of the show is dedicated to Loie Fuller, a pioneer of stage performance who fought unsuccessfully to copyright her choreography. This could be viewed as a reference to Taylor’s fight against Scooter Braun over ownership of her masters, but Braun didn’t acquire Big Machine, the label Swift signed to since the beginning, until June of 2019 - several months after this concert dropped on Netflix. However, Swift had been trying to buy her masters for years from Big Machine founder, Scott Borchetta, so it’s likely a reference to that then-current struggle.
The show is an entertaining one for sure. And there are at least five songs from other albums peppered throughout the 19-song set. It does stumble a bit with a couple of celebrity cameos and high-wire dancers during ‘Bad Blood’ that seem unnecessary. While Reputation won’t go down as one of the greatest concert movies of all time, it certainly shows Taylor Swift’s performance leveling up and strengthen connection with fans with displays of gratitude and actual momentary connection.
Miss Americana (2020)
The year 2020 was a pivotal year for the entire world. But it was also a big year for Taylor: she started the year with a documentary (January), a cancelled Lover tour (March), a one-hour concert TV special (May), a Disney+ concert film that featured her directorial debut (November - we’ll get to that), and two albums (July and December). That’s one hell of a year for any modern music artist!
The documentary, Miss Americana, details Taylor’s experiences from the Reputation Stadium Tour to the release of her album Lover. It’s a document that is both emotionally raw and musically exciting. In no way is it a concert movie, as there is probably less than 5 minutes of stage performance throughout the 85-minute runtime. But it does show Swift workshopping with Jack Antonoff and others songs that would become hits by the time this documentary was released. And it’s always exciting to see musicians fumbling their way to the lyrics of a song you know.
But the film covers in detail the toxic internet culture and backlash she faced a few years before, her sexual assault trial, and her politics among other things. Throughout it all, Taylor is on full emotional display, explaining her experiences, feelings, and opinions about each. There is no sense Swift is holding back; this is the real deal. You get her real feelings about her experiences testifying in a sexual assault case. You get her real feelings about her experiences with the backlash after years of working for approval. She even goes into detail about her experiences as a woman in the country music genre and how the (Dixie) Chicks are used as an example of what women shouldn’t do in that business and how that made her feel for years like she couldn’t say anything that might be controversial. Now, to that point, it’s fair to say that by the time she started speaking out during the 2018 mid-terms and the 2020 presidential elections she had already moved away from country music for several years and had grown her career in such a stature that she was in a much safer place to voice her politics, especially since she’d already been raked through the coals publicly. In fact, speaking out against conservative policies and as an ally of the LGBTQ+ community only made her more powerful. But her point about women in country music still stands, which makes actions by those like Maren Morris, who didn’t debut until 2016, braver by comparison.
Ultimately, Miss Americana is a very revealing and intimate look at one of our culture’s biggest and most powerful figures. It humanizes her and strips away any shred of credibility critics had about her as being calculated and disingenuous. Since this film’s release there has been an abundance of similar films from Selena Gomez, Billie Eilish, and Olivia Rodriguez, making its influence clear.
Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions (2020)
On Thanksgiving weekend, four months after the surprise release of her album Folklore, Taylor released on Disney+ her directorial debut: an intimate studio performance of that album. Taylor, along with her collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, gets cozy on Dessner’s property, which has a barn converted into a wood cabin studio, as well as fairy lights and plenty of lawn furniture to get comfortable in, and perform the entire Folklore album. Before each song 2-3 of them sit and talk about the songs, their development, and stories. Do you remember VH1’s Storytellers? It’s a bit like a pandemic version of that.
It’s all a very low-key affair with Swift snuggled in sweaters and fall jackets while effortlessly singing these pleasant and soothing melodies. The direction by Swift is simple: cuts to each performer and the occasional pan or zoom. That’s all fine, because it’s perfectly suited to the energy of the music.
Folklore is not the usual kind of concert movie, but it is also the kind that’s best suited for established Swifties. It’s not the sort of thing that will help the curious “get” what the big deal is about this Swift kid. But it is a pleasant viewing to have on a cold night by the fire.
The Eras Tour (2023)
At this point it’s been 5 years since her last tour and in that time she’s released 4 new albums and 3 re-recordings of her first 6 albums. Swift decided to celebrate all of her albums in a single international tour. This film was shot during her final stop in the United States, the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.
This concert is a complete spectacle of the best kind. There are incredible visuals on a giant screen and stage that runs nearly the entire length of the stadium. Equally outstanding are the costumes by Taylor and her crew. From both the visuals and the costume changes there are at least a couple “how did they do that?” moments. Those costumes, by the way, took hundreds of hours of work to create and came from some of the top minds in fashion, including Atelier Versace and Oscar de la Renta.
The great Mandy Moore (not the actress) carefully crafted the choreography so precisely that it often comes down to hitting specific spots on the stage that interact with visuals. The dance choreography alone is some of the best since the heydays of Madonna and Janet Jackson and make up a third of the spectacle. The stage’s visuals make up another third (the music makes up the rest, of course) as it transitions flawlessly from era to era, occasionally including sets like glass cages and a mossy cabin. It feels like whatever hitches they had in the Reputation Stadium Tour are refined here: the band is more visible, the stage is one solid piece rather than separate pieces, the set transitions are remarkably smooth.
Upon hearing the premise of the concert as a journey through Swift’s different albums, one might assume it would be a chronological journey that leads up to her current “era”, Midnights. But that isn’t so. Taylor crafted her concert with a rhythm that bounces around her history from a quiet, dramatic set to a more bombastic or lively set. It’s a very smart way to plot the concert experience. Most importantly: throughout the entire 2 hours and 48 minutes Taylor rarely stops enough to catch her breath.
Taylor Swift, with help from director Sam Wrench, has created a concert film that can comfortably sit next to Stop Making Sense and The Last Waltz as one of the greatest concert films by a single act. It is enough for the curious or unfamiliar to fully understand Swift’s talent and power.
The Ranking
The Eras Tour
Miss Americana
The Reputation Stadium Tour
Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions
So, after years of having them sit on my streaming queues, I’ve been able to watch all of Taylor Swift’s feature documentaries and concert films. It’s just over 8 hours of Taylor Swift. That’s either enough to exhaust or satisfy a viewer, depending on where they sit on the fandom spectrum. I definitely don’t recommend all of them for anyone but the most hardcore Swiftie. But The Eras Tour and Miss Americana are definitely strong recommendations for anyone who is curious or wants to learn more about Taylor than the headlines they’ve seen. Like Dont Look Back, Truth or Dare, or Stop Making Sense they are both an essential portrait of one of our greatest artists and essential pieces of rock history.
You can find The Reputation Stadium Tour and Miss Americana exclusively on Netflix. Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions is exclusively available on Disney+.