Live updates: Taylor Swift takeover of Toronto begins | Canada Voices

12:20 p.m. ET

What time does the concert start and when will Taylor be on stage?

– Globe staff

Taylor Swift fans attending one of the six shows of the Eras Tour can begin lining up at 3:30 p.m. at the Rogers Centre. Gates will open at 4:30 p.m. and showtime begins at 6:45 p.m. The opening act, Gracie Abrams, is expected to begin her set around 7 p.m., while Swift usually begins her three-hour shows around 8 p.m.

11:40 a.m. ET

Fans scramble for last batch of tickets

– Josh O’Kane

As often happens with high-demand concerts, there’s been a slow drip of fresh Toronto Eras Tour tickets for sale on Ticketmaster in the hours leading up to the show, made available to those who signed up as Verified Fans for initial ticket sales last year. And also as often happens, they’re being quickly snapped up by people who joined the ticket queue at the right millisecond – dashing the hopes of fans who’d seen them but didn’t snatch them quickly enough.

11:30 a.m. ET

Swift drag impersonator, Tay BoBo, builds community with her Eras Tour tribute

– Josh O’Kane

Swift parties were already in full swing on Wednesday night. By 9 p.m. at The Drink on Church Street, a horde of Swifties flanked the stage as Toronto’s premier Swift drag impersonator, Tay BoBo, mimed and danced to All Too Well in a red sequin dress, guitar in hand.

Thus ended the Red era of BoBo’s three-and-a-half hour, nine-costume-change Eras Tour tribute. She ran behind the bar, returned in a baby-blue dress, sang Enchanted for a brief Speak Now tribute, then dashed to the back again. She emerged with two back-up dancers, all in black-and-red regalia, and marched through the Reputation era of the set. Soon there was folklore, then evermore, and, an hour after Red, BoBo was ripping through 1989′s Style.

The bar was ablaze with fans singing, taking videos, and offering BoBo shots. Taylor Cordingley, who has been performing as BoBo for about six years, told The Globe in September that their work has brought them professional opportunities, joy and, through fellow fans, community. “We’re all like a family and the communal experience of getting to sing and dance to Taylor’s music in our safe, queer spaces is something that is akin to magic,” they said.

9 a.m ET

Playlists for every Swiftie in your life (including the non-Swifties)

– Globe staff

There truly is a Taylor Swift song for every mood, but The Globe’s newsroom Swifties thought it might be helpful to break some down into categories you could apply throughout the Swift takeover:

• Basic: Nothing but the most recognizable of hits
• Hardcore: Underappreciated masterpieces to show you know more than her hits
• Teen mode: For the high school BFFs you listened to Taylor with in the 2010s
• Dad mode: For the listener who only knows Swift as an NFL player’s girlfriend
• Kid mode: Songs to put a toddler to sleep. The entire Folklore album, no notes
• Lyrical ballads: For your skeptic friend who thinks she only writes pop anthems
• Pep talk: For your friend who could use some encouragement and reassurance
• Sneaky: The best covers for your friend who won’t give actual Taylor Swift songs a chance

They’ve all been conveniently curated for you on Spotify (and in this article).

Nov. 13

Getting tickets in Toronto is hard even for VIPs

– Simon Houpt

On Tuesday, Keith Pelley, the CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns the big local stadium that did not land Taylor Swift’s Toronto residency, admitted at a sports industry conference that he’d been spending a lot of time letting down VIPs clamoring for tickets. “I was literally on the phone last night with Pat Brisson, who is one of the great hockey agents.” (Brisson handles Sidney Crosby, among others.)

“Nathan McKinnon’s fiancée was looking for Taylor Swift tickets, and I went: ‘Ah! Oh!! I’ve had so many requests!’ And I went, ‘You do realize she’s playing Rogers Centre, not Scotiabank Arena?’ It’s the most disappointing thing,” he added, noting that Swift would have otherwise likely set a new record for the highest grossing concert at his arena. Still, Pelley looked on the bright side: “My God, I’d have to have a separate assistant just to deal with the Taylor Swift requests.”

Nov. 13

Royal Ontario Museum immerses Swift fans in its displays

– Josh O’Kane

Hundreds of Taylor Swift fans have been swarming the Royal Ontario Museum since last weekend for a “Swifties Scavenger Hunt,” with dozens of challenges and clues spread across the museum.

The winners of Wednesday afternoon’s hunt was a team of two sisters decked in Eras Tour T-shirts. The pair delighted in finding paperweights – for Swift’s neverending lyric sheets – in the Samuel European Galleries, and in singing the folklore song august as they tried (and failed) to find a bust of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

They’d scored tickets to Thursday night’s show and wanted to do “everything Taylor Swift” in the city ahead of time, said winner Diane Brownlee-Smith. Her sister, Sandra Brownlee, added, “We’ve been watching on social media for years now – Swifties gathering – counting down ‘til we could be a part of it.”

A dozen people worked a cumulative hundred hours putting the hunt together. At a moment when Swift is consuming the collective Toronto psyche, it was a reminder that people still want to take in a full breadth of culture and history. “It not only brings new business, it strengthens relationships,” said Cheryl Nichols, the museum’s tourism and marketing manager.

Nov. 13

Swifties start arriving to Rogers Centre from near and far

– Dave McGinn

Swifties in freshly purchased merchandise stood outside the Rogers Centre in Toronto Wednesday taking photos of the friendship-bracelet shaped display, while a constant stream of fans took photos pointing up at a street sign declaring the route from the stadium to Nathan Phillips Square “Taylor Swift Way.” Hundreds of others lined up in endlessly snaking metal corrals to buy T-shirts, hoodies, posters and other merchandise.

Danelle Eichenberg and her best friend came straight from the airport, having flown in from Michigan. She’d failed to get tickets in Indianapolis and Detroit.

“I actually saw her when she was doing country music,” said Ms. Eichenberg, a 49-year-old who works in the medical field.

Best friends Marie Mitchell and Juliette Sarard, both 20, flew in from Halifax. They each bought a hoodie and T-shirt Wednesday afternoon.

“She always knows how to write songs about how I feel,” Ms. Sarard says of Swift’s appeal.

They have their merch, but they still don’t have tickets. If they can’t snag any—the cheapest single ticket was going for $2,330 on Stubhub on Wednesday—there will be no shortage of Taylor Swift-themed events to check out: dance parties, food tours, a Swiftie Holiday Hunt, and after parties, to name just a few of the events taking over the city.

Nov. 13

An A-Z cheat sheet on Taylor Swift’s world, from friendship bracelets to university courses

– Globe Staff

If you’re brand new to Swift’s oeuvre, this is a good time to brush up on the basics.

A, for example, is for Athletic. It’s the approach Swift’s trainer Kirk Myers took to preparing the singer for her tour. In the months leading up to Eras, she worked out six days a week, focusing mainly on strength and her core. She also shared that every day she would perform the full three-hour-plus set list while running on a treadmill.

B, meanwhile, is inevitably about those Bracelets. “So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it.” It’s the line (from Swift’s song You’re On Your Own, Kid) that started a movement. The bracelets – made and traded by fans at her shows and meet-and-greets – have become essential Swift iconography.

– Ann Hui – Angela Pacienza – Judith Pereira

Explore the entire Swiftie glossary here.

Nov. 13

The multiple milestones of the Eras Tour

– Rebecca Tucker

The tour that launched in March, 2023 has cemented Swift as, arguably, the biggest artist in the world – and, if you don’t believe that, the financial records she’s set make her inarguably the most bankable one.

Remember the initial crashing of Ticketmaster’s site? The showcasing of Sabrina Carpenter? The soft launch of Travis Kelce? Take a look back at the two years since the tour was first announced, and all that’s happened since.

Nov. 10

What’s happening with Toronto transit for the concerts

– Jameson Berkow

For both Taylor Swift concert attendees and locals, dozens of extra trains, subways, streetcars and buses are being added to regular service for each concert night, according to the Toronto Transit Commission and Metrolinx. Hundreds of transit workers, police and volunteers are being deployed to help with crowd control.

For GO, there will be special event service and late-night event trips added – the organization recommends checking schedules and buying e-tickets in advance.

The TTC will also have extra service before and after the concerts (and Taylgate) for both subways and streetcars.

Oct. 21

The Taylor Swift economy by the numbers

– Dawn Calleja

$1 billion (U.S.): The value of ticket sales for the first 60 Eras Tour shows Swift performed in 2023. And let’s not forget the merch—sweatshirts, T-shirts and other items emblazoned with images of Her Normcoreness—which brought in another US$200 million.

300,000: Estimated number of lucky Swifties who scored tickets to her six Toronto shows at the Rogers Centre, where capacity is just shy of 50,000.

$55: Price of a general admission ticket to Toronto’s Version: Taylgate ‘24 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where fans can hang out before and during Swift’s shows.

US $331.5 million: That’s how much “equivalent brand value” Swift generated for the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL between September 2023—when she attended her first Chiefs game to cheer on her bae, tight end Travis Kelce—and January 2024, according to Apex Marketing Group. After that first appearance, sales of Kelce’s No. 87 jersey increased by 400%.

More mind-boggling numbers can be found here.

From 2023

A skeptical mom becomes a Swiftie

– Anna Tosto

For mom Anna Tosto, accompanying her daughter as a chaperone to a Taylor Swift concert in Boston felt like more of a pain than a privilege.

“I tried to understand the madness that had taken over a large percentage of the global population who were all desperate to be part of the tour experience. But I still viewed it all as utter nonsense. Crass commercialization and opportunism at its worst. Indulgence and fluff at best,” she wrote in a First Person essay in 2023.

But the joy of the fans, and a reminder of what music is meant to be for, changed her mind.

“She is young and beautiful, superbly talented and smart. An entrepreneur and performer whose persistence, guile and savvy make Elon Musk look like a rank amateur. Her fans love her dearly and they are happy when listening to her music. Isn’t this exactly what I want my daughters to see? In this crazy world where women’s rights are reversing instead of advancing, I want my children to see that a woman can indeed rule the world. She can kick butt, have fun, make money, be kind and sit proudly on top of the heap.”

Read the full column here.