A Long Time Coming—Taylor Swift brings fandom (and selfies) into cinemas • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

People often ask me why I go to multiple concerts on a single Harry Styles tour, and my only response in the past has been that it’s like going to rewatch my favorite film. Now The Eras Tour can also be your favorite film. Every night is concert night. “It’s not a movie!” the one-star brigade bleat. Of course it is—just as much a movie as Stop Making Sense is, with just as much dancing in cinemas.

“There were rambunctious crowds of twenty-somethings. Women dancing with their baby brothers. Moms taken aback as they didn’t expect Taylor to say ‘fuck’ so many times. The audience definitely made this experience vivacious and fun. Not quite the same euphoria as being in the maddening throng of a concert stadium, but it taps into some of that same energy.” —⁠Cassandra 

The scale of the production, the staging, the precision of the choreography is all a testament to Swift’s seismic presence on the world stage right now. Again, in her own words, “If I don’t beat everything I’ve done prior, it will be deemed a colossal failure.” As ever, she was determined to do things her own way, negotiating an unprecedented distribution deal with AMC and bypassing the major studios altogether.

And without that studio muscle? Cinemas are packed with fans decked out in their best Eras finery, dancing and singing and taking selfies in the aisles. Everything we’ve been told cinema is not, dismantled in one big, fun-filled party. And at a time when concert tickets are becoming prohibitively expensive, there’s been something so democratic about people who might never get to be in a stadium getting the full concert experience, chants and all—at prices set by the artist herself, not the cinemas.