Sunday, November 29, 2015

Taylor Swift has earned her title as Queen of Pop 2015 4.75/5 - Sydney 28th November 2015

Being the opening artist at any concert is tough, but 27 year old Australian, Vance Joy pulled it off with great success when he opened for Taylor Swift's 1989 World Tour Sydney show.

He started with a song about going back to Melbourne to someone he cared about and despite everyone being at the show to see pop Queen Taylor Swift, he drew excitement from the crowd, even those such as myself who were not originally fans.

Joy had only his guitar on stage and pulled off a brilliant rendition of Mess is mine before concluding his set with his 2013 hit, Riptide, which propelled him from oblivion into the public arena, and being of a calibre worthy of supporting Ms Taylor Swift.

Given he's a genuine performer it's hard for even the harshest critic not to fall in love with him or his supporting band members, like his drummer.

There was half an hour between Vance Joy's set and Ms Swift's.

The stage was prepared so that Taylor would enter the stage through curtains in the shape of an old stereo.  She drew squeals from the mostly, high school aged crowd when the started with Welcome to New York.

As she moved through her set list there were videos interspersed from her friends such as Lena Dunham and Selena Gomez between songs and vamping.

When Ms Swift vamped between songs she really thanked the audience for choosing to spend the night with her when they could have been "doing a million other things" in Sydney and that it was special that people had memorised her lyrics, when she "writes a lot of them".

She moved quickly through the first part of the set with I knew your trouble, I wish you would and All you had to do was stay just to name a few.

The pace changed with love ballad, You are in love.  Swift returned to stage with just her accoustic guitar and asked for crowd participation on the chorus.  This was a truly beautiful moment.

Swift is no stranger to criticisms from the media, so while she was introducing her next song she talked about how people should not be afraid of who they are and that people should ignore negative comments.  She was impressed that people were singing as if they truly didn't care who was around, and then launched into Clean, which it turns out has a different meaning to what I'd originally thought.

I had originally thought it was about a break up or friendship end but it's actually about being clean from what people think of you and moving on.

We are never getting back together started with a bang, and when the crowd realised what song it was being introduced by pyrotechnics they gave due applause and sung along the entire way through.

All shows have back up dancers, and as mentioned Swift made use of videos from her friends, she also made use of videos during the songs, and in the case of Out of the woods the video was set in the woods while she sung in a golf glitter full length jumpsuit.

There was a short break of less than a minute and then Taylor launched into her final track, Shake it off.  Lyrics appeared on the screens and fireworks concluded the show.  Her trademark outfit of the moment is skirts and crop tops, and that was her outfit of choice during Shake it off.  Instead of going for the usual four minutes, it went for seven months and she thanked her fans once again.

The set suddenly felt like it had been very quick, but the song was drawn out so Swift could adequately satisfy her fans, thank her dancers and back up singers, and just like Katy Perry has done before her, Swift ended the show with confetti and fireworks.

The best parts of the show were her little comments between songs.

Her show is arranged down to the last detail however despite this she comes across as extremely genuine and it's easy to see why she is the world's Queen of Pop in 2015.

If she does get bored of singing or decide she wants to take a break from it, then based on her looks to camera and movements she could easily be an actress or model.

All in all it was a brilliant show and it is easy to see why 76,000 people attended the sold out concert.

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