Taylor Swift Fearless Tour 2009/2010 > Reviews (1)

Taylor Swift: Fearless 2009/2010

(I''m only mainly reviewing the UK one, as that's the only one i attended, sorry)

About a week before the concert, I honestly had the biggest surprise of my life so far - one of my friends suddenly blurted out: "Hey, Emily, do you wanna come to a Taylor Swift concert on Monday?" I really would love to have seen my face then, I know it would have been full of confusion, shock, disbelief, and excitement. I knew of the concert before this, but it had been sold out (like every other show in the tour) when I looked for tickets. Eternal gratitude to my friend/

This concert was to celebrate Taylor's 6x Platinum album , Fearless. It's set to include 105 shows, in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan. The first concert, on April 23rd 2009, was held at Roberts Stadium, in Indiana. The concert I attended opened the doors at 18:30, the supporting act came on at 19:30, and Taylor came on at 20:30. The show finished around 22:45.

Monday 23rd November 2009

'Travelling There

We drove to the nearest train station, and took a train to London, where we then found the underground to Wembley. The train and underground fares added up to about £22.

The Arena

As you would expect to find a a popular concert, as soon as we arrived we were completely surround by rushing fans.There were fans of all ages, sizes, genders. I was surprised to see quite a few grown men fans, as I wouldn't have thought her music appeals to them as much, but then again, it is pretty awesome.What's not to like. :)
There were many stalls outside the arena, which sold food, glowsticks, flashy light things, T-shirts with various designs involving Taylor Swift, posters, calendars, typical concert merchandise.
Once we entered the arena (after having our tickets checked, and our bottle lids removed!) it was still jampacked, and we found ourselves amidst more stalls. These ones sold special programmes for the concert. At £10, I thought this very reasonable, for a thick A4 programme of good quilaty paper & images of the concert.. there were food stalls, which sold popcorn, ice cream. There were many small drink stations, bars, hamburger.hot dog shops, etc. I didn't personally purhcase any food/drink here, but I'm sure the prices would be typically overpriced, as they are at concerts.
There were many entrances into the stage, most of which accompanied by a set of separate female, male , and handicapped toilets. These queues seemed to be endless, but the toilet facilities themselves were very nice.
I made my way up the flight of stairs and into the actual arena. the usher was very helpful in showing us where our seats were.
After the supporting act before Taylor started, people came around the seats selling ice cream and popcorn. As it had gotten very hot in the arena, I bought a delicious ice cream for £2.

Supporting Acts

For most of her tour, Taylor was joined by American country music group Gloriana and American Idol 2005 finalist, Kellie Pickler. Though I did not see either of these acts, I'm sure they were very entertaining.

Here is the track listing: * Gloriana
1. How Far Do You Wanna Go/Go Your Own Way
2. You Said
3. Lead Me On
4. The Way It Goes
5. Wild at Heart
* Kellie Pickler
1. Best Days of Your Life
2. Things That Never Cross a Man's Mind
3. Rocks Instead Of Rice
4. Makin' Me Fall in Love Again
5. Didn't You Know How Much I Loved You
6. Don't You Know You're Beautiful
7. I Wonder
8. Red High Heels

In the UK, Taylor was joined by Canadian teen pop singer Justin Bieber, who was discovered on YouTube. Unfortunately, Justin broke his foot while performing one of the songs at Wembley Arena, so he could not perform the encore, but he still performed the following night at Manchester Evening News Arena (with the encore). His track listing goes as follows:
1. Love Me
2. Bigger
3. One Less Lonely Girl
4. Favorite Girl
5. Never Let You Go
6. One Time
7. With You (Chris Brown Cover)
I had never heard of Justin Bieber before, but I was keen to listen to him and see how I felt about his music. If Taylor had chosen him to support her, he must be good, right? Well, he was honestly amazing; pure vocal talents despite being so young, accompanied by great dance moves, and he's gorgeous. Before I knew it, I was already singing along to the chorus of "One Time", even though I'd never heard it before! Since discovering him five months ago, I have now bought his full album, My World 2.0, and am enjoying it immensely. I love him and his music, so I'm very happy Taylor chose him to support her in the UK.

Taylor Swift

I don't know how I'm going to describe this show and give it justice; it was just so unbelievable.
On the screens, famous celebrites and close friends of Taylor, such as Miley Cyrus, Lucas Till, and many more appear, and give the crowd their definition fo the word 'fearless'. Taylor Swift appears on the screen, and the crowd goes mental, so loud you can barely hear what she's saying. She tells us her personal definition of the word, and then the screen fades... the anticipation builds...
The curtain rose, the crowds screamed their heads off, and then we see a white stage with band members on it. Suddenly, a figure starts to rise on the stage on an elevator. TAYLOR SWIFT!
Dressed in a band uniform, Taylor starts singing 'You Belong With Me'. The crowd is jumping, screaming, singing; just crazy. Amazing atmosphere. Halfway through the song, two dancers dance close to Taylor, and then suddenly rip off her band uniform, revealing a beautiful black and white sparkly fringe dress. When she finishes the song, she is then handed a silver sparkly guitar, and plays & sings 'Our Song'. She even included a bit of belly dancing!
She then welcomes the crowd officially with a personal heart-felt speech, and then begins to sing 'Tell Me Why'.
Afterwards is another speech, a few lines of which made the crowd giggle, introducing the next song. A desk and chair, very high-school like, appear on the stage, and Taylor sits down to sing an emotional 'Teardrops On My Guitar'.
'Fearless' is next on the set list, and shows Taylor playing a different guitar.

During the song, she takes a moment to put her hands together to make her signature heart symbol, and the crowd copy her while singing.
Taylor leaves the stage, and a video is played on the screen. One part of it involved an interview with Taylor Swift, where she and the interviewer were sat in red armchairs opposite each other. The video faded with an echo of Taylor saying: 'If guys don't want me to write bad songs about them, then they shouldn't do bad things...'. Red light suddenly shines everywhere, showing on the stage identical red armchairs. The chair facing away from the crowd had a fake interviewer sitting in it, and the chair facing us had Taylor sitting in it, wearing the same red sparkly dress from the interview. She starts singing ''Forever & Always'. Halfway through, she holds a note incredibly well, but causes the interviewerto run away, and then Taylor picks the armchair up and throws it to the bottom part of the stage, causing the crowd to go even wilder.

Another video is played, and then Taylor surprises the audience by appearing in the middle of the arena wearing a blue dress, holding another different guitar. She performs 'Hey Stephen', and makes her way through the crowd, hugging, touching hands, signing a few autographs on the way. She then performs 'Fifteen', and 'Tim McGraw' . In the middle of Tim McGraw, Taylor returns to the main stage, and then finishes the song and also sings a heartfelt 'White Horse'. At Wembley, while she paused during White Horse, the whole crowd gave her a standing ovation of over 5 minutes! I remember screaming until my voice broke, clapping until my hands were numb, and stomping my feet until I was breathless! Such an AMAZING atmosphere at the time. Losing my voice? So worth it. I hear that in Manchester the following night she had an even longer standing ovation!
With the curtain down, the dancers come out and dance to a slower instrumental version of 'Love Story', dressed in Renaissance clothing. The curtain rises, revealing a new stage; a fairytale castle! Taylor starts singing 'Love Story' in a red Renaissance dress, and then halfway through the song is hidden by dancers to change into a gorgeous white gown.
She allows her guitarist to play a skilled solo while she changes into a black and silver dress, to return and sing 'The Way I Loved You'. She then performs a song at the piano, 'You're Not Sorry', which she decided to incorporate Justin Timberlake's What Comes Around.
'Picture To Burn' is next on the set list, which involved the fire on the screens to show the 'burning of the pictures'. So much attitude, loved it.
This is where she was supposed to perform 'Change',as she did everywhere but the UK, but unfortunately due to crowd appreciation there wasn't enough time:(
She returns to the stage for the encore, now dressed in a black halterneck dress.For 2009, she then sang 'I'm Only Me When I'm With You' (joined with Kellie Pickler& Gloriana), in 2010, it was replaced with 'Today Was A Fairytale'.

Again, because of the massive applause, the UK did not get to hear either of these.
Her final song was 'Should've Said No', which was broken into two parts. Between the two parts, Taylor and her fiddler played an incredible 'drum battle'. The timing on this needed to be perfect, and it was. Amazing. She returns to the lower part of the stage after the drumming, and continues the rest of the song, only to be showered in a waterfall that drenches her! I was like, 'Wow!' Not only was it so effective, but the water was spelling out words in the lyrics of the song, like 'no', and 'why'.
The curtain is closed, and the crowd show their final appreciation.

Thoughts

WOW!!!!
Although I couldn't talk properly for about a day, it was so amazing. Everything was incredible, not only her singing and beautiful personality, but all the technical things too: lighting, stage design, sound, costume designs, choreography, everything! Defiitely recommend it, definitely go again if I had the opportunity.

I hope I never, ever forget this night