In Her Own Words: Taylor Talks Tour

Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour is in full swing and will visit eight countries and span four continents by the time it wraps. Swift is upping the ante on everything this go-round, including playing stadiums as well as arenas, and weighs in on the bonuses of hitting those super-sized crowds.

Almost leaves you breathless.

“The benefits of playing stadiums are kinda endless,” says Swift. “It’s so many people — you’re looking out into this packed football stadium of seventy thousand people. The energy coming at you from seventy thousand people is the most unbelievable feeling in the world. It’s almost like…it almost leaves you breathless knowing that many people would want to come see you play a show so we’ll start there, that’s a benefit of playing a stadium. Also, you know you don’t have to play as many shows in a week if you’re playing stadiums so it gives you time to recharge and down time and leaves you generally not that overworked when you’re doing a stadium tour.”

Swift has also changed her thinking regarding costuming for the 1989 Tour. The fashion plate artist is working her street style into the show a bit more this time around and says she’s toning it down a notch in a sense.

More fashionable than anything done before.

“We decided on costumes for each song based on kind of the mood that they evoked. It all starts with the emotional DNA of a song and we take it from there. And I knew that I wanted this tour to be more fashionable than anything we’ve done before. In the past, our tour show clothes have seemed more like costumes and this one with the show it just seems more like really insane moments of you know, fashion, things I would love to wear on a red carpet, things I would wanna wear walking down the street. You know, I definitely wanted to pull it back into that world rather than like a Halloween costume vibe (laughs).”

Swift admits she is also very specific about ensuring that the sounds you hear on her records are replicated in the live show, meaning hours of meticulous rehearsals before the show ever gets off the ground.

I want to be as true to this album as possible.

“The first month of rehearsals was just musical so we’re in a recording studio trying to figure out how to get the live band to sound exactly like the album, ’cause I want to be as true to this album as possible. I want the drum sounds to be exactly the same drum sounds that you heard on the album etc… So, then we moved into production rehearsals which is doing all the choreography, learning all the changes in between the songs you know, finding a flow to the show. But a year in advance is when we draw up the stage and when we figure out what the stage is gonna look like. So it’s a pretty extensive, long process.”

Nashville fans will get to experience 1989 when the tour comes to town September 25-26 at the Bridgestone Arena.

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Lorie Hollabaugh

Hollabaugh, a staff writer at MusicRow magazine, has over 20 years of music business experience and has written for publications including American Profile, CMA Close Up, Nashville Arts And Entertainment, The Boot and Country Weekly. She has a Broadcast Journalism and Speech Communication degree from Texas Christian University, (go Horned Frogs), and welcomes your feedback or story ideas at [email protected].

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