Dance in the Rain!

I love music and have had periods in my life when I was into classic rock, punk rock, alt rock, jam bands, I even had a country phase, but pop music holds a special place in my heart. Britney, Miley, Beyonce, Madonna - you give me any confident female belting out music you want to sing along to, marching to the beat of her own drum and I AM IN, like every time. I've always been a fan of Taylor Swift, but before this tour I only knew two of her albums, and I had no idea what an incredible performer she is. Fast forward to current state, and I recently spent one hour on a Saturday reading about what the song 'Last Great American Dynasty' was about (it's actually really interesting, google Rebekah Harkness if you have an hour to lose).

We had tickets to go to the Lover tour...but womp womp, covid shut it all down. During quarantine Taylor wrote and recorded TWO albums during the time she was supposed to be touring; who does that?! And they were both fantastic! Most recently released was the album Midnights, then the announcement of the tour and Swiftie ticket mayhem, which is still occurring each weekend on a lesser level at each US tour stop. Homegirl got PAID.

Getting tickets - OYE VAY, what a mess. My friend Jessica did all the work; she sat in her home office for two straight days, unshowered, stressed and annoyed, with her Capital One card in hand. Two days and much frustration later she was able to get 4 tickets to the Saturday night show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA. The seats were not great (okay, okay, they were flat out terrible) but during the craziness of the ticket sale we had lost hope of going at all. When Jessica messaged to say she got me two tickets, I was pumped and didn't care where I sat because it's not a football game, it's a concert - you can hear from anywhere in the place! And we paid a nice, respectable $140 for each seat; our tickets were selling for $1,000 in the hours before the show, which is wild.

Folks, the weather outlook was bleak - it was most definitely going to rain. Fine, no big deal, dancing in the rain can be a wonderful experience, and her song Midnight Rain is on the set list, it'll be great! I offered to drive the four of us, it was the least I could do after what Jessica endured to get the tickets. We live about an hour and a half from Foxboro, where the show was at (and the New England Patriots play). I do not have a good handle on timeliness (actually, not even close to a good handle, more like a pinkie finger) and I asked Jessica to decide when we should leave. Opening acts go on at 6:30, Taylor is expected on at about 8pm....she says leave at 1pm. Cue me, wide-eyed with surprise, wow, that's early but okay...I get it. We take no chances! Good freakin thing, because it rained hard all day and traffic was terrible and it took us FOUR HOURS to make the 60 mile trek. I thanked them for being responsible adults many times during the drive, because I woulda missed the whole show if I was in charge.

Our four hour trip ended up going through every small town in Massachusetts to avoid traffic and accidents on the highway (a typical Waze move). We whittled our way on backroads alongside 95 south, which led to some good house-peeping and discussion. The downside was that backroads don't offer many opportunities to stop for snacks or potty breaks...but on the upside we weren't at a standstill on 95, and I had made a playlist with the entire set for the show, so we were singing along and discussing the various albums and eras. You're talking about 3 women well over 40 and a teenager, so what really happened was we peppered Alexis with questions about the history, songs and Eras themselves until we'd exhausted her, I mean, until we finally arrived.

We parked, put our ponchos on and followed the sparkly jackets and white cowboy boots towards the stadium. It was lightly raining, and at that point it was more annoying than anything else...I wish I would have known to appreciate the fact that it was the lightest it would rain for the next 8 hours. Note to future self: go ahead and spend the money on the 'more than a trash bag' poncho in this situation, it is in fact worth it. My cousin Amy and I enjoyed seeing all the outfits, guffawed at the line for merch like a couple of old hens, and tried our best to get some photos despite being in our 40's, technologically challenged and lacking vision and patience for the perfect photo. Taylor went on almost exactly at 8, it was raining pretty hard and I remember being surprised that she was going out in the rain as opposed to waiting it out. It rained, and rained and POURED and then poured some more, and that woman did not miss a freakin beat! Costume changes every couple of songs, choreography and execution on point, piano, guitar, vocals....it was all spot on. There was no waiting it out, the radar clearly showed it was not going to stop for many hours. Amy's husband texted her right before she started the last set of the night asking if it was over yet because the biggest band of rain yet was about to come through. And that last band was a doozy! But no one cared - it was incredible.

A couple interesting things happened - the first was quite unfortunate for the girl behind us wearing high heels, maybe for the first time in her life. She got so excited when Taylor came out that she fell forward into my row, just to my left; we all helped her up, the poor thing was in shock and had to be escorted out and missed the whole show. The second wild thing to happen was during one of my favorite songs from her younger days, Love Story. The last verse of the song, her Romeo proposes and when she sang 'he knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring...' this man two rows down knelt to the ground at the exact moment and proposed to his girlfriend in the pouring rain. Way to go Romeo, all of us around swooned for them, and then said he is so lucky he didn't drop that ring in the torrential rain.

I ruined every video I took with my too loud, off key vocals, but I give no cares. I peed my pants on accident because there were no bathroom breaks during her 3.5 hour show and I feel fine about it. Thankfully everyone looked like they just came out of a dunk tank, so my situation went unnoticed and I thought well enough ahead to bring a change of clothes for the ride home. I sang with all my might, and screamed my gratitude to this incredible artist that made me and 70,000 others disregard the monsoon occurring around us as we stood outside, some of us quite high in the sky.

It was the best show I've ever seen, and I've been to some pretty epic concerts and festivals in my days. She didn't just sing, she performed every single song full out on a set built for the scene. A treehouse was rolled on stage for part of her Folklore set; the long guitar-shaped stage had colorful videography that changed methodically with each song. I felt like I had a front row seat to a three plus hour live music video and I will remember the experience vividly for the rest of my life.

Favorites from the show: ...Ready For It?, Bejeweled, Love Story, the Man and We Are Never Getting Back Together.