Taylor Swift fans get moneys worth at Allstate show - Chicago Sun-Times
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BY ANDERS SMITH LINDALL
Taylor Swift performs in concert Tuesday August 9, 2011 at the Allstate Arena. Tom Cruze~Sun-Times
Set List
Sparks Fly
Mine
The Story of Us
Our Song
Mean
Back to December
Better Than Revenge
Speak Now
Fearless
Last Kiss
Sugar, Were Going Down (Fall Out Boy cover)
You Belong With Me
Dear John
Enchanted
Haunted
Long Live
Encore:
Fifteen
Love Story
Article Extras
Updated:
If a concertgoer had walked out of the wilderness and into Rosemonts Allstate Arena knowing nothing of Taylor Swifts three albums, four Grammys or more than 20 million records sold, that person would still have understood Swifts stature as a reigning queen of pop on the basis of just one thing: the singular sound of a basketball stadium rocked to its rafters by rapturous girls.
They are Swifts target market, and they had waited more than nine months for this since her latest smash album Speak Now debuted at No. 1. After an extravagantly showy but smartly paced two-hour performance Tuesday night, a set Swift is scheduled to repeat at Allstate tonight, they went home happy.
In fact they had waited almost two years since Swifts last local shows. Shes grown since then, and not just in the sense that shes no longer a teenager. Always well-crafted, her songs are more nuanced now, complex yet hooky and singable, her words funny or fierce and often sentimental but not cloying.
Her voice, too, was both stronger and more confident. Where her live vocals were once thin and sometimes pinched, here she not only risked but skillfully handled even the supple, playful warbles in the new discs title cut.
And she smashed the misconception that shes just a pretty face, playing guitar, piano and, for a breezy version of her older hit Fearless, ukulele. Best of all was her banjo playing, which led a sparkling front-porch jam on Our Song and Mean. Coupled with fiddle and some greasy guitar, they reconnected Swift with her Nashville roots.
But this was an arena show, by nature less about songs and more about spectacle. In its promotion Swift promised a Broadway experience, and she delivered. The stage was a mock theater proscenium with traditional red curtains and several staircases; the songs were subdivided into set pieces paired with elaborate backdrops and dancers in costume. They wore Fifties high school prep wear for a cresting rock version of Mine, formal black for the string-laden Back to December, and cocktail dresses for a riff-heavy Better Than Revenge, acting out the songs as smoke rolled, fireworks popped and snow-globe confetti twinkled to the floor.
A presentation this theatrical has to be carefully choreographed, a fact that leaves little room for spontaneity. As a result, Swift plays the same set list every night, with one exception: In each city, she walks through the crowd to a small stage in the back of the arena, where she tosses off a different medley of songs by local artists. It was Justin Bieber and Nelly Furtado in Toronto, Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi in New Jersey, even Eminem in Detroit.
At Allstate, Swift played only a solo acoustic take on Fall Out Boys Sugar, Were Going Down, saying it was her favorite song in her freshman year of high school. The choice was more notable for what it wasnt; given the chance, Swift opted not to symbolically bury the hatchet with a rival by covering Chicagos own Kanye West.
He earned the dubious crown as Swifts chief detractor after crashing her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, but hes far from the only one. Several factors work against Swift being taken seriously as an artist; for one, shes a massive celebrity and not shy about it, and for another, her music rests at the crossroads of country and pop, two genres about which its apparently OK to be dismissive. And shes both young and a woman.
The crowd, nearly all young women themselves, understood innately the foolishness of those false conclusions, though they wouldnt articulate it in those terms. They embraced Swift in the language of fans, and she responded with a message that was equally affirming. Emphasizing self expression crossed with a kind of girl power, Swift said each of them has a story to tell, and by extension, that they have worth.
All this made for top-shelf pop spectacle, but not only that. Like Swifts albums, her performance offered ample evidence that those who dismiss or disrespect her are dead wrong.
Anders Smith Lindall is a local free-lance writer.
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