Taylor Swift may have just changed the game. Again. The 25-year-old starlet opened her 1989 tour with a rousing performance of every single track on the album. Here’s a spirited take on her chosen setlist:
Swift played the Tokyo Dome, something she couldn’t have done if she was still a country singer. This was the first time she’d done a full headlining show (at least, in a non-Jingle Ball capacity) since she released her album 1989 last year. And during the show, Taylor barely even dipped into her back catalog. She only did three of her older hits: “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “Love Story,” and a weirdly Cars-esque version of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” (These are, not coincidentally, the three older Swift hits that could’ve fit the most cleanly onto 1989.) She also did every single song from 1989. She even did bonus tracks.
Not only does Swift challenge the way streaming services pay out royalties to artists, she flips everything on its head when she gives her full oeuvre in sequence on her tour. Basically, she’s declaring ultimate ownership of her songs, thumbing her nose at anyone who would try to limit the release of certain tracks to deter bootleggers and pirates.
More exciting than that, some lucky fans just had the tour experience of their lives because that just isn’t something most artists do.
But T-Swizzle isn’t most artists, so she can just shake it off and break the mold.
(Via Stereogum)
