Taylor Swift tuned up a cultural moment

The Future. Although we live in an era of fragmented culture, Taylor Swift’s tour has managed to bind it back together, ruling headlines week after week. While Swift has cemented herself as not only a generation-defining artist but also one of the savviest women in entertainment, the true takeaway of the tour may be people are itching again for culture-defining, in-person events that breed connection as we leave the COVID era behind us.

Star of the summer
Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been felt across culture like an earthquake (including a real one during a Seattle concert).

• The tour is on track to finish with $1.4 billion in sales — blowing Elton John’s $939 million-grossing Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour out of the water.
• That’s thanks to $14 million in ticket sales every show, with demand so high that it rocked Ticketmaster, led to insane markups on resale platforms, kicked off a “Taylor-gating” trend, and even sparked a Congressional hearing.
• It also led to hospitality shortages in every city she played (with local governments bending over backwards to show their love), and so much economic activity generated that the Fed suggested her tour helped the country avoid a recession.
• Then there are the fits: fans not only dressed up each night based on various Taylor “eras” but also started a friendship-bracelet trading phenomenon.

And in the midst of the career-spanning tour, ten of her albums have charted this year, with four of them hitting the top 10 simultaneously — the first living artist to do so since trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert in 1966.

According to Billy Joel (who knows a thing or two about successful live performances), “The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania.” And to think the international leg of her tour hasn’t even started yet…