Taylor tickets may cost a fortune but watching my kids? That’s just priceless
THERE is a universal truth when it comes to parents attending gigs with their children – which is that you rarely look at the stage or the performer.
Great as she might be (and I’ll more than touch on this) you didn’t buy tickets to watch Taylor Swift.
Your parted with your cash for that unmatchable feeling you get in seeing their faces when THEY see Taylor Swift – and you’re unlikely to find anything that will ever feel like such value for money.
I shared a night with my twins (and Charlie Spence who couldn’t have been less bothered if he tried, almost as if trolling every Swiftie in Scotland by playing Fifa on his daddy’s phone while surrounded by sheer hysteria) that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.
They’ve never been to a concert, bar the bankrupting experience that was Disney On Ice in 2016 (damn you, merchandise sellers) and not even the photo here will do it justice – truly, my favourite picture of all time.
By the time you read this, Taylor Swift will have played to nearly a million more people with dates at Wembley, Anfield and Cardiff ’s biggest stadium all sold out. And I want to talk about the sheer force for good she truly is.
I’ve played Taylor Swift on the radio ever since she broke though as the
first artist who truly took country into the mainstream.
Sure, Shania was doing the business decades previously but not on this scale and not with the younger market. This is a fan base she has not only taken with her but added to via the children of those original fans. What she does on the stage has been well covered, with five-star reviews all round.
There’s nothing new I can add to the praise here except to say she had the sort of stage presence I haven’t seen since the footage of Michael Jackson in his record-breaking stadium heyday. For me, the power of Taylor Swift begins long before the concert. We arrived at Croy railway station for a transfer and a girl much older than my girls offered them some friendship bracelets – something which happened on the next train and then the tram journey to Murrayfield stadium.
I can’t describe how perfectly natural this felt – almost as if Taylor had pulled together the very best of society into one single world at the same time.
All around the stadium you could see friendships formed and it just feels like one big festival of goodwill.
Let me say as well, I’m a very cynical guy and am called out for my sarcasm and overly dry put-downs on a weekly basis – so if a mere concert trip had this impact on me you can believe it truly was the real deal.
More bracelet-swapping and friendship forming continued in the stadium and, despite the bottlenecks of people heading home, there was a good-natured atmosphere that was simply too strong not to notice.
As evidence of this I can say that ScotRail were quite simply an advert for our nation last weekend.
Each and every member of staff went above and beyond and never stopped laughing, joking and even dancing with punters until the early hours.
They say Scotland has the best audiences in the world. Well, I bore witness to a different winner here – Taylor Swift really brings out the good in this world.
I love her almost as much as my girls do and probably all the more BECAUSE they do. Much, much respect to her...
It’s as if Taylor had pulled together the very best of society at the same time GARRY ON SWIFT’S UNIQUE FOLLOWING