Taylor Swift

I've made no secret of my love for Taylor Swift.  I knew she was coming to town, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to go because of my work/class schedule.  Luckily the scheduling concerns were addressed and we were able to get pretty decent tickets about two weeks out – we sat in the upper deck of Nationals Park, behind home plate, in the front row.  Luckily there were huge screens to project what was happening on stage, because otherwise I wouldn't have liked the seats as much as I did.  But since there were screens, I loved our seats!

While there were a lot of young fans there with parents, I was pleasantly surprised to see a wide variety of people attending the concert.  Guess it goes to show that she really does have mass appeal and that I'd wasted my time worrying that we'd be surrounded almost exclusively by screaming teens and twenty-something girls.  Don't get me wrong; that demographic was well-represented!  But there were lots of other people, too.

The opening acts were Shawn Mendes and Haim.  They were fine, but since I am not familiar with their music, I don't really feel qualified to judge their performance.  Apparently due to the threat of bad weather, they cut their acts short so that Taylor Swift could take the stage, and I am not going to complain about that.

The show was SO great.  So highly entertaining!  And the girl can sing and play instruments and certainly knows how to keep the crowd engaged.  On the outside, I may not have appeared to be one of the screaming 15-year old girls, but inside, I certainly felt that way.  Her set list was as follows:

Welcome to New York 

New Romantics 

Blank Space 

I Knew You Were Trouble 

I Wish You Would 

How You Get the Girl 

I Know Places 

Want to Want Me (with Jason Derulo)

You Belong With Me 

Clean 

Love Story 

Style 

Bad Blood 

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together 

Wildest Dreams 

Out of the Woods 

Shake It Off

Obviously most of the songs were from 1989, which I fully expected, frankly, they are really good songs.  I'm not going to lie, though…when she sang "You Belong With Me" and "Love Story," I freaked out a bit.  I love those songs!  I really don't know what would have happened if she had also performed "Mean"…pass out, maybe? I was secretly hoping she'd play it, but since it has a decidedly country feel to it, I was not surprised that it didn't make the cut.

As you may or many not know, she has been having a guest artist join her on stage each show.  One of my friends saw TS in Philadelphia and her guest was Echosmith – amazing!  Another friend was at the TS show the night before us, and her guest was Lorde – again, amazing!  So I had high hopes for the surprise guest, who turned out to be Jason Derulo.  I am not a fan, but the crowd went wild for him.  For me, it was the lowlight of the show, but he gave a very energetic performance, and it was cute to watch TS dance and sing with him.

One thing I really liked was that she comes across as a very sincere, down-to-earth person, and she repeatedly chatted at length with the crowd between songs.  She also had videos playing during her costume changes of her female friends talking about how real friends support one another and about the importance of women building each other up – important messages for impressionable young fans to hear.

One thing that was really cool is that everyone received a wristband upon entering, and they all lit up in unison, coordinated with the music.  It was awesome.  I didn't want the concert to end because everything about it was impressive.  She saved "Shake It Off" for the encore and it was incredible.  I would pay to see her again in a heartbeat.

The weather turned out to be a non-issue, which was good, but I must say that DC needs to take some lessons from Disney regarding how to move thousands of cars in a short amount of time.  It took FOREVER to get out of the city and we didn't get home until well after 1:00 am.  Pretty ridiculous for a Tuesday night when people have to work the next day.  I don't know if there were other factors impacting traffic that night, but seriously, get it together.  The exhaustion the next day was totally worth it, though, given how fabulous the concert was!

One final thing:  obviously the event staff was predicting the audience to be largely female, because they had designated many of the men's restrooms as women's restrooms for the evening.  This was excellent planning on their part because the typically long lines were vastly reduced or non-existent.  This photo was taken in one of the restrooms I was in, and believe me, I was not the only woman taking photos of this!

Happy Tails to you!