Front Burner - The Eras Tour, and Taylor Swift’s massive popularity

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Taylor Swift has been on tour for months but finally, Canadian fans have been given a chance to see her here. She’s having not one or two but six shows at the Rogers Centre in Toronto next year and even though there are 300,000 tickets up for grabs, fans have been likening the scramble to the Hunger Games. Swifties may be known for their dedication but those outside the fandom might be wondering: what is it about Taylor Swift that commands this kind of hype? Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of CBC Radio’s Commotion and known Swiftie, breaks it down for us. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, it's Tamara. So all it took was months of fan outrage and official grievance in the House of Commons, and a tweet from the Prime Minister. But Taylor Swift's Heiress tour is finally coming to Canada. Around 300,000 tickets to six shows in Toronto went on sale this week,

and the demand has been unbelievable. It's the moment Swifties have been waiting for. The first batch of tickets to her six-night residency here at Rogers Centre in Toronto, selling out swiftly. Hashtag waitlisted was trending on Twitter as Swifties shared in their frustration. Fans who hit that waitlist could be forced to buy from a reseller with prices starting in the thousands of dollars. Maybe you're one of the lucky ones who got a ticket, or one of the many more who got waitlisted,

or you're like me, watching it all go down and wondering, what is behind all of the hype? And is there something that you're missing? Today we're going to talk about how Taylor Swift got to this level of popularity, and why her fans are obsessed with her. Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of CBC's Commotion and one of the biggest Swifties I know is on the show. He's here to help me understand why the Heiress Tour is set to be one of the top grossing concert tours of all time. Hey, Elamin, welcome back. Hello, Tamara. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here. So did you get tickets to see Taylor in Toronto next year? I sure did not get tickets. I am so sad about it. I'm so sorry. That really sucks. How hard is it to get a ticket right now? How much have you seen them go for? Well, on the resale market, we've seen some tickets that are in the 500s, which if you've been to the Rogers Centre, that's the very top of the building where the stage looks like it's another city kind of far away. The very back row of the 500s, the resale market, you can get one, one ticket for about $2,500. I don't know if people are willing to pay those prices, but that is what some people

believe their value to be. Okay. So it's a big year for concerts in general. The other huge show this summer is obviously Beyonce's Renaissance tour. I went to one of the shows last month. It was an incredible show. It's the highest grossing tour ever for a Black female artist. And these two tours have been compared to each other a lot. But, you know, we didn't get six Beyonce shows. And it's projected that Taylor Swift could make even more money and earn over a billion dollars. And you got to see her in Chicago. So why is there so much hype around this tour?

Well, we should start off by saying that, you know, Beyonce and Taylor, I think, are fundamentally in two different games. Like Beyonce is not someone who has been touring as often as Taylor has. She's sort of gone in support of every album. But we've had a pretty long period of time where Taylor Swift hasn't toured. The last tour that she's went on is 2018, incidentally the same year that Beyoncé was on tour. But in that period of time, from 2018 until where we are now, Taylor has put out four new albums of original material.

She's put out Lover in 2019. She's put out the pair of album Folklore and Evermore in 2020. And then she put out Midnight in 2022. That's excluding the re-recording projects, which is to say like the Taylor's versions of her old albums, which I'm sure we're going to talk about. So she has put out just like an aggressive amount of new material out. That is a lot of albums that people want to see their artists actually perform. And when I saw her in June for the show, the show is an extravagant spectacle. Like it is three hours and 15 minutes long

and it is broken down by eras. That's why it is called the era's tour. You know, she sort of begins with like the lover era. You know, she moves into, she will do like a whole full course set. Here's like six or seven songs from this album, six or seven songs from this album. So it's kind of like smashing four tours

into one in a way. That's why this thing's so large and extensive. So Taylor Swift mania, it can be kind of hard to wrap your head around. The fandom is huge. It's global. It's been that way for a long time. And for people who aren't part of it, I think it can be a bit confusing. Like this episode was inspired by a conversation we were having on our team about these ticket sales. And we were all kind of like, I don't really get it. Do you get it? Like, what is it about her that people are so obsessed with? But we really want to understand. And so jumping off of what you said about the tour, it seems like it's not so much about her performance as a vocalist or

a dancer. I don't want people to come for me. I don't want Swifties to come for me. But what is it about her as an artist that fans love so much and that keeps them showing up for her again and again? Yeah, I would say that the thing that involves Swifties in the arc of Taylor Swift is a sense of story, right? Like there is a sort of deep sense of familiarity with this artist because she's played out so much of her life in public that you get to sort of witness those moments. And Taylor herself has kind of played into that lore by developing all kinds of, she calls them Easter eggs. Lots of people call them Easter eggs, ways to decipher, hey, here's how we know what this line is about. Here's how we know what this song is about. Here's how we know what this video is supposed to represent in terms of

her personal life. So much of her personal life that we kind of know about, we don't really know about from her telling us so much as it is through people putting together hints and saying, okay, this song is about that person. This song is about that person all too well as by Jake Gyllenhaal. You know, like these are the sort of ways that being a Taylor Swift fan sort of involves you in the story of her life. And I would say even with the re-records projects. So right now, Taylor Swift is sort of re-releasing the old albums that she has put out, the first six albums, but re-releasing them after re-recording them because her masters were sold without her permission and she really wanted to buy them.

And she says she wasn't given the opportunity to buy them. And what has been really interesting is like as the re-records come out, people are comparing the new versions to the old versions. You get to hear the way that her vocals were not particularly developed in some songs in earlier albums. And like now they kind of sound different and her vocal ability has grown in different ways. All of this sort of, I think, pulls you in in a way that makes the music a lot more than just a musical transaction. Like a lot of artists I go to and I'm like, hey, I'm really just here for the music. I don't really, I'm not really looking for anything more than this. With Taylor Swift, I think like you're looking to be brought into the lore.

so fans have been following this story for 16 or 17 years and a lot of things have happened in those years like various relationships controversies with other celebrities drama with her label and can you take me through some of the major moments that have become part of this lore around her. This is a little bit like pausing a scene of Game of Thrones and be like, hey, who are these people and why are they mad at each other? I'm like, Tamara, how much time do you got, my dude? Because we can spend a fair bit of time on this. I would say if we had to sort of distill the major moments. I would say the Fearless comes out in the late, in the sort of like late aughts, and it becomes the most decorated, most successful country album of all time. You get to the year 2009. 2009 is when Taylor Swift is about to be awarded some of the

biggest awards she's ever going to be given. She gets Album of the Year. She gets Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. Thank you so much for giving me a chance to win a VMA award. And Kanye West gets on the stage. I'm really happy for you. I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. happy for you. I'm gonna let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. That becomes a kind of thread that was that's going to continue to follow her for the rest of her career. The other major thread is what happens in 2010, which is she puts out this

album called Speak Now. Speak Now is where she really begins to get deeply self-referential as an artist. She has a song called Dear John. It is relatively nakedly about John Mayer and a relationship that the two of them had. She has this devastating line. And John Mayer is not heard from for five to six years or maybe 15 years. Where's John Mayer now? Is he in witness protection? We don't know.

No, he's not actually. But I just mean like that becomes like a sort of major moment. When All Too Well comes out on the Red Album 2012, we sort of continue to see this narrative that people are trying to stick to her of, oh, she only writes songs about her exes. So this is kind of a major thread of Taylor Swift's lore and life. And then the last thing I would say is that people regularly sort of criticize her for being too cunning. I don't know what that means, but people regularly sort of say, oh, she's too calculated. Oh, she's too sort of planned out. And I would say that she has done a lot to acknowledge that, yes, she's pretty precise about the ways that she sort of rolls out her album. But just to thread all those narratives together, it has given her, if you are a fan of Taylor Swift, it has given her a richness in terms of narrative of, oh, this person is in a

way kind of an underdog. Because one, this is a person whose greatest achievement gets undermined because all we talk about is a Kanye moment. This is a person whose achievement gets undermined again because all we're talking about will be exes in terms of the relationship that she has. And then again, this is a person who has developed this massive marketing machine and a kind of pretty deep intelligence in terms of how her fans operate. And all she gets for it is being called to calculating. And if you are in the fandom, you sort of are likely, I think, to see Taylor as a victim of some of these forces or people sort of kind of lined up at the gate to criticize her. And if you're outside the fandom, you might think,

you know what, this lady's doing the most. Like, she's doing too much all the time, and I don't know what to do with this. And I think those are the two poles. That's how she becomes this polarizing figure is because, like, the fans feel just as strongly that she is an underdog as people outside of the fandom feel that she is actually one of the most powerful people on the planet

and the truth is i think kind of a combination of the two of them In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Street Connections. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Let's talk a bit about who Swifties are too, because that I think might help explain her popularity, her fan base. It really does span

generations at this point, right? Women in their 30s and even older, but also teen girls. And why do you think that is? I do think that there's something really elegant about the way that Taylor has managed to capture like every 13 to 18 year old who's ever been a 13 or 18 year old from 2006 until now like it's like you become that age and then you get inducted into the Taylor Swift fandom that's a pretty impressive feat because generally what we know about the you know music industry machinery is like you go okay my fans have aged now I got to give them something according to that age you don't really necessarily keep being like, how do I extend my reach younger and younger? And I think one of the ways she's done this is like, when you sort of look at the

re-records, this is an artist who's unabashedly, you know, unafraid to look back at her younger self to be like, these are the songs that I wrote 15, 16 years ago. She knows she's a much better songwriter now, but those songs still stand the test of time. And she's willing to say, this is my story of girlhood. This is where I was as a teenager. And she's not looking down on it. She's just celebrating it. And I think you see a lot of artists who kind of look down a little bit on their younger selves, who maybe regret some of the earlier decisions that they made. You are having an artist who's celebrating all of the earlier songs that she wrote, even the songs that are like, oh, this has some uncomfortable lines, although she did edit some of the lines of Speak Now, Taylor's version, but for the most part, she doesn't do those edits. She's just kind of like looking back at this with a lot of fondness. And it's managed to maintain a young audience. Even as that audience grows, you know, she sort of inducts a new younger audience to it.

And then obviously for her like millennial fans who've stayed with her through the years, part of the appeal there is the nostalgia, right? part of the appeal there is the nostalgia, right? Listening to her older stuff, being able to scream the lyrics, feel like you're back in your high school days, almost. I mean, this is what's happening on the internet the day that we're recording this, right? So on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, she announced that she's releasing 1989, Taylor's version. It's going to come out in October. And 1989 was the album that changed everything, which is to say, if you were not aboard the train before, if you were vaguely unaware of the Taylor Swift existence, it was no longer an option for you to not know who Taylor Swift was after 1989. 1989 comes out in 2014, and it just is this massive sort of pop explosion.

It's the first moment that she goes fully pop. And the sentiment that people are sharing is like, what a joy it is to be able to return to when those songs, songs like Style, songs like Blank Space, songs like, of course, Shake It Off. When those songs came out and get to be that version of yourself again, like no one is really ready for how big 1989 Taylor's version is going to be. It's going to be big. Tamara, you're going to have to hide. Like it's not going to be fathomable for you to be on this planet. I don't think you're ready.

I don't think you're ready. I don't think you're ready for this. The other thing that feels worth bringing up is the whiteness of her fan base. So let's talk about that a little bit. Like, of course, there are people of color who are fans of her i'm talking to one right now exactly but there are also people of color who've been kind of turned off over the years by things that she's said or been silent on given the platform that she has and i'll give you like a couple of examples and maybe you can respond um you know for example she was criticized for being absent around the time that Trump got elected. And it got to the point that her silence was co-opted by white supremacists and they started calling her Aryan goddess. And most recently, she got a bit of backlash for not saying anything when her ex, Maddie Healy, was criticized for laughing along on a podcast as the hosts were making racist comments about iSpice. And then she went on to collab with iSpice, which a lot of people saw as an attempt at damage control.

And there have been instances where she's been accused of being kind of racially unaware, insensitive. And the criticism is that her brand of feminism doesn't account for race, but that doesn't really seem to have hurt her, right? And I'm just wondering what role you think whiteness has had in her success. I think the biggest role that whiteness has had in her success has been in this very delicate moment right after the Kanye West thing, where she was, I think, quite wrongfully sort of positioned as like, when you remember, I don't know if you remember like the coverage post that Kanye thing. But it was like, hey, here's like this black man trying to disrupt this sort of fragile white woman's moment. And there were, I would say, like definitely like racial undertones and overtones to the way that I was sort of talked about.

have talked about. But when I think about the conversation around where was she when Trump was elected, I think it's a valuable point to raise, but also it's a point that we've heard her sort of talk about. So one of the things that she's mentioned is, hey, I'm an artist who came up in Nashville in the mid-aughts. And if you remember what was happening in Nashville in the mid-aughts, it's like this was in the shadow and immediately in the wake of the chicks at the time, the Dixie Chicks in London, England, sort of saying something about George Bush and getting blacklisted by all of radio in Nashville. And radio is such a massive force in country music that it sort of just put a chill of like, oh my God, we can't say anything. We cannot say anything because it will literally cost you your career. What you learn from those moments is like, okay, I actually like my job is to speak as little as possible to present the music and then like not really like have much of a presence. And when you sort of see Taylor reevaluate the episode about the chicks,

and she did this in what she calls a documentary, what I would call is a massively sort of impressive PR project, which is like this film that came out called Miss Americana, produced in part by Taylor Swift. One of the things she sort of talks about there is like, there's like the scene where she talks about deeply regretting not saying something when Donald Trump was elected. And there is, you know, she had she's sitting in a room with a bunch of people, a bunch of advisors. And she says, you know what, I want to say something. And she's she's getting sort of visibly upset and crying. and crying. And what we're talking about here is this moment where Marsha Blackburn, who's a senator in Tennessee, is sort of facing reelection. And Taylor is reckoning with the fact that she didn't say anything when Trump got elected, but now she feels like she can, in fact, make a difference. And she does end up speaking out and Marsha Blackburn ends up being reelected anyway. But that's the first that you kind of see her trying to reckon with political power that she has and trying to figure out where should I use this?

I think the Mattie Healy thing, honestly, is kind of a repeat of regularly asking only women to answer for the men that they're dating. If we were going to say she answered for it, I guess she answered for it by not dating him anymore. But I don't know if that constitutes an answer because I think there's like this weird expectation, particularly that we put on women. We don't really do this for men. Right. But we do this when women pop stars are dating someone and we say, yikes, you got to answer for your man. And I'm not convinced that that's the right path for us to take. Okay, so we've just spent some time looking back at Taylor Swift's career. Enough time? The way that she... Should we spend more time? Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Continue. From the way that she engages her fans into her own story and her songs to some

of the criticisms that she's faced over the years. But I just want to come back to the Heiress tour, which feels like, because it's so retrospective, it feels kind of like the closing of a chapter of her career. What do you think her next era will be like? Oh, boy. Listen, if I could accurately predict what her next era would be like, I would just go work on her team because that sounds like a fun time. But I'll tell you this. The branding of this as an era's tour is in itself a kind of genius marketing move right like in a way every tour of every artist that every every artist ever puts on is an heiress tour they're going to play some new songs they're going to play some old songs they're going to kind of jump around

in their discography um but she's kind of structured this tour to say okay this is a statement about celebrating how far i've come in my career. And positioning this as an heiress to her allows you to then kind of close this chapter whenever it's done, because I have no idea when this thing's going to wrap up. But I think what it allows you to do is when you come back from the road, let's say she comes back from the road mid 2025, and she's done with all of the re-releases of um her albums uh it allows her to maybe look at the list of collaborators that she's had in her career because she's kind of been going back to some of the same collaborators over the past few albums um my guess is by the time by the time you

come back and it's 2025 um this you're looking at an artist who will be trying to mine the field for what are the next sounds and how can I push them further. But what those sounds are going to be, I genuinely have no idea. Okay, Elamin, I'm kind of sad to end this, but I have to let you go. And thank you for being such a good sport about this. And honestly, I think I kind of get it now. such a good sport about this. And honestly, I think I kind of get it now. Tamara, what I'm going to do right after this conversation is over

is I'm going to make you a playlist of my favorite Taylor Swift songs. And they will not be with the purpose of converting you, but I expect like notes back on my playlist just so I know how deeply you're diving in. But also, thank you for having me. You're the best. All right, that's all for this week.

Front Burner was produced by Imogen Burchard, Derek Vanderwyk, Joyta Shangupta, Lauren Donnelly, and Matt Amha. Our sound design was by Will Yar and Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chavison. Our executive producer this week is Elaine Chao. And I'm Tamara Kandaker. Thank you so much for listening.

FrontBurner is back next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.