Taylor Swift’s only 2016 show played in Texas

By Arbogast, Brandon, November 2, 2016

By Alexis Ancel// News Editor

The lights went down and immediate hysteria spread through a crowd of over 80,000 people as an ethereal blonde goddess rose from beneath the stage in a cloud of white smoke. Lights flashed. Hearts pounded. The moment had finally come –  Taylor Swift was back.

Fans traveled from all over the world to attend Swift’s only concert this year at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. Headlining the Formula One Grand Prix on Oct. 22 made for her first concert since the end of the “1989” World Tour last December, marking over 10 months since Swift had last taken the stage. Is it any wonder 2016 has been such a disaster?

Other than the puzzling absence of a single costume change, the entire show was so utterly Swift from beginning to end complete with fireworks, adorable monologues, unapologetic dancing and plenty of sneaky little surprises. After opening the show with “New Romantics,” the set list was made up of all the usual suspects: “Shake It Off,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “22,” “Love Story,” you know the drill. And would it even be a Taylor Swift concert if she didn’t play “Fifteen” acoustic?

But homegirl is just too smart for a mere “Greatest Hits” show. She knows which songs every last person will know and dance to, and she knows which songs will make the die-hard fans legitimately think their lungs are collapsing. I can confirm that this is in fact what it felt like when the drumbeat pounded from the stage for “Holy Ground.” Sometimes, as a die-hard fan, I think she might actually be trying to kill me.

While this was certainly an earth-shattering moment for “Red” era loyalists like myself, perhaps the biggest surprise of all came when Swift sat down at a bedazzled white piano to cover Calvin Harris’s hit “This Is What You Came For.” Even after the rumors began circulating on social media, no one really thought she would have the nerve to perform the EDM song she wrote for her ex as a piano ballad. We probably should’ve known better.

To top it all off, the poor thing played the entire concert with a bad cold, which of course didn’t hold her back in the slightest. Save for a few tissue breaks and accidental coughs in between verses, Swift’s voice was still angelic, powerful and, more than anything, happy. In the end, it just made her even more endearing and the whole night that much more memorable.

One of the most astounding things to witness at any Swift concert is the level of dedication and enthusiasm her fans bring to every show, and Formula One was unsurprisingly no exception. We screamed, laughed, cried, danced until we couldn’t feel our legs and even took over for her during certain songs. At every show on the “1989” World Tour, Swift performed “Blank Space” with a loop pedal vocal layering experiment that included the name of whichever city she was in that night. Unfortunately this particular performance was severely lacking any good golf club action, but thousands of fans that knew this routine filled in for her anyway and yelled “Austin” in unison at the exact right moment in the song.

According to her usual two-year pattern, Swift is due for another album right about now. Many of these super-fans desperately clung to the possibility of her using this concert to drop a new single, but sadly this was just another idea cooked up by hopeless fans in the middle of a Swift drought. Perhaps Swift really is taking the much deserved break she mentioned last October, or maybe some of the rumors are true and there really is another album upon us. One can dream.

Although I admittedly  would have paid hundreds of dollars to watch her sit on stage and eat pizza for two hours, my girl does not disappoint. The “Out of the Woods” bridge was as soul-awakening as ever. “Style” made everyone’s knees buckle. “Enchanted/Wildest Dreams” mash up cured all diseases and solved the world’s energy crisis. Who knows when we’ll ever get the elusive TS6, but one thing is for sure – in 15 songs, Taylor Swift singlehandedly saved the train wreck year of 2016.