Andrea Swift listened to Def Leppard when she was pregnant and, 20 years later, her daughter knows a thing or two about pouring on the sugar. Taylor Swift whips her blonde mane around like Def singer Joe Elliott, and once swapped lyrics with the Lep on “Hysteria,” a song written more than two years before she was born. Lines like “You’re just so cool, run your hands through your hair/ Absent mindedly, making me want you,” from Swift’s Fearless album, could just as soon make their home on Pyromania.
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Hot and cold, sweet and sour—Taylor Swift rocked the extremes at John Paul Jones Arena on Saturday, pausing only to soak in the ardor of her 12,500 fans. |
Swift proved herself something of a fire starter during Saturday’s two-hour set, packed with more hits than a Monster Ballads compilation. After she opened with “You Belong With Me” and “Our Song,” Swift thanked the capacity crowd, members of which played the role of sympathetic soul sister to Taylor’s heartbroken BFF.
“You taught me I’m not the only one who burns their exes’ pictures,” she said before leading her band through “Tell Me Why.” “And you taught me I’m not the only one who believes in love stories.” Moments later, as her banjo player and fiddler traded chaste solos, Swift retreated to an onstage stairwell, drew the drape of her hair across her face and sulked.
Oh, she’s a grievous angel for her generation, all right. For Swift, love still hurts and scars and, to hear her sing it, she’s really learned a lot—namely, how to wound and mar when she needs to. One moment, she introduced her single “Fifteen,” country music’s catchiest after-school special, as the age when “you’re old enough to fall in love…and old enough to get your heart broken.” The next, she turned “Forever and Always” from lament to a claws-out indictment, while video screens flashed male silhouettes and the words “They shouldn’t do bad things.”
Not to say Swift wasn’t sticky sweet from her head to her feet. After she revisited her first single, “Tim McGraw”—still one of her savviest tunes, equal parts princess and poison apple—Swift took a full 90 seconds to drink in her audience’s applause. She mouthed “Wow” and “Whoa,” clutched her heart and raised her eyebrows. Her sets hopped from high school hallway to 19th century dance; Swift played the part of marching band leader or peasant girl until a clever costume tug revealed—heavens to Cinderella!—a princess in disguise.
But as Swift reminded the room, and perhaps herself, during “White Horse,” she’s no princess. Sugar and pixie dust wear off, but the elements—fire and water, love and loss—remain, each necessitating the other. And after calling up digital columns of flame for a fierce take on “Just Another Picture to Burn,” Swift closed with a cleansing. Water poured down from the ceiling while Swift wrapped up “Should’ve Said No” and soaked through her black dress, maybe even washed the sugar off her for good.
