Did anyone enjoy Taylor but felt at 3.5 hours it…. dragged a little?

[Fromthenotorious]

I admit that i’m not her biggest fan and it was a bit of a fluke that i got a ticket to go with friends.

I enjoy her music and think she’s amazing but a dedicated Swiftie… I am not!

I just felt that it could have been at least thirty mins shorter and would have been more enjoyable. Even amongst the hardened Swifties around us, I sensed a little restlessness.

Anyone else agree?

@BitOutOfPractice So how does that make OP a music snob? With all due respect, it seems as though you’re projecting a little too much.

I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. I never saw an ounce of gloating from the OP. But several Swifties have pointed this out and now apparently the OP is a “literal slap” in the face. What is going on?

if you’re not a swiftie, with all due respect, you wouldn’t understand.

Op literally just asked if anyone thought the gig was a bit too long! Your reaction reminds me of back in the day when your friend would fall out with you for a week because you said you didn’t like S club 7 as much as steps 😭 such an overreaction!

Fair.

First time I’ve ever said STFU to anyone online ever, it’s not a good move.

Thanks for the birthday wishes @Iaskedyouthrice It truly is a wonderful sunny day ☀️

You may laugh at my post or think I’m insane. But for some of us TS is everything. For myself and my teen daughter, she is a huge part of our lives. My daughter was self harming, eating disorder and other mental health issues. She was performing badly at school and misbehaving. And then she got into TS, and within months she was a completely different girl. I owe a lot to Taylor swift, and our dream is to see her one day. Her music brings a huge amount of joy to so many, and to us she means the world.

I guess I have had my first hand experience of being exposed to Swifties 🏳️ And apparently the OP is now a “literal slap” and I’m still trying to understand how it is. But I guess I’m not a Swiftie so I won’t understand.

Hopefully Swifties can now calm down and remember that this is just a discussion board and we are not a hive mind. We all can have varying perspectives. It’s ok not to like the same things and it’s also ok to voice different opinions.

I wasn’t addressing the op with that part @ExitChasedByCars. I was addressing the several self professed music snobs who came after her. That’s why I started my 2nd paragraph with “op…”.

She isn’t gloating. She went to a concert and has started a discussion about it. I get her point- I would personally find 3.5 hours too much, no matter how much I liked the artist/band.

@BitOutOfPractice You wrote “musical snob” so I just assumed you were referring to the OP. Thanks for clarifying

And that’s amazing, it’s so good when people find something artistic that can change their lives in such a a positive way. I recall hearing a man with a drug addiction saying that hearing ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ got him off heroin.

However, that doesn’t mean that other people don’t deserve to go to concerts or that they have to enjoy every second. The OP found the gig a bit too long for her. Thats it. She’s still a fan, she enjoyed the gig, but she found it too much. She’s not rubbing it in or attacking anyone or diminishing your experience of Taylor Swift, she just found it too much and was asking if anyone else did.
That’s all it was.

I guess so. I will admit I’m coming across as slightly hysterical. It’s just gutting when you try so hard just to get a ticket. I was willing to pay a LOT. But it wasn’t to be. I know I need to get over it a little 😀

And that’s amazing, it’s so good when people find something artistic that can change their lives in such a a positive way. I recall hearing a man with a drug addiction saying that hearing ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ got him off heroin.

However, that doesn’t mean that other people don’t deserve to go to concerts or that they have to enjoy every second. The OP found the gig a bit too long for her. Thats it. She’s still a fan, she enjoyed the gig, but she found it too much. She’s not rubbing it in or attacking anyone or diminishing your experience of Taylor Swift, she just found it too much and was asking if anyone else did.
That’s all it was.

5 hour Springsteen gig sounds like heaven on earth!

I'm sure she's having a really hard time being 'torn down' by the odd person who doesn't find her lyrics full of genius! Why so dramatic?!

Also the statement that a single line can 'take your breath away' suggests to me that it's broad enough to mean something to someone who's never met TS. Pop music often works like this: by making us feel like the artist knows how we feel - that even though they're big and famous and special, they can relate to us. So maybe we're like them too! Maybe we're special too!

For me, really good writing isn't about soundbites that strike me as mildly clever or that I can 'relate' to. In fact, for me really good writing shocks, unsettles, is hard to get in to, takes time to understand and unpack, or makes you question things or look at them in a new way.

Pop music doesn't work like this. They write about things in a vague way so it could be relevant to anyone - so it has mass appeal. And all the emotions they're writing about have become so standardised, so usual, so expected, that it's easy to package them up and sell them back to us.

Pop music is so powerful because make us feel a sense of belonging that we sadly lack in a world where we're increasingly fragmented from each other - where we live further away from each other, spend more time at work, and have less and less free time to really connect with each other. And pop music is one of the many feel good consolation prizes that we have in a crumbling world that distracts us from our problems. Keep us stuffed full of TS and Deliveroo and Boohoo clothes and we won't be as desperate to make the world better. We'll be content enough to let it all carry on.

Some of the comments on this thread show that TS is deified - you can't say an ill world about her without it making people angry. Concerts are the new churches, pop music the new religion. And religion used to be the thing that distracted us from worldly misery, by promising us there was something better coming after. Football, pop music, shiny new trainers - they all do the same thing.

For me, the state of some pop music and pop lyrics are a worse than a travesty: they're indicative of how narrow and predictable and commodified the range of human emotions and experiences have become. And how easily impressed and pacified we are.

And a couple of hints that she's Juliet on her balcony, or sticking 'all's well that end's well' into a line doesn't make her the next Shakespeare.

I think there's so much beauty and hope and great, challenging art in the world - but it's not there for me in a woman talking about seeing her latest boyfriend by a vending machine over a tinny beat.

That’s ok @ExitChasedByCars its a rather, erm, odd thread so clarity is all I’d say!

This! My DD and my DH both love TS. I don’t like listening to her music at all. Whenever we’re all in the car they both listen to her and I genuinely can’t tell the difference between most of her songs (maybe that’s a problem with my ears, I don’t know). They try and convince me I’m ‘wrong’ for not liking her stuff (obviously in a lighthearted way) but it absolutely grates on me. And from the threads I’ve read on here you can’t say anything negative (even if just your opinion is you don’t like her music) without being lynched!

To add: I have nothing against her - she’s obviously doing something right and good on her - I don’t see the same level of threads and arguing over any other artists, especially men which is interesting. I don’t know the ins and outs of her carbon footprint etc because I’m just not interested enough to know. All I know I genuinely feel bored and ‘urgh’ when most of her music comes on but that’s ok. I’m sure lots of people think the same about the stuff I listen to.

Getting home from anything at Wembley (or other huge venue) is a nightmare whatever the event

And there, right there, in the post before my last one is the kind of boring, preachy, faux intellectual music snob nonsense that I had to listen to from my very own muso when I was married

Yes yes @EveningSpread you are so much more deep and clever and insightful than us all mere mortals. 🙄

And i Say that as someone completely ambivalent about TS.

I have no idea how deep or clever or insightful you are!

I'm not an expert, but being accused of being a "faux intellectual music snob" reminds me that we did find out a while ago that the British people are sick of experts ;) If you'd like to engage rather than call me names I'd like that :)

It's sad that anything other than "I love X" or "X is a genius" is met with such suspicion and disdain.

@CurtainsOfSparta and @ExitChasedByCars I wasn't suggesting that the OP on this thread was slagging off TS. Sorry for the confusion.

However, there have been plenty of threads and posts on this thread where posters have done so.

I did engage with what you wrote. I said it was boring preachy and faux Intellectual music snob nonsense. You did me the disservice of putting your speech marks where it cut off the word nonsense, changing the meaning somewhat.

I have no problem with experts. I do have problems with being preached at. Taylor Swift seems to bring out the very worst in self professed musos. She seems to be like some Pavlovian bell to them. Just like bros or wham were in my day. She seems to make them want to give us the benefit of their superior wisdom and, put us all right.

as I say, she’s not my favourite artist, not my least. But I really do not understand why she causes people like you to write screeds about her and why your taste is better. 🤷‍♀️

This thread is deliciously bonkers, on both sides of the Swiftie divide!

The op was brave to start a thread about a concert that fans of TS are paying hundreds and hundreds to be at, or cannot secure tickets for love nor money. You take your life into your hands admitting that you got there 'by chance' while proper Swifties (and parents of Swifties) have been struggling for months to get tickets. And to add insult to injury, you say it dragged on. I suppose they feel that your ticket may have been enjoyed more by one of the thousands who couldn't get a ticket. I remember similar arguments about Glastonbury several years back "you don't even want to go that much, proper Glastonbury goers have been pushed out because of you".

As for TS herself, I like a number of her songs and I think she's a good role model for young girls. Taking a man to court for just a dollar to make the point that women should not have to endure being touched up (sexually assaulted) was a stroke of genius. My 7yo dd loves her. I can see why. I think there's a huge amount of musical and intellectual snobbery about her that tends to bring out the worst in her detractors. So you listened to music that wasn't mainstream when you were a teenager. Musical taste is entirely subjective. I listen to music that makes me think. I also listen to music that makes me feel. It's as much about identifying with it on a personal level, and an influencer of mood. Nobody should have to justify their taste in music to anyone, or indeed be made to feel that they're not quite clever enough to understand and appreciate fringe music, because, you know, you're just too 'mainstream'.

I actually happen to think TS's music is quite clever. There are a few university professors who would agree. I like how she's switched personas over the years - women are not one dimensional after all. The way she markets her music is innovative. She's emotionally intelligent, she's fesity. And yes, she's beautiful too. Fans buy into the whole 'package'. It was ever thus.

Would I pay hundreds of pounds to go and see her? I wouldn't even do that for my favourite band of all time. But this TS debate brings out the worst in both camps. Chill out, accept that people will see a different part of the picture to you. And please stop with all the snobbery. It's not to your taste, that's all you need to say.

That's one outfit from the opening number. a lot of her outfits are like this one...but nobody mentions them. I wonder why that is?

It was a concert, not the second coming of Christ