Review: Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium, London, June 22
IT WAS my seven-year-old son who perfectly summed up the mood when he turned to me in the middle of Shake It Off and declared: “The thing about Taylor Swift is she’s a very nice person as well as being very pretty.”
Greg James tells Taylor Swift to take a shower
With fellow glitter-clad revellers singing along to every single word, it struck me that despite all the sequinned twerking, Swift is still the girl-next-door, a child prodigy now one of the most impressive performers of her generation.
Creating that sense of intimacy is quite an achievement when you’ve got $280million in the bank and are playing your first gig at Wembley to a sell-out 80,000.
Dressed in a black sparkly leotard and thigh high boots, Swift is a world away from her country roots as she parades around the stage in front of a huge serpent, belting out her somewhat risqué latest hit, Look What You Made Me Do, with a team of dancers.
There’s a Madonna-ish feel to proceedings with the tight choreography and giant video screens projecting Swift’s purple-lipped image across the stadium.
Yet unlike the Queen of Pop, Swift performs with the audience rather than at it – conversationally taking to the guitar to perform Dancing With Our Hands Tied and a new number, So It Goes.
The crowd goes wild for golden oldie Long Live/New Year’s Day where a clearly emotional Swift reminds us she was the youngest person to have written and performed a Number One song.
Travelling half way across the stadium in a gilt birdcage meant those at the back got a closer glimpse as she sang Blank Space.
Then One Direction’s Niall Horan appeared for a Slow Hands duet. It’s not difficult to work out why Swift remains so popular, for here we have a celebrity who can truly say: What you see is what you get.
● Martin Townsend’s CD reviews return next week