NOTES FROM THE (SOLDIER) FIELD: VIBES FROM THE PARKING LOT OF ERAS TOUR
I have tickets to the last L.A. show of the Eras Tour in August (shout out to Amy’s cousin Mike’s girlfriend Christina), but I’m getting married in July, and August seems sooo far away. So when Dusty and I left the house on June 2 for a Friday night out on the town, I dressed Swift-adjacent (denim + pink shirt) in case first-night Chicago tickets fell into my lap before the evening ended. I even deluded myself into thinking I’d spend $750 for decent seats, if the opportunity arose, which is an exquisite delusion in itself, to think I’d find tickets that cheap.
We drove down Lake Shore to get dinner on the South Side. The lake was sparkling—like a 40,000 person crowd with LED bracelets on—and it overcame me with an arresting sense of FOMO. To think Eras Tour was happening here, tonight, in the city where I lived, and I would not be going to the show…?????? I think this was exacerbated by the fact that Dusty was showing interest in the Eras Tour phenomenon. His sports podcasters (grown men!) recorded an entire segment about it. We split a Ricobene’s famous steak sandwich (thinking it was a white tablecloth restaurant until we showed up, lmao), and after, walked over to the outdoor mall in Chinatown to get soft-serve from the Japanese matcha place. It was a beautiful night out, 80 degrees, Chicago summer, so we were like fuck it, let’s go see what’s happening at Soldier Field. We were only one Red Line stop away.
We walked up to the stadium with two minutes left of “ATW Ten Minute Version” and happened upon hundreds of people facing the stadium as if hypnotized, chanting along, almost under their breaths (“Wind in my hair, I was there, I was there … Down the stairs, I was there, I was there”). The vibe was communal and campfirey, so I laid my button-down shirt on the grass and we sat there through all the folklore songs. To our left lay a well-dressed couple in their mid-20s drinking Miller Lites, propped up by their elbows facing the stadium like there was something to look at. In front of us, three teenage girls sipped Starbucks refreshers, and one of them donned a fabulous blue cowboy hat over her hijab. To our 2 o’clock were drunk blonde women in their 30s, all in sequin minidresses — Wrigleyville vibes— filming themselves from selfie angles, hands high in the air, as they sang “my tears ricochet” to the camera. “And if I’m DEAD to you why are you AT THE WAAAAAKE? Cursing my name, wishing I stayed, look at how my tears RICOCHET!!!!” I wondered who they were performing for.
The bridge of every song got the loudest crowd participation. This felt like very thoughtful worship, as Tay is famously proud of her bridge writing abilities. “This bridge is gonna go so hard,” a girl ten feet away from us said while she and her friend set up an iPhone camera on a tripod to record themselves… acting out the lyrics of “betty” in an interpretive dance.
“betty” is a song about a high schooler named James who cheats on his girlfriend and lives to regret it. At the climax of the story…or the bridge of the song… James shows up at Betty’s party and hedges his bets: “Yeah, I showed up at your party / Will you have me? / Will you love me? / Will you kiss me on the porch / In front of all your stupid friends?“ The way every stranger around me SCREAMED these lyrics, you’d think this bridge would lead to a happy ending for James and Betty, but it doesn’t. James is still in purgatory when the song ends, still outside Betty’s party, being embarrassingly nostalgic about the past (“Standing in your cardigan… / Kissin' in my car again… / Stopped at a streetlight / You know I miss you”). For all we know, Betty might already hate James. Maybe she’s afraid of him. Maybe she’s hiding in her parents’ en suite bathroom hoping he’ll go away soon, maybe she doesn’t believe him because she knows he’s driven more by guilt than by love. We’re never told, and it doesn’t matter. How the song resolves on this idealistic declaration struck me as so much more wistful (and brilliant, maybe) than ever before.
“These songs are so lonely,” Dusty said as he looked around. He was taken aback. “All these lonely people singing these lonely songs.” A blonde mom a few feet in front of us passed a fistful of popcorn to her daughter from a huge Smartfood bag. The daughter accepted the popcorn in her palm, though some of it fell on the ground. With one hand, she picked one piece of popcorn out from the other, threw it in the air, and caught it in her mouth. Her mom absentmindedly marked the tempo on a pizza box with her foot and did not miss a single lyric. Her daughter swayed but did not sing along.
During the bridge of “cardigan,” the last song in the folklore set, I turned to Dusty and childishly pointed out that “ooh, this is one of my favorite bridges!” As the singalong swelled once more, a distant whizz-pop of red fireworks sprayed from the sky above Northerly Island, making everyone collectively gasp. We were not privy to the spectacle inside the stadium, so clearly, this was some sort of cosmic, cathartic release.
During a silent transition (silent to us on the outside), the Swiftie mom turned around to the drunk couple to our left who had, by now, housed all their Miller Lites. “Do you guys want this pizza?” She asked them, tapping the box on the ground with her foot. “It’s really good.”
“Are you sure?” they asked, shyly. The girlfriend sucked on her vape and exhaled it through her nose. “More than sure,” the mom said. “We’re so full! Right hon?” Her daughter was still focused on catching popcorn pieces with her mouth. The flat white box was kicked over to the couple, who ooohed and ached over their cold pizza. “It’s sooo good,” the gf said. The bf sighed and lay down, sated, just as the rest of the crowd began to jump up and scream. We’d made it to the 1989 era, which means bangers.
“Style” was a loud singalong. “Blank Space,” louder. By “Shake it Off,” everybody was up and grooving, even the drunk bf, who I thought had passed out. “I have never seen anything like this in my life,” Dusty said.
Now is a good time to mention that about 75 feet in front of us flew the U.S. flag: the Stars & Stripes with Taylor’s likeness superimposed on top of it. Proof that this land around the fortress, also belonged to Taylor, thank you. A very you fuck with her, you have to fuck with us first kind of vibe.
Eventually, we decided to walk further into the crowd to do more exploring. We walked toward the flag and met the three girls who’d staked it holding court beside it. Beside them, other girls crouched below the flag, bodies contorted and phones up, to get the perfect shot of their fearless leader blowing in the wind. I couldn’t help myself; I had to compliment their brilliant idea. “Thanks, it was mine,” one of the girls said. She had brown hair and a flower crown on. Her taller friend tipped her head slightly from side to side in a Shiv Roy way and added “Well yes, it was your idea to bring it.” Sensing some tension, I moved along.
I’m glad we decided to keep scoping out the vibe, even though I’d been so comfortable sitting there on the grass among these bared souls that I almost didn’t want to move. Even when production turns Taylor songs into pop songs, they soothe me into submission like lullabies. Forging our way beyond the flag, veering left towards the entrance gate, we came upon a surprising clearing. Hanging along the massive iron gate that curtained off the official grounds of Soldier Field was a row of 15 or so girls in succession, young girls, barely high schoolers, in cowboy boots and sequins. They resembled either a kick line of Rockettes facing upstage taking five, or a line-up of suspects in a Slenderman stabbing case. Their posture was droopy, languid, uncontained; many of their hands absentmindedly reached through the bars towards the stadium, as if touching the air on the other side was bringing them closer to Swift. I gathered that the line was comprised of three different friend groups because the group dynamics were pretty easy to read. These girls were barely fifteen, and it had been a while since I’d been in such close proximity to people this age. I need to prep myself for 8/9, because this demographic has been and will always be the root and foundation of Swift’s fandom. This was Taylor’s very first audience when she started writing music: they were her peers. I’d forgotten how radioactive they are. Their chaotic energy can be felt even on the outskirts of their vicinity. Discomfort, despair, rage, ecstasy, and romance were in the air! It was super easy to point out all the solo-roaming dads on the premises, too. Their daughters had clearly banished them away from the fence so they could scream for their queen in peace.
I recently returned to this review of the Red Tour I wrote ten years ago, after seeing her at the Prudential Center in Newark, and one sentence I wrote shakes me to my core: “But it is 2013, and Taylor Swift is America’s biggest pop star.” This “frontline” of fans along the fence would have been four or five years old in 2013, and the 2013 version of this line of girls would have had no problem getting tickets to the Red tour. If Taylor was the biggest pop star a decade ago…what do you call her now???
It got quiet once more inside the stadium. I know the order of the show already because I’ve seen nearly all of it on TikTok — I knew it was time for the secret songs. The teen girls do too, and they have been waiting for this moment.
“SHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“sssssHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhTOP!!!!!!!!!!”
“shhhhhhhhhut…..UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
These girls are SHHHHing the rest of the crowd because they want to hear how Taylor will introduce the first secret song. (When Taylor doesn’t include a verbal introduction to a secret song, her fans will say she’s being “chaotic!!!” or “savage!!!” online— I guess it’s too overstimulating if she goes straight into a secret song, instead of preparing the crowd?) Tonight, Taylor gives an intro. You can hear her say that the first secret song she’ll play tonight is from 1989, and that she’s never played it acoustic before.
“NEW ROMANTICS?” one teen guessed, in a guttural shriek. (“New Romantics” is a bonus track from 1989 and a fan favorite- a song that has its own stans. There are hundreds of them in the oeuvre.) This news chugged its way down the line like the fastest game of telephone and led a sharp crescendo into actual hysterics. For 30 seconds, all these girls think “New Romantics” is the secret song. But it wasn’t. It was actually “I Wish You Would,” a song that does not have as many stans, but is still a 1989 classic. I watched them stop screaming as they adjusted their expectations, singing along regardless. The second secret song was “The Lakes,” a florid, humorless folklore bonus track song where she complains about Twitter, the paparazzi, and being famous. She says it’s in honor of Lake Michigan. Bogus, I thought. But these newer fans remained grateful and kept smiling, and sang along to the chorus, the only part of the song they knew (“Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don't belong / and my beloved, neither do youuuu…”)
We had made it to the Midnights era, the final era, and during “Lavender Haze” my brethren filled out the clearing between the teens and the rest of the crowd. Spotted: a Latinx couple drinking fountain Cokes. A family from Korea who seemed to be vacationing— as far as sightseeing goes, they’d clearly had the right idea. And a lone bearded man in his 40s, tripping face with sunglasses on. Too young to be a dad, but perhaps he was a stray Deadhead, leftover from the last time fans acted this way…? In order to beat the mass exodus, we decided to leave.
On the walk out, we passed a new batch of girls underneath the TS flag, willing the flag to stay put for a moment so they could capture it properly. A dad played Instagram boyfriend for his preteen daughter, who wanted a photo of herself in front of the Chicago skyline wrapped in her homemade “I <3 TAYLOR” banner. Everybody wore their new Eras Tour merch wrapped around their waists or over their clothes. (There are merch stands just outside the stadium grounds. Those without tickets have an equal opportunity to shill for Taylor.)
On that long path back to the street from the Museum Campus, the lit-up rickshaws were there to offer rides to the fleeing crowd, as they always are after a concert. They were all blasting different Swift songs from their crackling speakers, which resulted in a cacophony of familiar melodies so jumbled it was impossible for me to isolate a single one… and I know them all. At the very end of the line was one driver, an Eastern European lady, whose speakers defiantly blasted techno instead. I watched her stylishly light a cigarette and cross her legs. She looked miserable. She must hate this music, hate this crowd, hate this gig. As I was passing through this threshold, my third delusion hit: maybe, sometime before the weekend was over, Taylor would get to her, too.