Taylor Swift has received a LOT of backlash for the ridiculous prices people have been paying for tickets to see her live.
Now, the country singer is a beloved figure in the world of music.
Swift released her self-titled debut album in 2006 and received a whole array of positive reviews from music critics, including a glowing piece by The New York Times.
They described it as “a small masterpiece of pop-minded country, both wide-eyed and cynical, held together by Ms. Swift’s firm, pleading voice.”
Not a bad job for a sixteen-year-old newbie writing her own material, right?
But her second album was the one that really blew up for her.
With hits like ‘Love Story’ and ‘White Horse’, Swift found herself being propelled to superstardom and the album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart.
And from then on, her fame skyrocketed.
IMDb describes Swift as “a multi-Grammy award-winning American singer/songwriter who, in 2010 at the age of twenty, became the youngest artist in history to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.”
It continued: “In 2011 Swift was named Billboard’s Woman of the Year.
“She also has been named the American Music Awards Artist of the Year, as well as the Entertainer of the Year for both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music, among many other accolades. As of this writing, she is also the top-selling digital artist in music history.”
Swift has even received an honorary doctorate from NYU!
This was for her achievements as “one of the most prolific and celebrated artists of her generation”.
There were, of course, a few bumps in the road…
But she became a source of inspiration for other young women trying to get into the industry with their own content.
But it wasn’t all positive…
The journey wasn’t an easy one, and Swift hardly discussed the dark side until very recently.
Swift has has her fair share of bad relationships.
And it seems she uses this to help give more meaning to her music.
One of her mishaps was her relationship with fellow singer-songwriter John Mayer.
Mayer and Swift dated briefly when he was thirty-two and she was just nineteen, back in 2009 to 2010.
The star has written many songs rumored to be about Mayer, from ‘Speak Now’ and ‘Dear John’ to a track on the extended edition of her latest album Midnights.
The song is titled ‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’, and if you haven’t listened to it yet, it’s pretty savage!
However, more significant is the sheer success that the album is seeing.
Since its release, Midnights has smashed all sorts of records, including becoming the most-streamed album in a single day on Spotify.
Swift described the new record as “the stories of thirteen sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.”
And that retrospective spirit does certainly carry itself through the album.
One of the themes she explores is her experience of struggling with an eating disorder.
The star first opened up about her experience in her Netflix documentary Miss Americana.
She said “it’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day,” and that “it’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it.”
She continued to explain that seeing “a picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big, or… someone said that I looked pregnant … and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit — just stop eating.”
In new track ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’, the star refers to this struggle for the first time in her music.
“I hosted parties and starved my body / Like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss,” Swift sings.
However, it’s the lead single ‘Anti-Hero’ is what has everyone talking…
One scene in the track’s music video angered certain fans…
The controversial scene shows Swift standing in the bathroom with her apparent evil clone, who orders her onto the scales.
Once she steps onto them, the camera pans down to show the scales reading not a number but simply the word “FAT.”
With her experience in mind, some fans were shocked by this scene.
Juliet James even wrote an article for HuffPost titled ‘I Love Taylor Swift, But There’s A Big Problem With Her New Video’.
James wrote: “The worst part of this is that the moment she got on that scale, I knew … Because fatphobia is this pervasive in our culture.
“Taylor Swift is not, and has never been, even remotely fat.”
She continued: “But ‘fat’ isn’t a bad word (to be clear, neither is skinny). It’s a descriptive word society has turned into an insult.
“They might ‘feel fat,’ because our culture has turned body size into feelings, and because even thin women are harmed by our society’s insidious and painful messaging about bodies, but it is not the same as actually being fat.”
“Someone who looks like Taylor will never understand how actually being fat feels,” explained the writer.
However, others have hit back at this view, and rushed to defend the star.
Swift herself said on Instagram: “This song is a real guided tour throughout all the things I tend to hate about myself.”
She said the video shows her “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real time.”
Fans have used this fact to defend the star.
One tweeted: “If you have a problem with Taylor depicting her own eating disorders and body dysmorphia in a video about how much she hates herself might I suggest realizing that not everything is about you.”
Another said: “Showing Taylor being terrified of fatness is depicting her past distorted ED mindset… not promoting it. She’s highlighting the fact that it is distorted.”
You can watch the music video for yourself here.
However, that drama came before the star’s made history…
Swift achieved something that no other artist had managed before.
The pop star’s latest achievement is that she is the first artist ever to occupy the entirety of the top ten all at once.
She surpassed the previous record of holding 9 out of the top 10 spots.
“10 out of 10 of the Hot 100??? On my 10th album??? I AM IN SHAMBLES,” the star tweeted in response to the news.
Swift’s new record also topped the album charts, tying the star with Barbara Streisand for the female artist with the most number 1 albums.
The lead single ‘Anti-Hero’, even with its controversial music video, snagged the top spot.
It was followed by ‘Lavender Haze’, ‘Maroon’ and ‘Snow on the Beach’, featuring fellow singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey.
The rest of the top 10 was padded out by yet more of the new album.
It marks the perfect end to a big week for Swift, who also managed to break global Spotify streaming records with her new album.
Congrats to Swift for making the history books!
And with the recent news of her ‘Eras’ tour, many fans waited patiently in an attempt to snag tickets.
However, Ticketmaster quickly became overloaded…
And the site crashed, leaving millions waiting in line for hours.
Many turned to social media to vent their frustrations…
One wrote: “When Taylor Swift wrote ‘The Great War’ she was actually preparing us for the Battle of Ticketmaster. Her mind!”
Another joked: “8 billion people in the world and every single one of them is ahead of me in the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster queue apparently.”
Ticketmaster themselves took to Twitter to share an update with customers, revealing there was a “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets with “millions” having signed up for the presale.
They urged fans to “please hang tight” adding that queues were moving, albeit slowly.
You can see the post here.
However, the next update left fans utterly devastated…
As it turns out that the general sale was canceled, leaving thousands empty-handed.
“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled,” tweeted the company.
They reported that over 2 million fans have already bagged tickets during the 2 presales.
It means that the only ticket sales went to fans who bagged a code to enter the verified fans presale, or Capital One cardholders.
Furthermore, fans have criticized the site’s handling of the situation, as despite claims of the presale being for “verified fans”, tickets have quickly appeared on resale sites for insane prices.
In fact, Swift is so much in demand that resale tickets are now selling for as much as $95,000!
The incredible increase in cost due to scalpers has left some fans disgruntled.
One fan took to TikTok to vent her frustrations…
The fan said that Swift owes her a “massive apology” for the “absolute carnage and bloodbath” that was trying to get tickets in the presales.
“You can’t tell me that Ticketmaster and Taylor and her team don’t get a part of the percentage from those resold tickets,” she said.
“That is why they don’t stop the resellers.”
“Everybody wins in this but the fans,” she said.
Swift herself has responded to the controversy with a statement shared on her Instagram story, as per UNILAD.
“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” she wrote.
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”
“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets but it really p*ssed me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.
“And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs,” she added.
But following all of this drama, Swift has been hit with another controversy.
She has been accused of practicing witchcraft on stage during her Eras tour …
A video of a rather ritualistic-looking dance routine has taken TikTok by storm.
Take a look right here.
“This is Taylor Swift’s song ‘Willow’ where she is a witch during rituals,” the woman said.
“The first video you saw was taken by a fan the other night at the concert and he says, ‘yes, summon the demons b***h!'”
“So what she’s saying is ‘summon the demons’ is the new crowd chant that they all say when she does his witchcraft ritual.
The woman also accused Swift of “shoving witchcraft and rituals, crystals, astrology and all that down our throats.”
Swift has made jokes about witchcraft in the past.
She has previously said her song ‘Willow’ ‘sounds like casting a spell to make someone fall in love with you’.
Plus, in her song ‘Mad Woman’ she sings: “Women like hunting witches too. Doing your dirtiest work for you.”
“They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one,” she also sings in the 2017 song ‘I Did Something Bad’.
But alongside the controversy, Swift has also been congratulated.
The star stopped mid-way through her performance of Bad Blood on Saturday, to yell at one of her security guards.
In a now viral video, Swift could be seen calling out the security guy, who was seen waving his hands at an enthused young admirer.
Internet sleuths now think they have solved the puzzle and identified the precise moment that prompted Taylor to interfere. Fans realised that the security guard’s treatment of a female fan was what initially sparked her rage.
Witnesses claim that when the guard attempted to stop the fan bouncing around, the pop singer yelled at him.
“Hey, stop!” she could be heard shouting, adding: “She wasn’t doing anything!”
He was then escorted out of the building by other members of security.
The fan that recorded the incident said: “Also for everyone’s reference – the same security guard had been giving those girls trouble all night if they got close to barricade.”
While another witness said: “Taylor was yelling at a security guard because they fully kept putting their hands on us to physically push us off of the barricade instead of just telling us to move.
“We weren’t throwing anything, we weren’t screaming anything insane, she was fully coming over to dance and sing with us and it resulted in security being extremely aggressive for no reason.”
The video has been shared on Twitter, where it went viral, with one viewer writing: “I could watch this over and over. Taylor defending fans makes me so happy!!”
You can watch the moment here.
Soon after, the Swiftie in question actually spoke out on what happened.
Kelly Inglis hopped on her friend’s TikTok to explain the situation.
“I was the girl that Taylor talked to last night. Basically, the guard had been harassing our group all night, just to like…he just kept telling us not to touch the rail, and like anytime we did anything he was on top of us.
“We’re dancing, we’re having fun, and he didn’t like it. And Taylor noticed that I was having fun and that he didn’t like it, and she didn’t like it, and then he basically, like, got escorted out. And then they offered us free tickets for tonight.”
She added, “It wasn’t this big crazy thing, it was just a bunch of girls having a good time and he didn’t want us to have fun.”
But following a run of sold-out tour dates, some Taylor Swift fans have noticed a bizarre phenomenon.
“Post-concert amnesia is real,” Jenna Tocatlian, 25, told Time Magazine.
“It’s hard to put together what you actually witness,” she said. “You’re having all these emotions while your favorite songs are playing, and you’re like, ‘Wow, where am I?’”
“If I didn’t have the five-minute video that my friend kindly took of me jamming to it, I probably would have told everyone that it didn’t happen.”
Another fan, Nicole Booz, 32, described it as “an out-of-body experience, as though it didn’t really happen to me.”
“Yet I know it did, because my bank account took a $950 hit to cover the ticket.”
And now, Neuroscientist Dr Dean Burnett has spoken to the Daily Mail about the phenomenon.
“If you’re at a concert of someone you love, surrounded by thousands of very excited other people, listening to music you’ve got established emotional links to, that’s going to be a lot of emotion happening to you at one time.”
“As well as being exhausting for the brain, it’s going to mean all the things you experience will have a high emotional quality, which means nothing “stands out”, and that’s important if you want to retrieve a memory later.”
One woman said: “The amount of stress and time it took me to get Taylor Swift tickets, I will be getting an adult diaper because I am not missing a minute of it.”
Another said: “The diaper rash and trench foot was worth this moment of Taylor looking right at us.”
But it seems the Eras tour has been worth it, for Taylor.
As she’s now the second richest self-made woman in music!
She’s now worth an estimated $740 million, according to Forbes.
Overtaking Madonna, who reportedly has a net worth of $580 million, as well as Beyoncé at $540 million.
However, she’s still behind Rihanna, who has an estimated net worth of $1.4 billion.
Another story from the Eras tour went viral.
A woman called Susan called into the Country Mornings with Ayla Brown to tell all …
She’d spent $4,500 on tickets for the show.
“I really wanted to go big. I mean, she’s turning 19. Like, we’re getting closer as friends, not just mother-daughter. So I gave them to her.”
“You know, I thought I was going to go,” she continued. “I thought she was going to invite me.”
However, the daughter asked her friend to come instead.
“God, I was so hurt. I was so hurt,” she said.
“She has the audacity that day to say, ‘Hey, Mom, can you drive Casey and me to the show?’ ” she continued.
Susan told her daughter: “You know, I have my own friend, and I’m going to go do stuff with her. And you two have a great time.”
The host Ayla Brown then put a poll on Twitter asking who was in the right.
It was a close-run thing, but eventually the internet took the mom’s side.
But now, its one of Taylor’s good deeds that has gone viral.
With her current tour employing over 50 production truck drivers responsible for hauling all of the equipment across the country, Swift has certainly expressed her gratitude.
Sources told TMZ that the singer handed out six-figure ‘end of tour bonuses’ to each driver.
Meaning they were tipped $100,000.
That’s a pretty hefty tip!