Like all art, music can be boiled down to the most basic building blocks of tone and theme. For music, theme is usually contained in the lyrics; it's what the song is about. Tone, on the other hand, is how the abstract ideas are presented to the audience. Two pieces can have a very similar theme while having wildly different tones and vice versa. After a few days of review, I can say that the best part of Taylor Swift's Reputation stadium tour on Netflix is how the tone and theme are always both so craftily designed and matched to create a cohesive experience. Today I'll be comprehensively going through the entire show and briefly reviewing each performance while also tying in the changing tonal and thematic threads running through the performance.
But first, I want to point out one specific example of a concrete example of how tone and theme work, and to do this I will be examining Taylor's performance of Dancing With Our Hands Tied. She does the entire song using nothing but an acoustic guitar and her voice, but it feels perfectly natural. I've listened to Reputation more times than I could ever hope to count in the last couple months, but I somehow couldn't even recognize the song at first. After stripping the song's more electronic exterior Taylor recognized that it had potential to live in more than one genre. You may think "so what, she just picked the song that you could play acoustic guitar to and rolled with it", but that's exactly the point. Taylor recognized that this strategy wouldn't work equally well with every song, so she selected the track where a tone change would be most appropriate.
Changing the music doesn't change a song's theme, only which aspects are emphasized. The ideas behind the lyrics are the same, but the way it's presented is vastly different. Hence, (mostly) same theme different tone. The theme of Dancing With Our Hands Tied is of nostalgia over a relationship constricted by the world around them. If you read my post about State Of Grace from a few days ago them you'll understand me saying how this sounds like a blend of the overarching themes of two albums: Reputation and Red. This is why when, during this concert, Taylor changed the music to match a tone that more heavily emphasized the nostalgic aching aspect of the song, it ended up sounding like a song from Red. The theme was already there, all that she had to do was tweak the rest of the sound in the song so that it matched it. You may think that an acoustic guitar is too vague to be matched specifically to Red and that would be fair, but not all guitar music is created equal. Taylor's first four albums all make wide use of guitars, but in very different ways. Keep this in mind, as the rest of the concert plays with these ideas a lot. None of the rest of the sections will be given as much depth as this one; I'll just be using this terminology to more quickly review each one. Now, this has already gotten pretty long so here we go.
1: ...Ready For It?
The concert starts with ...Ready For It?, a pretty obvious choice. It quickly ramps up the intensity, is the first song on the album, and has lines that go perfectly with the opening of a concert. And it's not just it's name!
"Baby let the games begin"
Yup. Really the only place for this song to go is the beginning of the set. It also lets the crowd get an introduction to all the dancers briefly before having more in depth roles later in the show. Moving on!
2: I Did Something Bad
Really just an extension of the previous song, this really keeps the "reputation" part of Reputation going. I like how intense the beginning is, Taylor doesn't get that many chances to show off vocals that intense, so it's nice to see. The lightning effects were also pretty shocking. I'm not sorry.
3: Gorgeous
A pretty major shift in both tone and theme, so Taylor makes it happen by first addressing the crowd in a more intimate way. It'll get more intense later, but this is a good starting point. This is also where Taylor explicitly introduces some of the other performers. They won't be as front and center for the rest of the show, especially the backup singers, so it's nice knowing where the voices are coming from, especially since for the people who actually went to the concert and don't have the benefit of Netflix cams.
4: Style/Love Story/You Belong With Me
A nice medley of some variously old hits. The lighting is pretty well done, and it's also cool to see the band. Not much else to say except how cute Taylor's interactions with the band members are. Some of them look a little older than I expected, I wonder how long they have been playing music for Taylor.
Okay I just looked it up and three of those guys have been playing with Taylor for over a decade. Hot diggity dawg. Let's keep it moving!
5: Look What You Made Me Do
I really liked the outfits in this section. And hey, they even had a literal "tilted stage". That's "funny".
6: End Game
Good follow-up to the previous song that only slightly changes the tone. Considering the next track, an intermediate was needed, while the wardrobe didn't need to change at all. Endgame was a good choice to separate these two tracks, since it has a similar enough tone to both of them to make the transition smooth.
7: King Of My Heart
One of my favorites from the show. I already raved yesterday about it so I won't bore you with more details that I love, but I will say that it has among the best dancing, interaction with the dancers, use of set pieces, and vocals from Taylor. I'm having fun just watching it! Which is the point I guess. Here's that drum gif again if you missed it before. I personally can't stop watching it.
Thumpity thump thump
8: Delicate
Notice again how Taylor has a major shift in both tone and theme here, so she prefaces it with a short, intimate monologue with the audience. This is also when she flies over the audience. This is among the weaker vocal performances in the concert, but I think it's justified. After all, Delicate's tone compared to the other songs is more, well, delicate. It's a difficult song to scream, so it's not going to translate to the medium of a concert as well. So let's make up for it with the power of flight! Hey, I'm down.
9: Shake It Off
Will Taylor ever not do this song in a concert? Unlike the previous song, this one translates especially well to a concert form. The choreography is also lots of fun here. There's not a lot more to say, except...hold on. Is that who I think it is?
No, not the celebrity guests! Do you see him there, on the far left? That is most definitely Meekus from the hit movie Zoolander starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson!
Oh my god, it is you! I thought you died in that awful gas station explosion! I guess he somehow survived and became one of Taylor Swift's backup dancers! Cool.
10: Dancing With Our Hands Tied
Yeah, I'm still not over Meekus being here. Plus I already talked about this one! Just give me a minute!
11: All Too Well
Okay, I'm over Meekus (for now). This song is really good. It's also super impressive that people can belt all the lyrics without trying, because this song is not only super long but also super wordy. I get why though, it's a beautiful song and the way Taylor talks about how it's changed is pretty touching. It's probably the best non-single from Red, and there's a case for best song overall from that album. I'm not sure if I buy that but I can see it. Anyways, good performance and it's nice seeing the occasional song from previous albums that weren't smash hits. Am I bitter that it wasn't Better Than Revenge? Maybe, but I'll live.
12: Blank Space
Hey, nice dress. Hold on, when did you put that on? You've been wearing it since the end of Shake It Off? But how? I've been bamboozled!
That's not fair. Anyways, this song is way better in concert than I expected. It's already a great song, so seeing it done so well "live" made me happy.
13: Dress
Like Delicate, this song is difficult to scream so it's among the weaker vocally but visually this section is just like, the dopest. Considering how this is one of my favorite songs from the album I enjoyed watching it a lot. The camera usually doesn't stray far from Taylor, so seeing a more detailed view of the visuals they put together was worth it, even if it meant seeing Taylor a little less. I also never realized how similar the tone between this song and Blank Space is, which is why this section of the show blended so well.
14: Bad Blood/Should've Said No
Another lift? Ge'ez now I'm just nervous. Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I don't really like Bad Blood that much, but pairing it Should've Said No brought a smile to my face. This is a perfect example of songs that have the same theme being changed slightly so that they fit together. If these songs are similar enough in theme then it works, and it really works here. I never would have guessed this pairing would work, but it turns out some people understand Taylor's music even better than me.
15: Don't Blame Me
After another peak of intensity they take a quick break so that when this song starts it isn't too jarring. The costumes are really weird for this song and I dig it. Vocally this has to be one of the best performances from Taylor; she really nails every single part of this song and then some. Good shit.
16: Long Live/New Year's Day
The perfect mashup. While the previous union was through theme, this one is more through tone. These songs have little to do with each other on paper other than being about a romance. Rather, they go together well because they sound the same and treat their subject matter in the same way. The gentle way these songs are presented bounce off each other very well, and the piano brings it all together very well. And the way Taylor pauses and smiles when the audience proclaims it's unifying love to her is just precious. I honestly think it's genuine but I don't care if it isn't because even this aside goes with the tone of the songs she was singing. Wow.
17: Getaway Car
Before this song started there was a super weird section about a girl with not just a broken heart, but apparently a broken soul. It's really...something. Honestly Taylor is way too big of a nerd and just blew me away with this 3000 IQ play. And if I recall there was something about time machines?
Oh shit, I actually remembered that correctly? ...Huh. So going back to the actual song, it's a lot of fun and even though it wasn't the best vocal performance (it was just fine), it was just way too much fun not to enjoy. To be honest I was kinda hoping the concert would end here because of the "goodbye" but life can't always be so simple.
18: Call It What You Want
The fancy part imagery seems pretty standard but ends up working really well a couple songs later. You'll see. Also, you can't fool me Meekus! Now that I know your secret it'll take more than a costume change to fool me!
But yeah, cool number. Next!
19: We Are Never Even Getting Back Together/This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Seriously, is there a possible mashup with a longer title? This is 2 songs with 15 words, one of which is a contraction! So yeah, I swear I thought they forgot about This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, which I was initially excited about. It's not actively awful but I'm not the biggest fan of that song so I was initially skeptical when I saw it was the finale number. But it totally works! It's probably the best presentation possible for this song, and the ending with the fountain is a great time. I personally thought they went in way too hard on the laugh but whatever.
Wow, that's a lot of songs. And apparently Taylor Swift didn't know what a 767 is! I guess I'm biased though, speaking as someone from Seattle interested in engineering. Fun stuff! There will still be few more posts about songs from Reputation, and I will likely use this performance as an evaluative tool for a few of the songs. We will see! Anyways I know this was a long one so thanks for reading! Have a good one!
See you tomorrow,
-C
Very insightful.
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