Taylor Swift at the Sprint Center night two: Coronation of a superstar

The second night of Taylor Swift’s two-night siege of the Sprint Center and Power & Light District ended exactly like the first: with the megastar taking deep bows with her band, backup singers, dancers and crew and thanking the more than 13,000 fans in the sold-out arena for making her stay in Kansas City so hospitable.

Tuesday night’s show was her second in two nights at the Sprint Center.

Both were completely sold out (or close), and both drew crowds that demonstrated how Swift’s popularity has spread far beyond the target of her music: pre-teen and adolescent girls enduring the tribulations of pubescence. A significant minority of the crowds both nights were adults of both genders, many without children in tow.

Tuesday’s show was her eighth show in Kansas City since March 2007, when she opened for George Strait at Kemper Arena as a waifish 16-year-old country singer-songwriter.

She has come a long way since then.

About a year ago, Swift released “1989,” an album of catchy dance/pop songs that, in its title, celebrated her birth year and, in its music, pitched a flag in a music terrain with no roots in pop-country, the genre that made her famous.

The 1989 World Tour is more than a celebration of her commencement into the world of pop music.

It has also launched her into the class of pop stars whose live performances are extravagant spectacles, shows with visual features that eclipse the music: lasers, lights, flash pots, fireworks, confetti, a gargantuan video screen and a long runway equipped with a platform that rose at least 20 feet above the floor and spun in every direction, delivering Swift and her accomplices to various quadrants of the arena.

Backed by a live band, three background singers and a dozen dancers and wearing the first of nearly a dozen wardrobe ensembles, she opened with “Welcome to New York,” a song from “1989” that celebrates her new hometown.

Throughout the show, that video screen broadcast images that supplemented her songs.

The visuals were stunning, abetted by bracelets that were taped to every seat in the arena. They were equipped with lights of several colors, controlled remotely, that erupted several times, turning the arena into a large bowl of glowing and glittering stars.

Swift changed her costume almost a dozen times.

During a few of those changes, the video screens broadcast testimonials/endorsements of Swift from some of her famous friends, including Lena Dunham, Selena Gomez and the Haim sisters, who

assured the crowd that Swift was the down-to-earth, life-loving and cat-adoring person she seems to be.

The banter from Swift and her friends got serious a couple of times, like when Dunham, Gomez and the others, via video, urged the girls (and women) in the crowd to treat one another like sisters and friends and not like rivals. Be supportive, not petty and jealous was the message. It was a worthy sermon.

There were many music highlights, like her solo performance of “Fifteen” from a pulpit on that platform, high above the crowd.

But the best were her old songs fashioned into the pop/dance sounds on “1989,” like “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” which featured Swift delivering some riffs on electric guitar.

Unlike Monday’s show, which featured a surprise appearance by country star Dierks Bentley, there was no guest star on Tuesday night, but that didn’t quell the vibe in the arena.

She closed with a flourish: performing “Wildest Dreams” at a garish keyboard, then “Out of the Woods,” during which her dancers ran along the runway flying paper airplanes attached to long poles – kites they swerved and swooped, like birds.

For the finale, she and her dancers boarded that airborne platform and performed the raucous dance-pop hit “Shake It Off,” dancing gaily and uninhibitedly, like school was out for the summer.

That was the overall mood in the arena both nights, which felt like the coronation of a pop star and her graduation into superstardom.

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 7:06 AM with the headline "Taylor Swift at the Sprint Center night two: Coronation of a superstar."