‘The Swifties are out.’ Taylor Swift fever high in Kansas City before tour launches
The folks who run the Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium at Union Station knew their new Taylor Swift laser light show would be popular, given that Kansas City is a stop this summer on her new concert tour.
It’s billed as “the next best thing” if you couldn’t score concert tickets.
But as in all things Taylor Swift, popular doesn’t come close to describing the spell the singer/songwriter holds over her fans. The light show debuted last weekend and has been selling out. The planetarium had to keep adding shows because fans snatched up tickets so, well, swiftly.
The tour’s first weekend will be marked Saturday night at “Taylor Fest” at Kansas City’s Madrid Theatre.
Even civic leaders are enchanted. Case in point: The city of Glendale, Arizona, where Swift launches The Eras Tour on Friday, has temporarily changed it’s name to “Swift City.”
Friday is St. Patrick’s Day. But in Taylor Nation, March 17 is Taylor Swift Launched Her New Tour Day. Swifties have been waiting years for this day. Swift hasn’t toured in more than four years after canceling shows because of the pandemic.
“I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror because these dark circles I have from staying up until Midnight since October are scary BUT WORTH IT AND I’LL DO IT AGAIN TONIGHT,” Twitter user @MamaEmmerson tweeted Thursday, apparently referencing Swift’s “Midnights” album.
On Thursday, Swift revealed another midnight treat for fans before the tour begins. She will drop four previously unreleased songs at midnight (11 p.m. Central Time).
The four tracks include re-recordings of two songs she contributed to the 2012 soundtrack of “The Hunger Games” — “Eyes Open” and “Safe & Sound” featuring Joy Williams and John Paul White. Also coming: “If This Was a Movie (Taylor’s Version)” and “All of the Girls You Loved Before.”
Hyped-up fans are not waiting for the show to pull into their own towns. Some are shopping and sewing and comparing their concert outfits online.
“I hope this look screams Welcome to Kansas City!” Twitter user @Ding_Gorgeous of Kansas City tweeted this week with a photo of shiny fabric and handmade earrings emblazoned with “1989,” the name of Swift’s fifth studio album.
Lively discussions have erupted online about concert “spoilers” and how — or whether — to avoid them. Any fan worth their red lipstick already has thoughts on what song Swift will open with and who might join her on stage at each stop.
In North Kansas City, husband-and-wife Swifties already ran a Taylor Swift pop-up bar earlier this year. Now, some tickets are still available for Saturday’s Madrid Theatre celebration, through Ticketmaster.
At the planetarium, some tickets disappeared within 24 hours of going on sale. Word spread on social media about the cool show with 3D lasers and smoke machines set to the singer’s biggest hits. “You Need to Calm Down.” “Love Story.” “Bad Blood.” “Shake It Off.”
Afternoon shows were added this week and next — the two weeks of spring break in the area — and tickets for next week’s shows are selling fast, too. For now it’s set to end March 26. (Tickets are available online at planetarium.unionstation.org, with updates on the planetarium’s Facebook page.)
As Union Station spokeswoman Lauren Kovarna put it: “The Swifties are out.”
“We’re just blown away with how the Swifties have really shown up to represent,” said planetarium manager Patrick Hess. “Taylor Swift has become this international juggernaut and appeals to so many different ages and types of people.”
Fans have literally counted down to March 17. Earlier, one fan tweeted a photo of her arm painted with the number 13 — the number of days until March 17.
Taylor Nation, the singer’s official management team, hyped a countdown with tweets like this one: “5 days until the whole place is dressed to the nines. Show us your tour looks with #CountdownToTSTheErasTour!”
Michael Rulli replied with a photo of his 12-year-old son, Thomas, sitting on the family sofa in a Swift album hat. Rulli is the die-hard Swiftie in the family, but Thomas will listen to the songs in the car, good sport that he is.
“My son Thomas is definitely working the Midnights vibe in the last days in the countdown before the start of the soon to be phenomenal The Eras Concert tour!!” Rulli wrote.
Rulli is a 56-year-old pharmacist in Urbandale, Iowa, west of Des Moines, who plans to drive three hours to Kansas City in July with his wife and two sons to see Swift from the “nosebleed section” at Arrowhead Stadium.
“It’s gonna be so exciting,” Rulli told The Star. “I don’t think Taylor will let anybody down who comes to see her. I think she will not disappoint.
“I am not the young Swiftie fan. I’m an older gentleman. But nobody does and writes music like she does.”
He considers himself one of the lucky ones to have survived the ticketing debacle in November that left many fans unable to buy tickets. Swift said it was “excruciating” to watch Ticketmaster implode under the heavy demand.
Rulli won’t pick a favorite song but, as many music critics have, praised “folklore” and “evermore,” two albums that surprised fans when they came out in 2020 during the pandemic.
“Those songs were just amazing, especially at a time when we needed something to sit and listen to,” said Rulli. “I think she really came through for a lot of people who were really feeling down with the issues of the pandemic.”
And now look at what she’s done for Union Station’s planetarium. In recent years the planetarium’s laser show vendor has offered more shows set to current music — Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Lizzo, Hess said.
“The word’s starting to get out,” said Hess. “The younger crowd is getting excited. I think Taylor Swift was definitely the dam breaking for us bringing in an entirely new fan base.”
Not only that, he said, the planetarium is “happy to provide cheaper and easier access” than, say, Ticketmaster, to a Taylor Swift experience.
And Swifties who might miss tickets to the current run of shows “can rest assured we will definitely be adding more shows in the future.”
This story was originally published March 16, 2023 at 5:10 PM.
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