Luke Marsden column: I'm now a Swiftie!
It was cheaper to fly to Lisbon to see Taylor Swift than to watch her in the UK!
Over the last few months, I’ve joined a cult and I’m a more than willing participant. The cult’s leader is American pop star icon turned billionaire, Taylor Swift. Having read her backstory, listened to all of her albums, binged a Netflix documentary and watched her sold out Era’s Tour live concert film on Disney+, I still wanted more.
Her global ‘Eras Tour’ has been sold out for over a year, a friend of mine is off to Edinburgh in a few weeks to watch her, he purchased his ticket a year ago. I had no chance of seeing Swift live unless I was willing to pay upwards of £600 for a nosebleed seat in Liverpool, Edinburgh or Wembley. As I was driving to Manchester last Wednesday morning in the pouring day rain, facing no Bank Holiday weekend plans, I had a spontaneous brainwave, what if it was cheaper to do a weekend in Lisbon, go see Swift and book it all 3 days in advance? I called my friend and asked her to join in the insane plan. It was booked that evening and less than three days later we were Easy Jetting our way to Portugal.
An American bloke called Wes sold me two tickets on a re-selling website, I was nervous as I read horror stories about fake tickets, and multiple sales. As I felt the scorching sunshine of Lisbon on my back, I was anxious that the tickets were fake. As the red light turned green at the entrance to Lisbon’s Estádio da Luz, I’d never felt relief like it in over a decade, I was about to be in the presence of Swift.
Undoubtedly, she is the modern-day equivalent of The Beatles, I’ve never seen fans react the way that they did to her, the 60,000-capacity stadium was rammed, full to the brim of Swift-inspired costumes from her multiple platinum-selling albums. A lot of Americans had the same idea as me and my friend, it was far cheaper for them to holiday in Portugal for two weeks than to watch The Eras tour in America.