On Friday afternoon, a seemingly endless parade of Taylor Swift fans dressed in floral dresses, glittery cowboy boots, sequined T-shirts and handmade friendship bracelets made their way to East Rutherford, NJ, turning the massive asphalt parking lot at MetLife Stadium into a pop-a Performance space, a fashion catwalk and a meeting place for old and new friends.
Two months and 25 shows into the pop megastar’s career-spanning Eras Tour, the show came to the New York area for three weekend dates — her first concerts near (but not quite) her adopted hometown in five years.
“I really, really missed you!” Swift told the sold-out audience of more than 72,000 people.
And they had missed her.
A young woman revealed that she cried tears of joy as she walked through a tunnel leading to the parking lot. Two fans with tickets for Saturday’s concert, who traveled from Costa Rica, came hoping to see Swift on Friday as well. A woman in an “I ❤️ TS” shirt turned down an interview request, admitting that she teaches in a public school and shouldn’t be at the stadium on a Friday afternoon.
Even entering the parking lot required dedication — and potentially an expensive ticket.
Six months after a bargain-packed Ticketmaster presale, a single seat at Friday’s show was available on the secondary market for no less than $1,000. The astronomical costs prompted Swift’s loyal fans, known as the Swifties, to band together to help each other find tickets at fair prices.
Charlie Tokieda, 39, of Brooklyn, got face value tickets to Friday’s show by waiting online during the advance sale, and he bought another pair of tickets on the secondary market for a show in Denver to celebrate his birthday in July.
“We got a great deal and you could have bought a nice used car for that great deal,” he said.
On Friday afternoon, security guards in orange shirts stood near the gates enclosing the parking lot and demanded proof of entry before stepping aside. It was part of an effort to crack down on “Taylor gating” — hanging out in the parking lot and listening to the concert without a ticket — which MetLife Stadium has said isn’t allowed.
Maria Naeem, 32, who Ubered in around 9:30 a.m. and slipped into the parking lot unnoticed, was among the few fans and escorts who stayed outside as Swift prepared to take the stage. Naeem, a doctor, had asked two colleagues to cover her shift and had driven from Virginia hoping to buy a ticket at will.
“They don’t sell and everything online is very expensive,” she said, disappointed.
Many of Swift’s most dedicated followers have donned DIY costumes and have resembled the singer at various moments in her career. A fan wrapped himself in a pink and white “Taylor Swift 2024” flag. Others wore snake-print skirts, a nod to Swift’s 2017 album Reputation.
Robert Pszybylski, 19, from Long Island, wore a floral shirt inspired by Swift’s 2021 Grammys dress, more or less tailored for the concert.
“I kept googling ‘3D embroidered floral fabric,'” he said. “I ordered from Etsy in China. It took a month to get here.”
Even those not lucky enough to get tickets found other ways to participate in Taylor Mania.
For months, fans with and without tickets have been obsessed with getting hold of concert merchandise, sometimes even staying overnight to snag the most coveted items. Perhaps in anticipation of a frenzied rush to the vendors, the MetLife Stadium flagship store started handing out merchandise a full day early.
But those efforts did little to shorten the lines on Friday, when, in addition to a precious blue crew-neck sweatshirt, fans were hoping to take home a new special edition “Midnights” CD (yes, a CD!), which included a remix of the song “Karma” featuring up-and-coming Bronx rapper Ice Spice.
Towards the end of the show, Swift introduced the remix video starring Ice Spice and announced that while in the studio she “not only fell in love with her, but just decided that she was the entire future.” The rapper later joined Swift onstage to introduce the remix and close the show. Start a new round of wild screaming.
Though she played about 40 of the same tracks in each 3-plus hour set, Swift also revealed a handful of “surprise songs” to keep adoring fans on their toes.
On Friday, she invited longtime partner Jack Antonoff to perform a fan favorite from Reputation, “Getaway Car,” and then sat down at the piano for “Maroon” from Midnights, the latest of her four albums released since her last tour .
The LP, she said, was about “the nights of my life,” “things that kept me up,” and “memories you keep coming back to.”
“Maroon,” she said, was about a memory of – you guessed it:
And I lost you
The one I danced with
No shoes in New York
When I looked at the sky, it was maroon