I’m a cultural illiterate when it comes to Taylor Swift and the millions of screaming “Swifties” flocking to her “Eras Tour,” which celebrates the phases of her career.
At an average ticket price of $250, the 66 U.S. and Latin American stadium shows this year will gross a record of nearly $1 billion, with 85 worldwide shows yet to come in 2024 — magnets for girls and young women who have grown up with the 33-year-old pop star.
Add massive merchandise sales, a movie and a culture surrounding Swift with secret codes that rival QAnon, and it blows away recent tours by fellow superstars such as Beyonce and the Rolling Stones.
I understand little of it. The only phenomenon that came close in my younger days was Beatlemania, which I didn’t much understand either — even after a close encounter with it.
It was the summer of 1964 when my family set up in a temporary apartment in Van Nuys, Calif., before our move to Hawaii. I became friends with my neighbors Susan and Jackie, and we were inseparable all summer.
A touchstone was the release of the Beatles’ movie “A Hard Day’s Night.” I was a folkie and not into the Fab Four, but Susan and Jackie were eager to go and I tagged along.
We stood forever in line on a scorching day. Inside the packed theater were mostly girls about my age who seemed in a teenage spell.
Intermittent screaming started even before the lights dimmed as the young ladies warmed up their lungs. By the time the curtain lifted and the first chord was struck, it became an unrestrained howl that didn’t moderate for the length of the movie.
Bob Dylan sang about young voices shaking windows and rattling walls, but these girls were the only ones I saw actually do it as they shrieked with tears streaming down their faces.
The screaming girl behind me put a WWE chokehold on my neck with her left arm as her right hand went down my shirt and tore skin from my chest. Her tears soaked me.
I might have been flattered, but I was just a handy anonymous receptacle for her exploding hormones.
I turned to Susan and Jackie for help, but they were hollering and crying along with the rest.
I retreated to the little windowed soundproof room theaters used to have where parents could take crying babies and keep up with the movie without bothering others.
Watching the girls in the audience scream without hearing them while watching a movie about screaming girls epitomized the surreal power of Beatlemania.
I never saw such raw emotion from music again until news clips of the Taylor Swift concerts, where it erupted in 65,000-seat stadiums instead of neighborhood movie houses.
The big difference is Swift is a woman-child singing about her life in a way that hits seriously true with the joyful young women in her audiences, while the early Beatles were four guys singing to teenage female fantasies.
I’d call it progress.
And I hope Susan and Jackie have lived joyous lives full of the excitement from that Van Nuys theater.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
