The sound was unlike any I've ever heard before. Incredibly shrill, impossibly loud and with a sustained intensity that implied the hordes were working in shifts to achieve the lengthiest possible shriek. And we were only watching Hot Chelle Rae.
This was the final show of Taylor Swift's 111-date Speak Now tour, and the majority of the room had pre-banked this as the best night of their life to that point. The crowd was awash with home made t-shirts and signs, with many more two-or-three-days labour banners binned out front (including this beautifully rendered heartbreaker: 'I came from Fiji to see you!'). Swift's fans mightn't have a name attached to them like Gaga's 'little monsters', but they can step to anyone for mad, expressive fandom.
When she came out the room exploded, and she opened super-strong, picking the pop-rock-country nuggets from Speak Now like Sparks Fly (through a hail of sparking fireworks - Swift is nothing if not hyper-literal) and Mine. The stage set is ludicrously opulent, festooned with trapezes, a bridge, a ballustrade, all in ornate fairytale style. Which is to say that unlike many touring artists, Taylor spends the money you pay for tickets, rather than banking it. (And makes it back in pre-show commercials, which are a little jarring, but very forgivable).
The general feel of the show is that of a dreamy, old-fashioned kid who has been given the chance to bring her pre-adolescent fantasies to life. It's a cloyingly romantic vision, and at times can get a little too sugary, but the scale of it is remarkable - as a production it dwarfs any other arena show I've witnessed - it feels beyond music, so deeply woven are the theatrical and balletic elements.
The set heats up and stays strong with Back to December, Mean and Speak Now, all of which pop ferociously, songs so stark and clear there is no room for ambiguity or nuance. With other artists the tendency can feel lazy and unrepresentative of reality - but with Swift, it's precisely the world as she has always seen it, and she's fought to let it retain those qualities for herself and her fans.
