Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a tight end playing in the Super Bowl -- The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift, April 19

I saw Depeche Mode do a 3.5 hr set at the start of the year. I would say I'm much less invested in them as a band than I am Taylor Swift but they were a far stronger live act. Their pacing was stronger, Gahan was lively and likeable, and even their mid-set ballads didn't feel like a slog. I'm not against a long set if it's wholly entertaining for the duration!

Someone who's been doing something for 40 years is better at it than someone who's been doing it for 15? Surprising.

She’ll have this performance thing down by 2050

Cool, I can totally imagine me at 81 paying half my remaining life savings to go see 61-year-old Taylor Swift. I didn't have any life goals for if I make it to 2050, now I do.

(If it happens, I'll find this thread and report back.)

Twenty Six Years Pass

Paramore being better at it than both didn't take them 40 years

Because Paramore rules, is why.

The time I saw them was at Bonnaroo, and it was the day that news broke about Anthony Bourdain's death. At one point during a breather between two songs, Hayley Williams sat down on the edge of the stage and talked about it and how much she loved Bourdain and how hard mental illness is and gave a sort of pep talk to anyone suffering (pretty sure she included the suicide hotline number). It was really affecting, the whole field of people got quiet and paid attention, and it was just striking the ability she had to talk directly and pull people in just sitting there talking. And then they went back to rocking.

If Taylor doesn't write a song called "The Bechtel Test" where she has a coffee with Gabriette and they don't refer to Healy once, she will have let me down, she will have let the community down, and most importantly she will have let herself down.