Disclaimer: What follows is a good faith exploration of what we might call “Taylor Swift fatigue” or “Eras Tour exhaustion.” It is not an attempt to disparage Ms. Swift or her fans — many of whom have waited patiently for well over a year in anticipation of her arrival in Toronto. Instead, it is a safe space for skeptics to vent about the overwhelming excitement of so-called “Swiftmania.”
Brace yourselves: in less than a week, legions of Taylor Swift fans will descend on Toronto ahead of the megastar’s mini-residency at Rogers Centre.
For Swifties, it probably feels like Christmas in November. For everyone else, it sounds like a major headache.
500,000 visitors are expected to visit from outside of Toronto between Nov. 14 and Nov 23. Traffic, naturally, will be a nightmare — anyone heading downtown can expect gridlock and soaring ride-share prices.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of those fans are expected to clog up the city’s public transit en route to the show and other events, such as the massive “Taylgate ‘24” parties happening at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which is expected to draw some 20,000 fans each night.
“It’s not the music I hate, it’s the fans,” Mike Barber — a co-owner of Body Buzz Records, quipped to the Star, paraphrasing a line from a classic Sloan track.
“I try not to think about Taylor Swift or her music all that much, but the phenomenon of (her) fandom is mind-boggling,” Barber explains. “To me, it’s mostly an indication of the collapse of all of the traditional music industry and music media that millions of people have coalesced around one songwriter as a sort-of popelike figure.”
To be fair, Barber has a particularly good reason to be annoyed — he and his now-wife had planned to throw a wedding celebration in Toronto on Nov. 16. They were forced to push the date up by several weeks after discovering that the average price of a hotel in the city was suddenly upwards of $800.
“She knows how to write a bridge, though,” concedes Barber. “That puts her ahead of like 95 per cent of her contemporaries.”
Beyond the logistical nightmare, it now feels near impossible to avoid the circus surrounding Taylor Swift and the Eras Tour.
On Monday, Mayor Olivia Chow helped unveil “1 Taylor Swift Way,” one of 22 new street signs (paid for by Rogers) that will mark a route from Nathan Phillips Square to the Rogers Centre.
“We hope fans are enchanted by their walk down ‘Taylor Swift Way’ and will generously support the auction of these signs, each a keepsake for evermore that will help a great cause,” Chow said, in an apparent attempt to deliver the cringiest series of Swift puns imaginable.
For Evy Kwong, who works at Wired magazine, the biggest problem with Swiftmania is its seemingly inescapability.
“Just logging off is the ideal solution,” she says, “but now the stanning is hitting real life. I’m not ready for the internet to be part of my everyday life/walks/commute.”
Taylor Swift’s visit to Toronto is expected to inject more than $282 million to the city’s economy, according to the Destination Toronto.
While hotels, restaurants, bars and ride-sharing companies are sure to benefit from this injection of capital, it’s unclear whether the Eras Tour will be a net positive for Toronto, which — as the Star’s Edward Keenan points out — bears the cost of policing and security, traffic management, transit, infrastructure preparation, but which will not be on the receiving end of any new revenue.
Culture writer Niko Stratis says the intensity of Taylor Swift fans make it difficult to speak honestly about being annoyed by the Eras Tour without facing potential backlash. In 2022, Stratis faced the wrath of the Swifties after her review of “Midnights,” despite describing the album as an “impeccably produced pop with an unseen depth.”
“There’s no room for nuance or critique in the conversation without immediately getting written off as being a hater,” says Stratis. Then there’s the hype, which Stratis describes as “a little embarrassing”: “Naming streets after her, (that’s) something we’ve never done for a touring artist before.”
Cartoonist Alex Hood isn’t a fan of Taylor Swift, but she’s emphatically not a hater. “I find adults who fixate on hatred of pop stars, especially female ones, usually have some weird axe to grind against women in general,” she points out. “It’s pretty innocuous and not worthy of ire.”
(Given my over-the-top griping about Swift in a piece published last week, this gave me pause.)
Hood’s critique of Swift has less to do with the music than what she says it symbolizes: “the shallow, tasteless esthetics of wealth and consumption.”
Last month, Forbes estimated that Swift was worth $1.6 billion, making her the richest female recording artist on earth.
So what to do?
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to keep busy during the Swift residency. Here’s what a few of our curmudgeons suggest.
A guide to the city for the Swift-fatigued
- “There’s plenty of other great shows to go check out in the city, all for a lot less than the cost of a Taylor Swift ticket. Adrianne Lenker is playing the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Nov. 16, so you can avoid downtown altogether and still get to see one of the best singer-songwriters on the planet. Or go check out the OBGMs on Nov. 15 at the Velvet Underground. They’re one of the best punk bands this city has ever produced.” — M. Barber
- “I love going to the Tranzac and seeing some sort of weird, specific local free jazz, folk or experimental band. It’s a great deal cheaper and the setting is intimate. It’s better when you have no idea what’s playing that night. It will always be something weird.” — A. Hood
- “This may surprise you, but I actually believe that it is important that you face your fears head on. Sure, it would be easy enough to spend a night out far from the crowds — maybe dinner on the Danforth, or at a quiet bar in the Junction. But why not stand strong and embrace the chaos? To that end, I suggest you take out some cash and, if it’s warm enough, grab a seat on the patio at Java House. A classic dive bar on Queen Street West, this pub is just grimy enough to stave off the Swifties, but close enough to Rogers Centre to provide a front-row seat to the spectacle of 40,000 zealot fans writhing their way through the city. Bonus: On Fridays, you can get two entrees and a pitcher of premium beer for just 36 bucks.” — R. Assaly
