Noon: We cast our eyes over to the MCG from our apartment in Docklands, a place we’re lucky to have after a last-minute cancellation by our Airbnb host three weeks earlier. It’s a familiar tale for others – hosts leaving young, eager fans high and dry to hike up the price of accommodation closer to the time. We blast Taylor Swift through our speakers, getting ready in a flurry of laughter, singing, dancing and pink gin, knowing we were about to witness the culmination of our girlhood desires in a single night – and for my boyfriend to witness me at my absolute peak.
3.30pm: An early dinner – booked weeks earlier – at a rooftop pizza place aptly titled the same as Swift’s 2012 album Red’s opening track, State of Grace. We’re not the only fans to make the connection.
5pm: We begin the trek to the venue along the Yarra River and almost get caught up in a hens’ do.
6pm: As our tickets are scanned, it finally dawns on us that we’re here. Not just at an event so notoriously difficult to get tickets for but in a space filled with like-minded people, ready to sing our hearts out.
6.15pm: We find our seats, still in moderate disbelief as we look around at the biggest stadium any of us has ever been in.
6.20pm: Sabrina Carpenter takes the stage as opening act. The ex-Disney Channel actor and singer was the soundtrack to my childhood. And it seems Taylor was Sabrina’s, too. She opens her set with a grainy video of her, aged about 10, singing one of Swift’s early country singles Picture to Burn. It’s lost on some but to others, it’s hilarious.
7.20pm: The tension is at an all-time high. Social media means fans can prepare for a lot of things, including the playlist Swift curates beforehand that signifies when she’ll be on stage. Lady Gaga’s Applause has everyone out of their seats before a big, animated clock counts down the minutes as Lesley Gore’s 1960s hit You Don’t Own Me blasts through the stadium.
7.30pm: The beginning. Dancers trailing gigantic, rippling sunset-hued fabrics strut down the stage. The dancers lower their fabric over the centre and when they lift, there stands Taylor Swift. “It’s been a long time coming but …” she sings from her Lover era song Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince. I sob. We are under way. You can barely hear her over the crowd during the bridge to Cruel Summer.
7.40pm: Swift labels us “wonderful, beautiful, passionate Melbourne” and is evidently also impressed at the 96,000 in attendance. It’s her largest show on the tour yet, and she says if we started counting to 96,000, we’d never get there. She’s probably right but we’ll never know. We’re here to dance and sing and cry, not count.
7.50pm: We transition to Fearless, and the beautiful house on the screen that had a room signifying every era disintegrates into a shimmer of gold, matching her silver sparkly dress. Swift spins in circles as she strums her guitar, a move she often did at age 16. In the bridge of the title track, she makes a heart symbol with her hands that all 96,000 people give back to her. That’s what 15 years of die-hard fans get you.
8.20pm: Unexpectedly, we go from her early album to her second-to-last release, evermore. After she sings Champagne Problems at the piano, the crowd give her a five-minute standing ovation. She laughs and looks around with that signature awestruck look on her face.
8.45pm: The Speak Now era. Thematically purple in a glittery princess dress belting love anthem Enchanted. After, she sings Long Live, a song written at the end of her 2009 Fearless tour, in fear that she would never experience a tour quite like that again. The way she points to her long-time guitarist Paul Sidoti, while singing “for all the years that we stood there on the sidelines wishing for right now” makes me teary.
9pm: Her Reputation songs are edgy, powerful and the highlight of the show. The lit-up wristbands given to the crowd are glowing in a pattern of a snake slinking through the crowd.
9.25pm: The Red era kicks off with 22, an absolute banger for those of the age in the audience, namely me. As she emerges alone in a dazzling red and black coat, her question of whether we’re having a good time is answered by deafening screams, mine included. “Good feedback,” she remarks.
Her 10-minute rendition of All Too Well is performed by her alone on centre stage. The lyrics are screamed cathartically by us all but as the song descends into its outro, the crowd is impressively silent as we take it all in.
9.50pm: The folklore era begins with a pre-recorded, spoken-word rendition of Seven, the dancers reflecting the lyrics before Swift emerges on the roof of a moss-covered cottage, working chimney and all. She sings the 1, dramatically reminiscing on a love lost, before moving into the cottage itself.
She says she wrote folklore during the pandemic, imagining she was a wise old woman writing with a quill by candlelight, when in reality, she was a “millennial woman drinking her weight in wine”.
The way the show moves from youthful, bright-eyed hoedowns to alcohol-related confessions is funny, more of a beautiful character arc rather than a whiplash contrast.
10.15pm: Her 1989 era begins with her most perfect pop song, Style. Her most commercially successful album holds its place as a crowd favourite. As she plays Blank Space, lit-up bikes ride around the stage and golf clubs destroy an animated sports car. Bad Blood ignites the pyrotechnics and things head to another level.
10.30pm: It’s the acoustic section when Swift performs on guitar and piano. The catch is that no one knows what the songs will be. But we are treated to what has been dubbed the best surprise songs of the weekend. She starts with fan favourite Getaway Car, throwing in the bridge of folklore track August and the outro to The Other Side of the Door.
She moves over to the piano for the second surprise, This is Me Trying, a song devastatingly depicting mental ill health. Tearfully, we sing along to her raw, emotional rendition and she lets us settle before the stage turns into a light blue ocean. She dives in underneath. Her animated self swims up the catwalk.
10.50pm: Animation over, the real Swift walks out singing Lavender Haze, the opening track of Midnights. The choreography steps up yet another level. So do the fireworks.
During Anti Hero, she walks to our side of the lower bowl, and you can feel everyone leaning into where she stands, waving frantically as we continue to sing. We’re exhausted, but so too, is she, probably, so no excuses. She changes into a blue bedazzled bodysuit for Midnight Rain and there’s a burlesque-style chair dance to the sultry Vigilante Shit. The crowd gets even more raucous as we know we’re nearing the end.
Mastermind, my favourite, is a game of chess to match the calculated, confessional lyrics. Then it’s Karma, an explosive, colourful finale that leaves me in tears for something that we’ve been waiting for for so long after fighting for tickets, flights, accommodation, making costumes and friendship bracelets which we traded with those around us.
It’s all coming to a beautiful end. In a world of countless niche communities, it’s rare that as many people as this are so obsessed with one phenomenon. Monocultures are arguably no longer, except for that of Taylor Swift.
She waves us goodbye after a thank-you to her dancers, musicians and crew, and dips beneath the stage. As the lights come up, we sit there, taking in the thousands making their way out of the place. I was 10 when I saw her perform her Speak Now tour at Vector Arena, and it was the first time I felt I had music that was mine.