A feat of endurance and performance that in terms of magnitude puts to shame every other major musical act, pretty much ever.
I’m writing this, per usual, on planes to and from New York City.
I hate the city.
The concrete canyons, trash piled higher than you are tall, dudes with exposed socks and earbuds, ladies in all black everywhere, traffic traffic more traffic.
It’s all bitter, no sweet.
But you can direct flight it from anywhere in North America – and people who matter, at least in my industry, for whatever fucked up reason, tend to be based in the general vicinity of NYC – so it’s inevitable, like high tide killing every east coast sandbar, death, taxes, and Trump electoral college math.
I buried the lede though.
I just got back from Vancouver.
Vancouver is actually a great city, although I didn’t see all that much of it beyond the stadium where mankind’s last, best scream into the yawning void that is the AI overlord future performed the last show of a stadium tour that was only a “tour” in the most banal sense possible – the fucking thing grossed over $2 Billion US dollars, a mind-bendingly shocking number that is not only insane on its face but also in relative terms, in that it is basically $1 billion USD more than second place.
Taylor Alison Swift is a psychotically insane force of nature that makes one question previously taken for granted realities in ways that are impossible to explain to humans who have not experienced her mind-blowing auteurism in person.
I should mention – Mrs. Rocks is a real-life, hardcore, balls to the wall, Swiftie.
Don’t fuck with Taylor in our house.
You will not survive.
Your heart will be ripped from your chest, your eyes clawed out, and your tongue fed to the wildlife in the nature preserve beyond the backyard.
I asked Mrs. Rocks the other day how many TS concerts she had attended in her lifetime.
She wasn’t sure.
A lot.
Vancouver was her third Eras Tour show.
But there were many more.
From the beginning.
Back when TS had bouncy curls and sang about things like screen doors banging in a country night, before the whole Kanye thing awakened some wild beast inside her and rocket-fueled her thirst to dominate the global music industry.
Back when TS played regular arenas, before Scooter Braun bought her masters and inspired her to embark on a multi-era revenge mission that would make Inigo Montoya proud.
Thank you Amy, indeed.
As for me, Vancouver was my first ever TS show.
I don’t know what to tell you.
The stadium was sold out.
60,000-ish people stood for three and a half hours and sang every. damn. word. of. every. damn. song.
At the top of their lungs.
I’ve been to multiple games at the NFL stadium that holds the decibel world record, including a game that sent the team that plays there to the Super Bowl a couple of years ago on a long field goal as time expired.
Vancouver made my ears rattle and hum in ways I’d never experienced, anywhere, ever.
And TS takes no breaks.
There were no intermissions.
At most, there were 30 seconds of musical interludes now and then as she changed costumes in, under and around the massive stage.
And while no one will confuse her dance prowess with say, B. Spears, TS moves nonstop, all over the stage, both in and out of scripted choreography, all the while singing and engaging an absolutely batshit with ecstasy crowd.
It was a feat of endurance and performance that in terms of magnitude puts to shame every other major musical act, pretty much ever.
And Vancouver embraced the whole experience.
There were TS-themed displays everywhere, including at the iconic Capilano suspension bridge, which turned its entire park over to TS quotes and motifs.
Per various sources, the Eras Tour pumped over $150 million into the Vancouver local economy, at least some of which was from Mrs. Rocks and I – in addition to a great hotel room at L’Hermitage, we enjoyed a fantastic meal at Dovetail, which should be high on your culinary list if you find yourself in the Pacific Northwest (not sponsored posts, btw).
All that being said, I’m sure by this point the core lords among the ever-friendly BG audience are wondering what the hell any of this has to do with surfing and writing me off forever.
This would be all the dudes who right now are thinking, “Rocks rides soft tops and orders ED pills in bulk from forhim.com.”
Wrong on both fronts – I’ve got plenty of E and no issues with the D – but I digress.
Here’s how it relates to surfing – yes TS is a multi-billion dollar industry, and yes she has single-handedly rewritten the rules of pop superstardom by taking over her music in unprecedented ways (for those of you not in the know, she has been re-recording every album Scooter Braun purchased and releasing the Taylor’s Version (TV) of the same, exact fucking album, thereby cannibalizing – very effectively – the album sales of Scooter’s portfolio), and yes she had her own production company do a deal directly with a movie theater chain to distribute her Eras Tour film rather than work with a movie studio, and yes she self-published a book that was available exclusively only through Target (not Amazon) this past Black Friday and yet still rated as the highest-selling book of the year, and yes she has more Album of the Year Grammy’s than any artist ever, and yes she is the most prolific singer-songwriter in history – like if Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Melissa Etheridge and the Beatles all got together and made a mutant songwriting savant baby – and yes Time magazine has named her person of the year multiple times ….
And yet she did all of that by absolutely motherfucking catering to her core audience.
Taylor Alison Swift did not go chase Metallica fans, and Beyonce fans, and Cold Play fans, and name any other band on earth’s fans.
TS did it by making her own music, being fully authentic to whatever songwriting vibe was in her head at any given time, and going full bore 100% all in with her Swiftie tribe.
Not once did she ever say, “you know what, I think there are a bunch of old Pink Floyd fans up in Massachusetts – I should write an album for them, I’m sure they’ll become big fans of mine.”
She has been the Easter egg queen since the beginning but has only ramped up the riddles over time, feeding the insatiable appetite of Swifties for clues and clowning about whatever hidden thing might be around that next blind corner in the TS universe.
So what does this have to do with surfing, you ask?
The most famous and arguably most talented and energetic human on earth, the only one I’ve ever seen live in person who made me think, “you know what, maybe AI won’t take over the earth, because right here in front of me is a rockstar genius who has put together a portfolio and an iconic track record that can’t be duplicated by Chat-whatever-GPT” – that person did it all by engaging her core audience to the maximum possible limit of engagement!
Open your goddamn eyes, WSL people!
Surfers want surfing, in great waves, where the commentators can use words like “consequence” without irony.
The answer is right in front of you.
Or at least it was, until that last night in Vancouver.
A night Mrs. Rocks and I will never forget.
