Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour

Taylor Swift was, as usual, preternaturally poised as she took the stage at the B96 & Pepsi Jingle Bash on Thursday night. With her sparkly top shimmering in the lights and her gleaming white teeth competing for attention, she prowled the stage like a catwalk model. She gave a smile here and there, and at one point strapped on a guitar for an acoustic performance of “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” a reminder of her humbler aw-shucks roots and a brief respite from the flash and glamour. And then, an efficient six songs and a little under 30 minutes later, she was done. Say what you will about Swift: the Taylor train runs right on time.



To be fair, you could say the same of the rest of the acts on the bill, less a concert or even a revue and more a kind of junket, where major pop acts gather to pay fealty to the big radio stations that play them, and vice versa, all in symbiotic view of an adoring sold-out crowd. Preceding Swift this night was a veritable hodgepodge of pop stars new and old, from the still teenaged Khalid (who kissed up in a Cubs jersey) and actor/singer Sabrina Carpenter to rapper Logic (whose moving suicide prevention PSA “1-800-273-8255" struck a powerful chord) to generic girl group Fifth Harmony and middle-aged boy band Backstreet Boys.



While the Jingle Bash was built not to surprise, Backstreet Boys (backed by 10 dancers) somehow swung back from the brink of kitsch with songs older than many of those singing along. Hits like “Larger Than Life,” “I Want It That Way” and “As Long as You Love Me” may once have been dismissed as disposable, but 20 years later they still did exactly what they were designed to do to a packed young crowd. Logic, too, managed to stick out in the strict format with his infectious positivity and goofy modesty. They were enough to counterbalance the forgettable Carpenter and the weirdly anachronistic Fifth Harmony, who could have passed for C-list ’90s peers of the Backstreet Boys.