Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour

If you've seen a Taylor Swift concert prior to this summer, you know she doesn't mess around. With her infectious stage presence, impressive musicianship, and mesmerizing stage setup, the pop star leaves you wanting more the second her show ends.

But last August, the now 28-year-old singer declared that "the old Taylor is dead" in her eerie single "Look What You Made Me Do," the beginning of a new era for Swift. Introducing a production-heavy, moodier vibe with her sixth album, Reputation, it seemed Swift's next tour may be a different experience than her past productions. And it is, but in a way that doesn't overshadow what she's done before. Instead, the Reputation Tour shows the Taylor Swift she has meant to be all along.



As someone who had the opportunity to catch every Swift headlining tour in her country days (Fearless, Speak Nowand Red), I knew very well what the old Taylor was like on stage. She had an innocence that made her feel like your friend, but there was always this boldness that, while endearing, felt a bit juxtaposed to her good-girl, curly haired image. It always worked, though, and each production was incredible -- but it all made sense once I saw the Reputation Tour.



The larger-than-life show is the culmination of everything Taylor has done in concert, meshing her talent with her prowess in a nearly two-hour spectacle. While reports of not-so-great ticket sales have loomed, that's certainly not the "reputation" the tour should get. Whatever the stats, here area some reasons why Swift's latest tour is the pinnacle of her career.

The most impactful video comes before Swift's encore, titled "Why She Disappeared." While the visuals themselves are fun to watch and the story she tells feels like an age-old fairytale, the video is actually a lot deeper than what it appears to be.



Though Swift's interim videos show images of herself, her sentiments are so introspective that they result in some self-reflection of your own accord as you wait for her to return to the stage. But Swift shares the same kind of meaningful messages before playing her empowering song "Long Live" on piano. At the opening night of the tour in Glendale, Arizona, she elaborated on what she went through while making Reputation, and what that word means to her -- which made the message of the whole show even more meaningful.



"I learned a really important lesson that I've been telling you from the stage for about 10 years, but I never had to learn it so harshly myself and that lesson has to do with how much you value your reputation. And I think that the lesson is that you shouldn't care so much if you feel misunderstood by a lot of people who don't know you, as long as you feel understood by the people who do know you."