This is an enduring problem for the devout - Swifties and other disciples alike. No wonder true believers in the YouTube comments feel compelled to attest to the moment’s veracity. I began searching the Internet for sources only after I started worrying I might have confabulated the whole thing. She seemed worried she might be disappointing me. When I asked a fellow attendee to confirm the magic of my experience - “Tell me I’m not crazy!” - she said she definitely remembered it raining, but that was all. In my own experience, even those who were at the concert sometimes fail to reassure me that the moment really happened.
Only the faithful over at The Swift Agency, a blog devoted to the performer, told the story: Swift goes to Foxborough, sings “Fearless” in the pouring rain, loves it. This newspaper’s own retrospective litany of Swift’s Gillette Stadium visits also omits the fearless moment. Those that did focused more on the glamour of the sets and the costumes and seemed to miss the profundity of the moment in the rain, from which Swift emerged with a case of bronchitis that forced her to cancel the next leg of her tour. Curiously, however, some contemporary reviews of the event didn’t even mention it. In a subsequent interview, Swift described the dancing-in-a-storm moment as her favorite from the entire tour. I would like my tombstone to say “‘attended the infamous Tswift rain show.’” I don’t know where the tears ended and the rain began. “I was there! It was one of the best nights of my life. The best of them spans the final song of her set, “Long Live.” In the hundreds of comments on that video, you can find people proclaiming - years later - the splendor of the events I’ve just recounted. There are a few relics of the rain concert scattered across YouTube. Swift wasn’t performing “Fearless” - she was living it. Boyfriends who had pretended they didn’t want to be here. The teenagers with their glowing bracelets in the pit. Without hesitation, Swift danced in a storm in her best dress, fearless.Įveryone was losing their minds.
If she can lack subtlety, though, she had nothing on the heavens that night, which delivered the most Swiftian metaphor imaginable. Taylor Swift is sometimes accused of being a little on the nose. Glittering from head to toe - even her guitar was bedazzled - Swift strutted out from under the awning that shielded her from the elements and performed the rest of the song, and the concert, in the pouring rain.