- Taylor Swift's new concert movie, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” is safely the highest-grossing concert film ever in North America. What does she do next?
- Swift could go smaller — doing scaled-back albums and tours — or different, but probably not bigger
- Here are five possibilities
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Now that Taylor Swift’s new concert movie, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is safely the highest-grossing concert film ever in North America, is it too early to start looking at what the Berks County native’s next concert/concert movie move should be?
“The Eras Tour” had a record-breaking opening weekend of $92.8 million, but last weekend took in a far smaller total of $31 million. That’s not bad for a film that distributors have limited to Thursday through Sunday showings.
The film’s last showing at Frank Banko Alehouse Cinema in Bethlehem’s ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks is Nov. 5. It also ends its run then at AMC Allentown 16, 1700 Catasauqua Road, Allentown, and at The Movie Tavern-Trexlertown, 6150 Hamilton Blvd., Allentown.
So where does Swift go from here — as far as concerts and concert movies?
Well, on Friday, the singer released a new re-recording of her nine-year-old album "1989" — the latest of her re-issues of her catalogue of albums.
But Swift still has to consider the next step forward in her career.
Here are five suggestions.
A Greatest Hits tour concert/movie: One could argue that’s what “Taylor Swift: The Era’s Tour” was, but in truth, it wasn’t.
Sure, the tour (and film) included an astounding (and, honestly, exhausting) lineup of 40 songs from “eras” throughout Swift’s 17-year recording career — and that was the whole point, to represent each part of her career.
But there were significant omissions, starting with her very first hits – 2006’s “Tim McGraw” and 2007’s “Our Song.” Also notably missing were “Mean” and “Mine,” both triple-platinum hits from “Speak Now”; and the four-times-platinum “Wildest Dreams” from “1989” (even though she played it on the tour).
There also were a lot of superfluous songs in the film: “Enchanted” from “Speak Now”? “Tolerate It” and “Marjorie” from “Evermore”?
Swift could easily go on tour playing just her biggest hits in a format slimmed down from The Era Tour’s two and a half hours and have success.
Of course, greatest-hits collections usually come when a career is on the downside, which it appears Swift’s is not.
A “Tunnel of Love”-type concert/movie: When Bruce Springsteen released his 1984 album “Born in the U.S.A.,” it took him to the absolute top: selling more than 17 million copies in the United States and more than 30 million worldwide.
By comparison, Swift’s biggest album, “1989,” has sold about half that — 9 million copies in the United States.
After such success for Springsteen, there was no getting any bigger — so Springsteen got smaller.
On his next album, 1987’s “Tunnel of Love,” “he turned inward,” in the words of one critic, producing a much more introspective and personal disc. It still sold 3 million copies but was a much more reserved tour.
Swift already sort of did that, with her coronavirus-era discs “Folklore” and “Evermore,” but there’s still room for a full step back from the over-the-top scale of The Eras Tour with a new album of those types of songs and a tour.
Or …
A simple “here are the songs” tour: While the film “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” was a bombastic blast, there were segments of the movie that suggested Swift could pull off a much more traditional tour in which she simply sings with a small(er) band behind her.
In the movie, the songs from "Folklore" and “Evermore” were presented in a far more traditional concert setting: Some with a smaller band, her alone on guitar for "Betty" and alone on piano for “Champagne Problems.” The song "Willow" from the “Evermore” era particularly suggested that.
While Swift is probably too big at this point to make an alone-and-acoustic tour impossible, she certainly could pull back to arenas instead of stadiums.
A true theatrical tour/cinematic album, ala Prince: It’s been nearly 40 years since Prince’s album “Purple Rain” was released, accompanied by an actual movie of the same name that contained all of its songs. That album was his first No. 1 and sold 13 million copies; the film also hit No. 1, grossed $68 million and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.
Swift’s Eras concert (and movie) features fabulous sets (including massive structures — even with a train running behind it!) and casts of dozens of performers.
Why not take one more step and build a story that links all those elements together to make a stage play and movie? If anyone could pull it off, it seems Swift could.
Simply another album and another big tour: The easiest route for Swift would be to stay on the road she’s on and simply produce another album like all her others and schedule a bunch of shows to take it to the masses.
Of course, The Eras Tour would be hard to top – and probably not wise to even attempt.
