Last summer, I can remember standing around with my friends as we desperately awaited emails from Ticketmaster to say whether or not we were eligible for Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets or if we had been placed on the waitlist. The four of us signed up to get tickets at any of the UK venues that she was appearing at. We weren’t fussy, we just needed to be there. But throughout the afternoon our disappointment grew as one by one we began to receive emails letting us know that we were on the waiting list.
But by sheer luck, one of us got an email to say that we had successfully got through the ballot, and we would be eligible to purchase Taylor Swift tickets for when she appeared at Anfield. We screamed the place down and then we had a tense wait on our hands to see if we would actually be able to purchase them on the day.
To cut a long story short, we weren’t that lucky. The day the tickets went on sale, three of us were on our laptops trying endlessly to get through the queue and get tickets. However, after hours sitting and staring at the screen, we were either timed out or by the time we got through, nothing was left. We admitted defeat, got our faces on and refused to speak to each other for the rest of the day.
I decided later in the day, hours after they first went on sale, to try going back into Ticketmaster to see if there was anything else happening on the portal. I got through the waitlist again and sitting there were four tickets, standing at Anfield. The only catch was that they were part of a VIP package and each ticket cost almost £380. Bearing in mind that before this we had all said that our hard limit for tickets was £200 and we wouldn’t go above that. However, moments after I put a text in the group message to say that we had a chance to see her at the pleasure of £380 per ticket, I was instructed to put them in my basket and checkout as soon as possible.
Which is exactly what I did. Over £1,500 lighter in my bank account and not to mention the crazy booking fees and I was the proud owner of four tickets to the Eras tour. So that we could all afford to actually get to the concert, I set up bloody payment plans and direct debits for my friends to slowly repay me, but I didn’t care. We had tickets and we were going!
Don’t get me wrong, I am not the biggest Swiftie in the world. At least not in comparison to some people who live and breath Taylor Swift. I have an amazing cousin who is in her early twenties, and I am pretty sure that Taylor Swift is essentially the Messiah to her. She listens to the new albums with tears streaming down her face, texts me lyrics endlessly through the day and when the movie came out last year she was at the cinema every single day, sometimes twice per day. In comparison to her (and many other die hard Swifties), I feel like a bit of a con. They are the kind of people that didn’t deserve the battle to get tickets.
However, for me, Taylor Swift was like an old friend. She is just a few years older than me and there hasn’t been a time where I haven’t resonated with her music and the songs she puts out. I can remember getting dumped when I was in college and feeling the song All Too Well in my bones. Or when I was smitten with my first crush and I felt like I was playing out Love Story in my head. Or even further back, when I was getting into country music with my Grandad as a pre-teen I would listen to her Debut album and scream every word to Tim McGraw. Then I listened to her music today and as I look back on songs like Betty, Cardigan and so many others, I realise how much they tie into every aspect of my life.
The only issue once we got tickets was that it was a bloody long wait before the actual concert. I think once the tickets were mine, we had an 11-month wait until the concert. We planned our trip meticulously. We were going on the train, going to stay in a swanky hotel, get dolled up and make a full weekend out of it. In that time, one of my friends that I was going with had a baby and I found myself knocked up. Is it terrible if I admit that one of my first thoughts when I saw my positive pregnancy test was manically trying to calculate how pregnant I would be at the concert of a lifetime?
When I first did the math’s, I realised that I would be almost 32 pregnant. But at the time, I didn’t see that as an issue. I was naive to pregnancy and naturally in my mind I just figured that everything would be smooth sailing and completely pain free.
Time then passed by at a snail’s pace however one thing was incredibly apparent and that is that my pregnancy was anything other than smooth sailing. I began to suffer really badly with Pelvic Girdle Pain at 13 weeks and by the time I made it to 30 weeks, I was in agony. Each time I was standing, the pain that radiated through my pelvis was excruciating and when I would walk, I could feel my bones against each other. The thought of standing for almost 5 hours and walking too and from the ground was more than I could bear.
In the end, I reached out to my friends and let them know that I wouldn’t be going. I was heartbroken, it wasn’t a decision I went into lightly. However, my Pelvic Girdle Pain combined with always needing to pee and then fact that my baby was tiny and growing well under average made me nervous.
But I have that one kind of friend. You know the kind of friend that I mean. She went into fix it mode.
She was trawling the internet for seating tickets, how we could park right next to the ground, she was ringing Anfield to try and get disabled access. You name it, she did it. This was the same friend that had a baby in the wait for the concert, so she knew my pain and some of my concerns.
In the end, we cancelled our hotel and the thought of a wild weekend in Liverpool. I then looked online and paid to rent somebody’s driveway that lived in a new estate right next to Anfield. All in all, it would be a 3-minute walk to the ground. From there, it was just the issue of having to stand through the concert.
I did end up going as you can probably guess from this post. We got there around 6pm and Paramore were due to start at 6:30pm. Thankfully, the rain had stopped but we had set aside the thoughts of looking super cuts and went with practicality instead. We were top to toe in raincoats, comfortable shoes and enough layers to keep us warm. My aim was to have a good time, sit down on the floor when I needed to, ask my friends for help or if I was really in pain, I was under strict instructions from my husband to get back to the car and leave.
To be honest, as much as I love Paramore, I could have missed them to try and preserve my hips so that I could stand through the entire Taylor Swift concert, however, I got there and bloody tried. I think it must have been slight adrenaline that carried me through for the most part. The old emo inside me went crazy and I was jumping around and acting like I wasn’t 8 months pregnant. To be honest, at this stage and getting to see everybody come into Anfield dressed up to the nines really carried me through. It was so amazing to see and to be a part of it all.
When Taylor Swift first came on stage, I’m not going to lie, I was crying like a baby. It was probably the hormones combined with the feeling on the arena. I am sure if you guys are like me, you will have seen endless TikTok’s and videos of her concerts over the past year and it suddenly felt so surreal to be there and see it live for myself. And I not going to lie, as soon as she was on the stage, my anxiety was instantly reduced. Again, it was the adrenaline of it all. The excitement carried me through, and I was acting like a crazy woman. Throwing myself around, dancing with my friends and singing every single word as loud as my lungs would allow me.
I was even getting loads of attention from people around me. Even at 32 weeks pregnant, I didn’t look it. My bump was very small (much smaller than average), but people were beginning to clock that I was in fact with child. I had endless Scouse people that were standing near me come up to me through the concert and check that I was doing ok. Literal strangers were asking how I was, if I needed them to get me any water. At one point I did tell somebody that I was heading to the bathroom, and she came with me, pushed me to the front of the queue, took the abuse from everybody else and then walked me back to my friends. I didn’t ask her too, but she was just amazingly wonderful.
I think that is one of the biggest things that I do have to say about the concert. It was just a surreal atmosphere. Over the years I have been to countless concerts, and I love seeing live music. But I have never been part of a crowd before that literally oozed love and affection. It felt like everybody had each other’s backs, everybody was complimented one another and it was like were part of a big support system and for myself being pregnant, that was amazing.
At the point when Taylor Swift began to play the opening notes to the 10-minute version of All Too Well, my friends cleared a space for me. That song has been my anthem for as long as I can remember and oh boy, did I perform my rendition of the song, alongside T-Swift absolutely flawlessly. However, I think I might have scared the baby.
All of a sudden, my little baby that hadn’t caused me any issues up to that point suddenly maneuvered itself up into my ribcage and I was winded. Literally to the degree that I was doubled over and struggling to catch my breath. Even to look at my stomach, you could see where the baby was positioned and how high it was sitting to the right hand side.
But that wasn’t the end of the world. I just had to take things steady. While my friends checked in with my and continued to jump around like idiots, I found myself moving closer to the edge to get some more space. At one point, a medic who was working the event came up to me with a bottle of water and invited me to sit in their booth if I needed to get off my feet for a while (and I did take him up on the offer later into the night).
I think the reason why I wanted to write this post is because the whole evening was unlike anything that I had ever experienced before. The live music was incredible, but I had no doubt that it would be. I was floored by how amazing the evening was and my love for Taylor Swift, and deep appreciation grew tenfold. But also the atmosphere. I honestly don’t think that I can say enough good things about attending an the amazing people that were in attendance. I felt taken care of even though nobody that I was standing around had any obligation to.
It was an amazing night. My highlights were Enchanted, All Too Well, Betty, I Can Do It With A Broken Heart and Bejeweled.
