Fearless Tour
The Fearless Tour was the debut concert tour by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, in support of her second studio album, Fearless. It began in Evansville, Indiana, United States, on April 23, 2009, and concluded in Cavendish, Canada, on July 10, 2010. Swift's first headlining concert tour after she had opened shows for other musicians to support her debut studio album Taylor Swift, it covered 118 dates and visited North America, England, Australia, and Japan.
Kellie Pickler, Gloriana, and Justin Bieber were supporting acts. The set list consisted of songs mostly from Fearless and some from Taylor Swift. The song "You're Not Sorry" was performed as a medley with excerpts from Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around... Comes Around". For the 2010 shows, Swift added the soundtrack single "Today Was a Fairytale" to the set list.
Music and media critics generally praised Swift's stage presence, showmanship, and interactions with her audience, although some thought that she did not possess strong live vocals. Upon completion, the Fearless Tour drew 1.2 million people in attendance and grossed $66.5 million. Several shows were recorded and released for a concert series, Journey to Fearless, which aired on The Hub from October 22 to 24, 2010. Journey to Fearless was later released on DVD and Blu-ray in October 2011.
Background and development
released Fearless, the second album of the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, on November 11, 2008, in North America. She wrote the majority of the album while touring as an opening act for country musicians such as Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts throughout 2007–2008. Fearless topped the US Billboard 200 for 11 weeks and made Swift the best-selling musician of 2008 in the United States. It also received critical praise for her songwriting and won numerous industry awards.On January 30, 2009, Swift announced 52 dates for the Fearless Tour, which was her first headlining tour; she said, "I never wanted to go into an arena and have to downsize it so there were only 5,000 or 4,000 people there. So we waited a long time to make sure the headlining tour was everything I wanted to be." To conceptualize her tour, she drew on her experiences opening for other country acts including Paisley, Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, George Strait, and Kenny Chesney. The first 52 shows visited cities across the United States, kicking off in Evansville, Indiana, on April 23, 2009. Kellie Pickler and Gloriana were announced as opening acts. The tour took place after Swift, aged 19, finished high school.
In mid-2009, Swift announced two shows in England, including a London show announced in June and a Manchester show announced in August; both were scheduled for November. Justin Bieber was announced as the supporting act. On September 30, 2009, Swift announced a February 2010 Australian leg, and a week later, she announced 37 additional shows in North America, scheduled for March–June 2010. In January 2010, she announced a show in Tokyo, Japan, scheduled for February. The last US show was held on June 5, 2010, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The Fearless Tour also visited the Bahamas and, in total, covered 118 shows over 15 months, until July 10, 2010.
Production and stage
Swift was inspired by her childhood years at the community theater to incorporate theatrical elements to the stage: " I never want people to think that they're just seeing a show where I'm playing song after song after song. When I play a song, I want people to feel like they're experiencing exactly what I went through when I wrote the song as I'm singing it for them." She involved herself in the stage designing process with the production designer Jonathan Smeeton, who helped realize Swift's vision for theatrical and dramatic settings that accompanied the narratives of her songs. Smeeton conceived the ideas and collaborated with Barry Otto from the production company CT Touring over a few weeks at a studio to execute the designs.The set included a back wall built from LED panels, a middle ground with five towers and two flying screens, and a foreground with a 10-feet-square drum riser at the left stage and a 20-feet diameter circular riser at the right. Both risers were 8 feet tall, giving another projection surface right off the stage itself. All pieces were designed in white to best showcase the projected images. Images that were projected onto the background included "Bavarian castles", "Victorian ivy", flying butterflies, and clouds; each were used in different song performances to accompany their individual meanings and statements. A fairytale-inspired castle, co-designed by Swift, featured more than one million lumens of light. In total, the equipment included 12 Barco FLM HD projectors, 56 Martin Professional 40mm LED panels, 4 Sony HDC 1500 HD cameras, and 1 Grass Valley Kayak 200 HD flypack system. The two-storied main stage consisted of three winding staircases, a background for projections, and extensions that allowed the audience to better interact with Swift; an auxiliary state where she sang some acoustic songs was a rotating stage in the back, on the floor.
The tour's front of house engineer, Russell Fischer, and mixer, Andrea "Vito" Carena, chose Audio-Technica's 5000 Series Wireless System for the lead and background vocals. Swift used Audio-Technica's Artist Elite 5000 Series UHF Wireless System with an AEW-T4100 handheld transmitter for her lead vocals. Fischer selected other microphones from Audio-Technica for the background vocals, systems, guitars and overheads, and kick drums. Fischer selected Audio-Technica because their products had "massive rejection and controllable gain before feedback" and ensured that the feedback generated by Swift's movements around the audio systems did not get into the mix.
One month before the tour kicked off, Swift held open-call auditions to recruit dancers. Six dancers in total were finalized: three males and three females. Rehearsals took place in an old steel factory in Nashville, Tennessee, starting in February 2009 and lasting for over a month. There were over 150 personnel working full-time for the Fearless Tour, including band members, dancers, stage designers, logisticians, chefs, wardrobe personnel, public relations personnel, and drivers for trucks and buses.
Concert synopsis
Each concert lasted for two hours and encompassed 17 songs for the 2009 shows and 16 songs for 2010. The set list consisted of songs mostly from Fearless and some from Swift's 2006 album Taylor Swift. Before the concert began, the screen showed footage of celebrities including Miley Cyrus, Faith Hill, and Garth Brooks sharing their definitions of the word "fearless".The show opened with the stage decorated as a school hallway as background videos showed lockers; six background dancers were dressed as cheerleaders, and the seven-member backing band wore marching band outfits. Swift appeared at the top of the stage, in a drum majorette uniform, and sang "You Belong with Me". Midway, the dancers removed her marching-band outfit to reveal a sparkling, silver cocktail dress and boots. She then played a sparkling rhinestoned acoustic guitar to sing "Our Song" before she performed "Tell Me Why". Then, she spoke to her audience about an unrequited love in high school, as the background screen showed a library, and performed "Teardrops on My Guitar"; she played a helpless school girl who watched her love interest dance with another girl. After speaking to her audience about finding true love, she sang "Fearless", strumming an acoustic guitar and twirling across the stage.
The next segment began with a video showing Swift doing a mock interview with Hoda Kotb, who asked Swift why any male should date her if she would call out their wrongdoings in her songs. Swift responded that if the boyfriends did not want that they "shouldn't do bad things". She then appeared onstage in a red dress and performed "Forever & Always", during which she threw an armchair down the staircase onstage. The concert proceeded with a video skit titled "Crimes of Passion" featuring a detective tracing how Swift's name-dropping ex-boyfriends in her songs affected their lives. The next segment was a mid-show acoustic session, which began with "Hey Stephen". Swift sang the song on an acoustic guitar, standing in the aisle of lower-level seating. Midway through the song, Swift, in a knee-length dress and cowboy boots, went down the aisle toward a rotating B-stage at the floor level, as she hugged her fans and signed autographs for them. At the B-stage, she performed acoustic versions of "Fifteen" and "Tim McGraw" on a guitar. Swift then returned to the main stage for "White Horse".
For the performance of "Love Story", the backup dancers wore Victorian clothing and danced to Pachelbel's Canon as a castle backdrop was projected onto the stage. Swift appeared at the top of the stage, donning a crimson gown with golden accents that critics said to evoke the fashion from the Victorian, Edwardian, or Elizabethan eras. For the final chorus of "Love Story", Swift hid behind backup dancers as she changed into a white wedding dress and a jeweled headband. She then changed to a sparkling purple mini-dress to sing "The Way I Loved You", accompanied by a male backup dancer in a tuxedo.
File:Taylor Swift - Fearless Tour - Los Angeles 05.jpg|thumb|right|Swift playing a baby grand piano to sing "You're Not Sorry"|alt=refer to caption
Next, she played a baby grand piano at the top of the stage to sing "You're Not Sorry" before incorporating excerpts of Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around...Comes Around" as the stage lighting flashed, guitar chords played loudly, and the dancers, in black, performed hip-hop-inspired acrobatics. The next number was "Picture to Burn", accompanied by background projections of burning flames. "Change", included in the 2009 concerts, closed the segment: Swift shared her thoughts on 2009 as a "tough year" as the screen projected images of victims of economic and natural disasters, and as she sang the lyrics about "things around", the projections showed images of triumph.
The encore for the 2009 shows included two songs: "I'm Only Me When I'm with You" and "Should've Said No"; she sang the former with the supporting acts Gloriana and Kellie Pickler as confetti fell down the stage. For the 2010 shows, Swift replaced "I'm Only Me When I'm with You" with the soundtrack single "Today Was a Fairytale" and sang it alone. For the closing number, "Should've Said No", she recalled an ex-boyfriend who cheated on her in a speech to the audience before singing the song as the stage was accompanied by artificial rainfall.