The Red Tour
The Red Tour was the third concert tour by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, in support of her fourth studio album, Red. It began in Omaha, Nebraska, on March 13, 2013, and concluded in Singapore, on June 12, 2014. The tour covered 86 shows that spanned 12 countries across Asia–Pacific, Europe, and North America.
The set list consisted of songs mostly from Red, with a few numbers taken from Swift's previous albums, Fearless and Speak Now. Swift played various instruments such as electric guitar, acoustic guitar, banjo, and piano to perform several numbers, while other songs were accompanied by costume changes, bands, and choreographies. During several shows, Swift invited surprise guests onstage to sing with her, and she performed surprise songs outside the regular set list on acoustic guitar. The Red Tour was generally well received in the press, with critics praising her stage presence and songwriting while also opining that it demonstrated Swift's pop-star prowess that was outgrowing her country music origins.
Swift had integrated partnerships with Diet Coke, Keds, and Elizabeth Arden to promote the Red Tour. The Southeast Asian leg was additionally promoted via tie-ins with Cornetto and AirAsia. The Red tour was attended by 1.7 million people and grossed $150.2 million in revenue, becoming the highest-grossing North American tour of 2013 and the highest-grossing country tour of all time, surpassing Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's Soul2Soul II Tour. In Australia, it made Swift the first female artist to headline a stadium tour since Madonna in 1993 and the first female artist to sell out Sydney's Allianz Stadium in its history. The tour won Top Package at the Billboard Touring Awards in 2013.
Background
's fourth studio album, Red, was released on October 22, 2012, through Big Machine Records. While Swift and Big Machine promoted the album to country radio, it incorporates elements from different genres of rock, pop, and electronic. Red debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart with first-week sales of 1.208 million copies, surpassing Garth Brooks's Double Live as the fastest-selling country album.On October 25, 2012, Swift announced the Red Tour on the primetime TV special of 20/20 with the journalist Katie Couric; the tour was set to commence from early 2013 across North American stadiums and arenas. The first North American leg consisted of 58 shows in 45 cities in 29 US states and 3 Canadian provinces, starting on March 13, 2013, in Omaha, Nebraska. The opening act was announced to be Ed Sheeran, who would tour with Swift on all North American shows. In January and February 2013, Swift announced additional dates in East Rutherford and Edmonton. Austin Mahone, Joel Crouse, Brett Eldredge, Florida Georgia Line, and Casey James were announced as opening acts on different North American dates.
In May 2013, Swift announced Australian and New Zealand dates of the Red Tour, visiting four stadiums in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, and Brisbane, and one arena in Auckland. Neon Trees and Guy Sebastian were confirmed as these dates' supporting acts. She further announced dates for England and Germany upon finishing the North American leg in September 2013, with the Vamps confirmed as the London opening act the following month. In February 2014, Swift announced the Asian leg of the tour, with shows in Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore slated for June. She later announced additional dates for Tokyo and Shanghai. On May 24, 2014, the tour promoter BEC-Tero announced that the sold-out Bangkok show had to be cancelled, citing the 2014 Thai coup d'état and surrounding political instability.
Planning and development
Planning for the Red Tour began in the summer of 2012, around eight months prior to its kickoff. The planning encompassed stage design, set list creation, costume design, dancer selection, and rehearsals that lasted one month. Swift said that she wanted the Red Tour to convey a different experience than her last tour, the Speak Now World Tour: whereas her previous tour embodied a "fantasy oriented, a very princessy vibe", the Red Tour would include not as many gowns or theatrical elements. She thought of the Red Tour as "mature and a bit more sophisticated".Red shades dominated the props and settings of the concerts, including musical instruments, microphones, costumes, stages, and audience lighting. Swift collaborated with the producer Baz Halpin to design and direct the stage of the Red Tour, having worked with him on the Speak Now World Tour. According to Halpin, he designed the stage to accompany Swift's desire to stay connected with her audience as much as possible, and she was involved in selecting all options in the early design stage. Each number was accompanied with a distinctive aesthetic: a carousel on which the band performed for "Stay Stay Stay" and "Mean", a haunted house for "I Knew You Were Trouble", a circus for "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", a New York cityscape for "Holy Ground", and a 1920s Hollywood backdrop for "The Lucky One".
Swift's seven-member band included a pianist, two guitarists, a violinist, a bass guitarist, a multi-string instrumentalist, and a drummer. Supporting Swift on stage were four backing vocalists who had performed "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" with her at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards and 15 dancers selected by Swift and her mother from over 400 people through auditions in early 2013. After six months of the concert run, three dancers left to join another tour, leaving the number of dancers to 12. Talking to Rolling Stone in August 2013, Swift said that she strived to perform better to serve her fans and that having stadium concerts made her more mature as a performer.
Stage design
The concerts included two stages; the main stage included three staircases and an extended stage towards the audience. It was semicircular, divided into three aisles surrounding two empty spaces for standing tickets in the middle. The aisle in the middle of the stage contained a runway that could be raised a few feet and rotated by a hydraulic system. The stage was equipped with a fireworks system, a LED lighting system, nine large screens, and two elevators to take Swift up and down backstage. For stadiums, Swift rented a canopy system built on four steel pillars from Stageco for the main stage.The drum set used in "Holy Ground" glowed up when Swift and the dancers beat on them using fluorescent cylinders; this set consisted of two parts: one onstage with Swift and the other hanging from the ceiling. The smaller B stage was located on the other side of the performance venue, with a circular rotating platform in the middle also using a hydraulic system, which could be raised about 15 feet, where Swift performed songs on acoustic guitar. The arena shows also included a flying cage that carried Swift over the audience to move her from the B stage back to the main stage. Inside the backstage was "Club Red", a room decorated with images and costumes she had worn on stage, where Swift met and interacted with some selected fans and the media before or after the show.
The Red Tour traveled across North America with 24 tractors carrying stage installation equipment and lighting, along with 15 buses carrying 80 staff members. If the concert took place at outdoor stadiums, the fleet also included a truck carrying a steel frame structure to build the canopy for the stage. At each venue, the tour management team hired 120–150 local workers to help with the setup. The dismantling process began immediately after the performance ended and usually took about four hours to complete. Many props, musical instruments, and costumes used in the tour were later displayed in some music museums, and in a series of exhibitions titled "The Taylor Swift Experience" at the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live.
Sound and lighting
There were 73 musical instruments used in the tour, 13 of which were Swift's. Eighth Day Sound Systems provided the sound system and equipment for the Red Tour, which used three DiGiCo SD7 digital mixing consoles and a d&b audiotechnik speaker system from JPJ Audio. David Payne, a sound engineer who had worked with Swift for over four and a half years, chose the SD7 mixing console because of its layout, quality, and ability to handle sound effects and integrate with the SoundGrid wave bundling system. Every member onstage had a separate in-ear monitor, except for the dancers who shared one ear mix. The tour carried an additional spare room with 8 d&b audiotechnik M4 monitoring speakers for the opening act and special guests duetting with Swift. The sound team worked with about 96 input channels from the stage plus 12 audience microphones arranged around the performance venue for the Pro Tools recording tool. Swift used four separate microphones at different times.Eighth Day Sound Systems collaborated with JPI Audio to provide the sound system for the concerts in Australia. There were 11 sound engineers working per night, including two engineers on each side of the stage, two monitoring engineers, two engineers in charge of audio delay, one front of house engineer, one system/FOH engineer, and one RF engineer cum technical team leader. Three trucks were used to transport the sound system. Halpin used SGM's multi-color XC-5s LED lights for the Red Tour. There were 42 XC-5 lights used in the lighting system, provided by Production Resource Group.
Wardrobe
was the main costume designer for the Red Tour. There were 128 costumes used, including 23 for Swift and 103 for the dancers. Swift's wardrobe was provided by different fashion brands: black high-waisted leather shorts from Bleulab, a cummerbund from Kate Spade, oxford shoes from Miu Miu and Lanvin, dresses from J. Mendel, boots from LaDuca, and a white corset from Moschino. According to Toybina, she designed the costumes after Swift created the set list and discussed the choreography, believing that they reflected the inspirations of each song as well as her individuality. After Swift approved the designs, Toybina and her team proceeded with fabric selection, sewing, and creating additional accessories. It took Toybina a little more than three weeks to complete the wardrobe.Costumes used in the Red Tour were strongly tied with the album's theme: the white shirt and brimmed hat of the album cover, striped shirts, oxford shoes, pork pie hats, and high-waisted shorts. According to Vogue Germany, Swift's outfits on the Red Tour showcased a more urban and sporty aesthetic than her previous country image: T-shirts and shorts paired with flat shoes, although some dresses were paired with high heels as well. In an interview with Keds, one of the tour's sponsor, Swift said her favorite costume was the first outfit of the show: a white laced Oxford shirt, black high-waisted leather shorts, a black hat, and oxford shoes. She added that she was not only concerned with the appearance of the costumes, but also their "functionality": "Can I run around in this? Is this something that I can throw my hair around in?" Regarding makeup, Swift said that red lipstick was a must and that she preferred using long-lasting lipstick over regular oil-based lipstick, and that she wanted a "perfectly angled cat eye look".