Taylor Swift kicked off her Reputation tour in Arizona on May 8, and after a few weeks of hints about the tour, we finally know what Taylor and her team have been working on — and it involves some serious soul-baring onstage, as well as a shoutout to her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn.
Though the Reputation album itself deals with some of the controversy and fallout Tay experienced after the Kim Kardashian-Kanye West Snapchat leak back in 2016, Taylor has never really spoken publicly about it before — until now (snake references in her music videos notwithstanding). She decorated her Reputation stage with snakes, the emoji that Kardashian’s fans used against her post-leak, and opened up about the experience during the show.
Taylor asked the audience what they thought about the snakes, then explained their significance in her life at the moment. “A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media and it caught on,” she said. “A lot of people were calling me a lot of things on social media. I went through some really low times for a while because of it. I went through sometimes when I didn’t know if I was going to get to do this anymore.”
Apparently, she decided to use the snake motif to make a point about bullying. “I wanted to send a message to you guys that if someone uses name calling to bully you on social media, and even if a lot of people jump on board with it, that doesn’t have to defeat you. It can strengthen you instead,” she said. “I learned a really important lesson that I’ve been telling you from the stage for about 10 years, but I never had to learn it so harshly myself — and that lesson has to do with how much you value your reputation.” The singer went on to say that her break from the spotlight helped her figure out who she really was and who she wanted to be, and emphasized the value of having good friends around you who know who you are at heart.
SHE LITERALLY HAS FLYING SNAKE SKELETONS AS A PART OF HER SHOW. A QUEEN. #repTourGledale #repTourManila #TaylorSwift pic.twitter.com/soAGJdVO1k
— pilar 🌞| SWIFTIE (@taylorfrappe) May 9, 2018
That’s not all that happened at the tour, either. When performing her Reputation song “Gorgeous,” Taylor took a minute to shout out another important person in her life as of late: her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, who was in attendance at the first show. Fans captured her pointing at him during the song and totally lost it. Taylor has kept this relationship pretty private except for song lyrics and a few secretive symbols, so to see outright PDA from the two was pretty major.
But, after all, this is a new era for Taylor: she has shied away from press interviews since Reputation came out, and it seems she is now ready to use her own (literal) platform to take control over the narrative. Are we ready for it?
TAYLOR WAS POINTING AT JOE AFTER PERFORMING GORGEOUS OMG MY HEARTYJLCMKSMSKXKMXMAKAMKSNZNS (via tswiftmuffin on IG) #repTourGlendale pic.twitter.com/ku7CTZgbYh
— koken (@coccayne) May 9, 2018
Taken from Teen Vogue. Read the original here.
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