The Swifties and Deadheads may not seem to have much in common. There may not be many music fans who have equal numbers of Spotify playlists of “Shakedown Street” and “Cornelia Street,” “St. Stephen” and “Hey Stephen,” or “Althea” and “Dorothea.” Still, there’s reason to imagine that these two audiences were truly separated at birth, even if the average age of attendees at Taylor Swift and Grateful Dead concerts doesn’t automatically indicate that they’re identical fans.
What they share is a strong and abiding interest in power. He livesAnd it’s not just about attending one show. Despite their differences in scale, Swift’s two-year tour and Dead & Company’s three-month Las Vegas residency stand out as the two most exciting concert phenomena right now for similar reasons: because each concert on those two tours is so uniquely individual that for true fans, the fear of missing out is literally a nightly occurrence. If you’re a true believer but can’t make it to many of either artist’s shows (and who can, except a toddler?), you can still obsessively log in to watch live streams or fan-generated clips, or at least keep up with setlist variations, perhaps even in real time. It’s not just the tour or the residency that carries event status; it’s the sense that each concert on those two tours is a nightly occurrence. every single concert It's interesting, and it will stay in your memory.
These fandoms don’t share much of a common language. But whether it’s the Deadheads holding up their index fingers in search of an unused extra, or the Swifties standing outside European stadium shows holding up placards with messages of despair and karma, a “miracle ticket” is a miracle ticket.
I’ve been in a unique position to perhaps witness both of these phenomena, as someone on the Venn diagram of the overlap between the two bands’ fans. I say “perhaps” because there’s probably another person in the world who’s been to the Eras Tour seven times and the Dead & Company headquarters four times, though I kind of doubt it. Either way, I can stand with the fans and say I would have loved to have seen more. There’s a grandeur to Swift’s massive production and Sphere’s vast visuals that you can get a little used to, with repeated exposure, I can attest. But the combination of the stunning spectacle and the promise of nighttime spontaneity? It’s addictive and unbeatable.
Both of these groundbreaking tours have their end in sight: Dead & Company wraps up their Las Vegas gig this week, and next week brings the final European dates of the Eras Tour, with five final shows at Wembley Stadium, before Swift wraps things up with a North American run later in the fall. So it seems a good time to reflect on some of the deeper reasons why these two artists are able to keep their fan communities engaged, show after show.
I recently spoke with Dead & Company manager Bernie Cahill about what Swift’s tour and “Dead Forever” have in common. “I think the overlap is in the songwriting, and these two communities that are really connected by music and lyrics and storytelling,” he said. “And when that’s the foundation, you have the opportunity to create a real community. She has a huge, unblemished body of work, so there’s a lot to connect to and engage with her fans, and she continues to write great songs. Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, the Dead, they wrote what many call the Great American Songbook. And I think that’s always the best foundation for community and a long career in music.”
There’s no doubt that this idea, that fans are devoted to these great live shows based on great songs, is true. What they both have in common is the fascination with how the pieces of this catalogue are assembled and assembled for the live show, especially if there are surprises thrown in each night.
There’s certainly some ironic contrast to be drawn between the quantitative differences between Swift’s unpredictability and the surprise potential of a Dead & Company show. At “Dead Forever,” despite a significant amount of video repetition, the amount of musical overlap from night to night is literally zero percent. The group (which includes original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, as well as John Mayer) played three shows in a weekend, where if you had back-to-back tickets, you were guaranteed to hear a completely different set of songs. Meanwhile, with the Eras tour, the amount of nightly overlap is at the exact opposite end of things, hovering around 95 percent. This is a dangerous repetition, if you want to call it that: Almost everything Swift does on stage will be a rehash of the night’s tropes; every dance move or strut will be choreographed in advance; not only that, but almost every facial expression, almost every sideways glance, is something that has been conceived and rehearsed for a year and a half or more. The band plays live, contrary to Dave Grohl's jealous insinuations (I can attest to that having stood a few feet away from the backing musicians on the floor at two European shows), but it's not as if they're going to go out of control and add jazz chords to “Style.”
But for Swift, what difference does that 5% make—that is, the two numbers on a night when she goes completely off-script in the “secret songs” acoustic portion. It’s the revelation of what these two shows will become that fans love, just as Deadheads love the gradual rollout of a full setlist. It’s always been a mark of Swift’s genius to incorporate unexpected bits into her arena and stadium shows; on one tour, that was a nightly guest appearance by a city-specific guest star. She’s since decided that there’s no such thing as a guest spot like a random appearance on one of her deep tracks. In 2023, the trick was that she’d perform two surprise songs a night, one on piano and one on guitar, but for 2024, she’s decided even that’s old hat. So in Asia, Australia, and Europe, she’s been mixing her own material, ensuring that her fans are as stunned and excited as they were a year ago.
The best thing about these medleys is that Swift doesn’t introduce them, at least to the extent that she offers any explanation of what connects the two songs she’s merging. This leaves an air of mystery, at times—an essential addition to a crowd-pleasing show that otherwise leaves few questions hanging in the air. Sometimes, the medley doesn’t require much thought to figure out: If “Hate It Here” leads into “The Lakes,” it’s not hard to conclude that the two tracks share a similar theme, the desire to escape. But on some nights, the medleys are so different that it invites a lot of speculation about what connects them in Swift’s head.
One night I saw Swift in Dublin at the end of June, I combined “Sweet Nothing,” a transparently romantic song that lives up to its cheery title, with “Hoax,” one of her darkest, most bleak, most mysterious songs. What could these two very different songs have in common? I came up with a theory. Maybe “Sweet Nothing” was a must-see for an Irish show, with its local reference to “foreign.” The pebble we picked up last July. / deep in your pocket / We almost forgot about it. / Does he miss Wicklow sometimes? But this song seems to be about her relationship with Joe Alwyn (who co-wrote it). And if she felt obligated to perform an Irish-themed song in Ireland, she probably didn't want to leave it at that, without admitting—for her fans, or for herself—that the “nice” relationship had turned into something else…something that felt like…a scam.
Am I over-interpreting Swift’s choice of mixtapes? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she just put her catalogue into a random tool, and “Sweet Nothing” and “Hoax” were the two songs that came out that night. But one thing that many great shows have in common is that even as they immerse us in the production values and pure entertainment, they also leave us wondering, at least in the back of our minds, about the artist’s thought process, especially when it comes to the choices that are clearly made for a single show. Just as I’ve wondered why Swift mixes the songs she does, I can wonder how or why Dead & Company chooses their setlist. On Friday night in Las Vegas, I saw how beautifully the transition from the psychedelic “Drums” and “Space” was to a riff on the Beatles’ “In My Life,” then a full-length cover of “Dear Prudence.” Were they thinking that Prudence should be brought out of her space and onto Earth? It was probably more intuitive than that. But that's just part of the excitement of live concerts when unexpected songs seem like destiny.
Of course, much of the appeal of the Eras and Dead Forever tours lies in how far each one pushed the boundaries of production values. No one who attended either artist’s concert will forget what Silent House did with Swift’s direction, or what Treatment did with the visuals for the Sphere screen that wrapped around Dead & Company. The giant office scaffolding, neon bikes, and other props in their show… the giant dancing skeletons and star fields in their show… these are images that fans will remember for a lifetime.
But for other artists looking to make something of these groundbreaking shows, without the means to create massive effects or hire major production companies in the industry… there’s still something to gain from them. It’s the beating hearts and thinking minds at the heart of these concerts, the artists who are determined not to perform over the phone, but to make each show feel unmissable, even if seeing them all is impossible. This is it A hunger that artists can emulate—or go to great lengths to try to emulate—even on a club scale.
