This summer, the economy has been fueled by two women: Barbie and Taylor Swift. Barbie is crushing all of her box office competition, and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a $2.2 billion juggernaut, spreading economic boosts to every city on the tour schedule. I would also argue that Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour has been a huge economic boost, but this post is about Tay-tay. Time Magazine did an interesting analysis of why the Eras Tour has been Taylor’s most successful tours yet, and she already had a great touring history.

While there’s much to say about the music, costumes, and production, the impact of the Eras Tour is starkly reflected in the numbers: a projected gross of $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone, and hundreds of millions of streams, reaching a nearly 80% spike in those listening to her music catalog in the weeks after the tour kicked off.

Swift’s tour is in a league of its own, even among legendary groups like the Rolling Stones who have been touring for decades, other major touring artists like Harry Styles and Beyoncé and contemporaries like Adele with sold-out Las Vegas residencies, as the singer-songwriter brings her mega tour directly to her dedicated fans in various cities for multiple nights.

The reasons behind the Eras Tour’s unmatched success are many. Nora Princiotti, staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the podcast of Every Single Album: Taylor Swift, attributes part of the tour’s success to the sheer depth and popularity of Swift’s music catalog. “I don’t know that anybody envisioned a tour of this scale ever happening. She can go three and a half hours and just hit after hit after hit,” says Princiotti.

There’s also the timing: The tour has become the perfect outing for concert-goers itching for a post-pandemic live music immersive experience. “We are in an experience economy where people crave going out and participating in social events,” says Alice Enders, a music industry analyst at Enders Analysis and a former senior economist at the World Trade Organization. “It’s no surprise that people are flocking to this Eras Tour experience in what is increasingly an otherwise digital environment we live in.”

[From Time]

The thing about extremely-online people craving irl experiences is that Taylor gives them BOTH. Taylor gives her online Snake Fam enough content to fuel and engage with a billion internet rumors, memes, videos and conspiracies. Then those same people go to the concerts and make friends and share friendship bracelets. Meanwhile, Taylor is literally too big for the Super Bowl Halftime Show:

Taylor Swift has turned down the chance to perform at the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show in Las Vegas because she is simply too ‘busy’ with her current Eras world tour. The 33-year-old singer, who will play several shows at Foro Sol in Mexico this week, has been touring the United States since March of this year but is ‘in no rush’ to do the legendary musical performance that usually lasts between 12 and 15 minutes.

Taylor doesn’t believe that performing at the Super Bowl halftime show in Sin City would be ‘a defining moment for her right now’ and is very much focused on other projects.

A source close to the Shake It Off hitmaker exclusively tells DailyMail.com: ‘Taylor is busy with her current tour, she has zero time to prepare a Super Bowl show, she will do it eventually, but she is in no rush at all to do it in Vegas or do it in the next couple of years. She knows she is at her peak in her career and each move from this point on is as important as the next. Working on her current tour and recording her old music and working on new music and living life are taking up the majority of her time.’

The insider continued: ‘The Super Bowl will be a nice thing to do someday but it is not a defining moment for her right now. She knows she has all the time in the world, and she always reminds her team that Madonna was 53 when she finally did the show herself, so timing is everything. Taylor is well aware of how she wants her career to develop and will do things her way and her way only and will not rush into something she doesn’t want to do just to do it and that includes the Super Bowl.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Real talk: for years, Taylor Swift avoided the Halftime discussions because she’s sponsored by Coke, and the Halftime show’s longtime sponsor was Pepsi. Now Pepsi is out and Apple is sponsoring the Halftime show… so that’s why there’s speculation that there’s new interest in Taylor. But I think the rest of it is correct, Taylor’s simply too busy right now and she knows that she’ll be asked again.

Here are some pics of Taylor at Jack Antonoff’s wedding last weekend:

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.