Taylor Swift is finally addressing the abject chaos that was the rollout for tickets for her upcoming “Eras Tour,” and the superstar singer/songwriter is just as displeased as the rest of planet earth, saying the situation “pissed me off” and implying that there’s a possibility she’ll bring the ticket-buying process in-house (which is probably what she should have done in the first place, given Ticketmaster’s long history of buffoonery). In the Instagram story post, she also made it seem like more tour dates would be added, in an effort to help alleviate the pain of those who didn’t get tickets the first time around.
“Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Swift wrote on Instagram.
She continued: ““There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” (That bear attacks line was good.)
Swift, who has a cultivated a well-documented closeness with her fans, concluded by saying: “And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
If you haven’t been following the story, earlier this week tickets went on sale for Swift’s mammoth “Eras Tour,” ostensibly tied into her excellent new album “Midnights” but also serving as several albums’ worth of tours (the tour for “Lovers” was canceled due to COVID-19 and the two albums she stealth-released during the pandemic, “Folklore” and “Evermore,” never had accompanying tours) – meaning that the pent up demand was huge.
Getting tickets was brutally difficult and, after the initial pre-sale fiasco, Ticketmaster just outright canceled the general sale for the public (which was meant to happen Friday, hence the timing of Swift’s statement).
Not sure if this is quite as much of a pain-in-the-ass as waiting at the JCPenny’s at the mall for Nine Inch Nail tickets to go on sale and having to haggle with the little woman behind the computer for the best seats (nostalgia!), but it’s close.
