I have never had more fun at a concert than I had at the Taylor Swift Eras tour in Toronto last Thursday. It was a night filled with joy. Not the joy of vanquishing enemies or the joy of mocking the unfortunate or any of the other kinds of faux joy people seem to feel in 2024, but plain old joy. Happiness in being together, singing along, and watching a spectacle.

What was my favorite part? I don’t mind telling you. To set the scene, you have to understand that the lighting design for the show was fantastic. Everyone got a wristband when entering the stadium, and they glowed and changed colors throughout the night. The place looked magical. The stage was also filled with very bright spotlights that could swivel, and when they shone up, you could see the beams of light very clearly. In 2008, the young Taylor Swift wrote a cheesy teenage love song, “Love Story,” that mixes a country pop sound with some teenage references to Romeo and Juliet and the Scarlet Letter. The boy and the girl have a forbidden young love, but her father disapproves, and so it looks like heartbreak. But then the bridge:

I got tired of waiting
Wondering if you were ever coming around
My faith in you was fading
When I met you on the outskirts of town
And I said

"Romeo, save me, I've been feeling so alone
I keep waiting for you, but you never come
Is this in my head? I don't know what to think"

The bridge starts quietly and sadly, but the drummer starts a build-up partway through. It gets louder:

He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring
And said

And then the whole-step key change! The spotlights swivel up to the ceiling! And everyone starts screaming!

"Marry me, Juliet, you'll never have to be alone
I love you, and that's all I really know
I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress
It's a love story, baby, just say yes"

Look, it’s not Bruckner. But if you can listen to Love Story in a crowd of 50,000 people, or even alone riding the train on your way to work, and not tear up, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Taylor Swift has earned everything she has gotten.