The AI chatbot coming for your job, ‘Swifties’ take on Ticketmaster, and Apple sued for AirTag stalking
Nightcap’s Jon Sarlin talks to futurist Amy Webb about the implications for ChatGPT, the next-gen AI tool that’s blowing everyone’s minds. Plus, Morgan Harper of the American Economic Liberties Project on whether Ticketmaster has met its match in Taylor Swift and her legion of devoted fans. And CNN’s Sam Kelly on the lawsuit filed against Apple by two women alleging their exes used AirTags to stalk them. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.
A group of Taylor Swift fans is suing Ticketmaster over what it claims are botched sales for the singer’s upcoming concert tour. The suit includes charges of fraud, price fixing and deception.
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When Taylor Swift first began dating actor Joe Alwyn more than four years ago, it was almost immediately clear the couple had come to an agreement: Their relationship would be an intimate but private one, and they’d be a united front in protecting that privacy. Gone were the paparazzi photo ops of Swift’s days with Tom Hiddleston, and gooey Instagram pics—like the ones she’d posted with Calvin Harris—would no longer populate her social media. Instead, her accounts would focus on promoting her work and sharing photos of her other loves: cats Olivia, Meredith, and Benjamin.
Still, a love story like Swift and Alwyn’s couldn’t stay behind closed doors forever, and since 2020, they’ve been more public about their relationship than ever before. This includes Swift’s confirmation that Alwyn co-wrote two songs on folklore under the pseudonym William Bowery and also helped pen three tracks from Swift’s latest record, evermore. As we eke out the details, scroll below for a timeline of their coupledom, leading up to their collaboration on Swift’s ninth album and the brewing engagement rumors.
May 2, 2016: They meet at the Met Gala (probably).
Nobody knows for sure when Swift and Alwyn first met. But sleuths have determined that the song “Dress” on her 2017 album Reputation might refer to their first meeting.
The lyrics in question: “Flashback to when you met me, your buzzed cut and my hair bleached.” Swift’s hair was, indeed, bleached at the Met Gala, and Alwyn’s hair was buzzed.
Neilson Barnard//Getty Images
At the time, Swift was still dating Harris—and this was also the night she met Hiddleston and danced goofily with him in a video that went viral, and later sparked the rebound heard ‘round the world. It was an eventful night for Tay.
Oct. 12, 2016: Swift and Alwyn attend the same Kings of Leon concert.
A month after breaking up with Hiddleston, Swift went to a Kings of Leon show with her friends. Online sleuths have since determined that Alwyn was at the show, too.
Nov. 12, 2016: Swift attends Alwyn’s movie screening.
Swift and a gaggle of squad members went to the premiere of Alwyn’s film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. If she and Alwyn were dating at this point, it was so under the radar that press coverage of the premiere didn’t even mention his name. It’s not clear if he was in attendance.
Alwyn at the photo call for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
Kris Connor//Getty Images
May 16, 2017: Reports emerge that they’re dating.
A source close to the pair told The Sun that Swift and Alwyn had been together for a few months, and that their friends and families were in on it:
“This isn’t a new couple alert or a secret relationship – the only people this has been a secret to is the media because all of us, Taylor and Joe’s closest friends and their families, were aware they have been together for several months and have known each other for a long time.
“After her 1989 tour and all the attention Taylor received, she learned she had to be more protective of her personal life and she and Joe decided early on to keep their private life private.”
June 5, 2017: They’re caught by the paparazzi in Nashville.
The paparazzi finally caught the couple in action: sitting on a balcony in Nashville, where Alwyn was allegedly meeting Swift’s parents for the first time.
July 25, 2017: They’re caught again, this time in New York.
Hoodies pulled tight over their faces, the couple were caught leaving Swift’s apartment.
Swift and Alwyn seemed desperate to go incognito in these pics.
Oct. 20, 2017: Swift tells fans her new single “Gorgeous” is about Alwyn.
Swift hosted a “secret” listening session for her new album, Reputation. She allegedly told fans the single “Gorgeous” is about Alwyn.
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“Basically Taylor made us all promise that if anyone made any accusations of who this song is about, we tell them it is 100 percent about her angel boyfriend of one year,” a fan wrote on Tumblr. “This isn’t a secret. She wanted us to tell people.”
Oct. 27, 2017: Ed Sheeran spills the beans on Alwyn.
On the heels of Swift’s revelation that “Gorgeous” is about Alwyn, her good friend Ed Sheeran was asked about Alwyn on a British radio show.
“He’s really nice,” he said. “Really, really friendly, really good dude.”
Dec. 11, 2017: The couple is spotted snuggling during an Ed Sheeran performance.
Momentarily letting their guard down, Swift and Alwyn engaged in some honest-to-god PDA while Ed Sheeran performed at iHeartRadio’s Jingle Bell Ball in New York City.
“THEY LITERALLY SLOW DANCED TO ALL EDS SONGS WITH THEIR ARMS AROUND ONE ANOTHER AND JUST KEPT LOOKING AT EACH OTHER AND KISSING,” a fan tweeted, according to EW.
May 8, 2018: They post coordinating cactus photos to Instagram.
Both Alwyn and Swift posted photos of themselves, solo, standing next to the same cactus.
Alwyn later said they didn’t even realize the photos coordinated.
“I didn’t even think of that until I was in New York and someone else mentioned it,” he said, according to ET. “It wasn’t purposeful at all!”
This is the closest we’ve come to an “Instagram-official” moment for the couple.
Sept. 19, 2018: Alwyn talks about Swift for the first time—but only to say he doesn’t want to talk about her.
“I’m aware people want to know about that side of things,” he said to British Vogue. “I think we have been successfully very private and that has now sunk in for people…but I really prefer to talk about work.”
Oct. 18, 2018: Alwyn speaks very, very briefly about Swift’s newfound political activism.
In early October, Swift finally waded into the political world to endorse two Tennessee congressional candidates, after a career-long silence.
A few days later, an interviewer asked Alwyn how he felt about Swift’s post.
“I think it’s great, and I think it’s important,” he said, before uncomfortably shuffling away.
Nov. 23, 2018: Swift acknowledges Alwyn’s existence on social media.
After two years of knowing him, Swift finally posted something about Alwyn—or at least, his work—on Instagram.
It was a clipped trailer for his new movie, The Favourite, with a caption calling the film “phenomenal” and imploring her followers to go see it. She tagged the movie’s account, plus Alwyn’s and Nicholas Hoult’s.
Nov. 25, 2018: Alwyn reiterates that he’d like to keep his private life private.
In an interview with GQ, he skirted around the topic of Taylor, saying, “Someone’s private life is, by definition, private. No one is obliged to share their personal life.”
He also declined to name a favorite Swift song. “I’m just not even going to go into that side of the world,” he said.
Dec. 7, 2018: Alwyn opens up a teeny bit about their relationship.
Just to mix things up, Alwyn provided a tiny kernel of information about his relationship with Swift, before saying he didn’t want to talk about it.
Esquire asked him if he sought out any guidance from friends when he started dating Swift.
“I didn’t seek out advice on that,” he said. “Because I know what I feel about it. I think there’s a very clear line as to what somebody should share, or feel like they have to share, and what they don’t want to and shouldn’t have to.”
Dec. 11, 2018: Swift attends Alwyn’s movie premiere in London.
Swift popped up at the Cineworld Leicester premiere of Mary Queen of Scots as well as an after-party.
Jan. 6, 2019: Swift and Alwyn attend the Golden Globes (separately).
Alwyn attended the awards show for his nominated film The Favourite, and Swift presented Best Original Score and Best Original Song during the 2019 Golden Globes. Although they didn’t walk the red carpet together, an Us Weeklysource claimed the two got quite flirty while she was onstage.
“While Taylor presented, Joe watched the teleprompter near him and smiled and (his Favourite costar) Nicholas Hoult patted him on the back,” the source said. “After Gaga walked on stage, Joe shifted his gaze to the stage near Taylor.” The insider added, “She was smiling at him while she walked off the stage. She looked over her shoulder and gave a sassy cute little smile at his table’s direction.”
Handout//Getty Images
Feb. 10, 2019: Swift and Alwyn step out at a BAFTAS after party.
Swift skipped the Grammy Awards in favor of attending a BAFTAs after party with her beau. Clad in a pale blue Stella McCartney gown, Swift gave off major Cinderella vibes alongside Alwyn. The two were even photographed walking together hand-in-hand. (A rare occurrence for this secretive duo!)
GOR//Getty Images
March 2019: Engagement rumors begin.
As Swift continued filming the big screen version of Cats in London, reports swirled that getting engaged to Alwyn was not far off. “Taylor’s friends are all talking about a proposal and how she really wants to marry Joe,” an Us Weeklysource shared. “He’s her dream guy.”
A Peoplesource echoed those sentiments, saying, “Taylor really got lucky to meet Joe, and she is the first one to say it. Joe really is one of a kind.”
May 2019: The couple is spotted on a couple dates.
Swift and Alwyn ate breakfast at Café de Flore and then took a stroll through the city of Paris in a rare public outing.
Later in the month, the couple made it a double date with similarly private pair Robert Pattinson and Suki Waterhouse. Per an Us Weeklyonlooker, the four low-key celebs dined at San Vicente Bungalows in Hollywood, spending the night laughing and talking.
August 2019: Swift releases Lover—and fans go nuts dissecting the lyrics.
Ahead of the August 23 release of her album Lover, Swift revealed to fans that new music would address her current relationship…in so many words. During a YouTube Live,she explained,“It’s a really romantic album, but it really celebrates love in all its complexity. Not just flowers and sunshine but the patchwork emotions that go into any love you feel.”
Once the album dropped, fans began dissecting every song for hidden clues about the couple. Some were even convinced the songs “Lover” and “Paper Rings” were Swift’s big marriage reveal.
Swift continued to avoid talking about Alwyn in interviews. While speaking toThe Guardian about why she wouldn’t speak on her relationship, she said, “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she said with a laugh. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it—but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”
Shortly after a People source gave an update on the relationship saying, “Joe’s personality is great for Taylor. He is very calm and always very supportive. He’s sympathetic and understanding and supports her speaking out about things that she doesn’t agree with.”
Even her inner circle likes Joe, the source added: “There’s something refreshing and different about their relationship. Joe makes Taylor very happy, and it’s hard to picture her not spending the rest of her life with him. Her family loves him. He seems older than he is and is a fantastic guy.”
As for future comment from either party regarding the romance? The source says it’s unlikely: “Joe loves acting but doesn’t want to be a celebrity,” the source said. “They both agree that for their relationship to keep working, they want to keep things more quiet. She’s the happiest she’s ever been.”
September 2019: The couple is photographed on a private plane.
The two were photographed boarding Swift’s private plane after a low-key trip to her beach house in Watch Hill, Rhode Island.
October 5, 2019: They’re seen together after SNL.
In a rare sighting for the couple, Alwyn and Swift were seen holding hands after the singer’s Saturday Night Live performances. They headed to New York’s Zuma for the show’s after party.
Jackson Lee//Getty Images
November 2019: Swift joins Alwyn for Thanksgiving.
Swift celebrated Thanksgiving in London with Alwyn, according to E!, but not before hosting a splashy American Friendsgiving with friends including Gigi Hadid, Antoni Porowski, and Martha Hunt.
Instagram
Early December 2019: The lovers spend time in London.
Us Weeklyand E! both ran reports early in the month stating things between the couple are still going well. “Taylor has had a tough year and Joe has been a rock for her,” a source told Us. “They are still going very strong.”
Meanwhile, E! reported that,“Taylor has been spending a lot of down time in London,” per a source. “She doesn’t go out much other than to take a walk with Joe or go to the local pub. They spend a lot of time with Joe’s family and friends. All weekend they had people come over or they went to family members’ homes.”
December 16, 2019: Alwyn supports Swift’s acting career.
Alwyn was on hand to subtly support Swift at the NYC premiere of her new movie, Cats.
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin//Getty Images
December 26, 2019: The couple spends Christmas together.
After spending Thanksgiving together, E! reported that Swift spent her Christmas holiday in London, too. “Taylor spent the holidays in England with Joe,” a source told the outlet. “She was there for the week leading up to Christmas and spent time with Joe’s family and friends. Some of Taylor’s family also flew in from Nashville to spend time with them.”
January 1, 2020: The duo are serenaded in the Maldives.
Alwyn and Swift rang in New Year’s Eve with a concert in the Maldives. Although neither party revealed the travel plans themselves, singer Matthew Crane posted the news himself on Instagram. “So I can now finally reveal who I sung to on New Year’s Eve in the Maldives, probably the most notable Pop Star at the moment, the one and only @taylorswift and @joe.alwyn,” he wrote on his Instagram. “They were both so friendly and kind to me when I performed, they even gave me a standing ovation and complimented on my voice. It was truly an honor and an experience that I will never forget. 🎤🎶”
January 5, 2020: Alwyn and Swift sit together at the 2020 Golden Globes.
The couple had their most public outing to date at the 2020 Golden Globes, where Swift was a presenter and nominee for Best Original Song – Motion Picture for her and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new original song for Cats, “Beautiful Ghosts.” While they didn’t walk the red carpet together, onlookers captured Swift and Alwyn taking their seats next to each other inside the ballroom:
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E! also tweeted out a photo of the pair sitting side-by-side, Alwyn in a tux and Swift in an Etro gown:
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Next, the couple of more than three years was spotted at the Golden Globes CAA after party. A source told E! that Swift (in a a sparkly navy Alexandre Vauthier dress) wasn’t afraid to show PDA with Alwyn. “They looked inseparable and really in love,” the source noted. “Taylor had her arm on Joe, and she leaned in to kiss him several times.”
January 31, 2020: Miss Americana drops on Netflix.
With the release of Swift’s documentary Miss Americana, came new insight into her romance with Alwyn. She spoke vaguely about why she fell for Alwyn in the fall of 2016, after her Kim Kardashian Snapchat drama had tarnished her reputation. “I felt alone, I felt really bitter,” she explained. “I felt sort of like a wounded animal lashing out. I figured I had to reset everything. I had to reconstruct an entire belief system for my own personal sanity. I also was falling in love with someone who had a wonderfully normal, balanced life.”
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Swift also revealed why she and Alwyn chose to keep their relationship quiet. “We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private,” she said. “Even though it [Swift’s public image in 2016] was really horrible, I was happy. But I wasn’t happy in the way I was trained to be happy. It was happiness without anyone else’s input. We were just…happy.”
Those searching for Alwyn appearances won’t find much. He kissed her hand in the car at one point and hugged her backstage after a performance of “Getaway Car” on tour. Swift also serenaded Alwyn with a song believed to be about him from her album Reputation. She sang the song “Call It What You Want” to him while he filmed her.
February 12, 2020: They’re spotted at the NME Awards.
Just before Valentine’s Day, Swift and Alwyn got close in the audience of the NME Awards in London. An audience member spotted Swift, sporting a two-tone Monse short suit, and Alwyn kiss and hug when she was announced the winner of Best Solo Act.
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February 23, 2020: They celebrate Alwyn’s birthday.
For Alwyn’s 29th birthday, Swift joined her beau, along with Ed Sheeran and his wife, Cherry Seaborn, for a celebration in London. The foursome and a few other friends hung out at restaurant Bob Bob Richard in Soho, per E! News. “They had fun drinking champagne at the table by pushing a button that says ‘Press for Champagne’ and having it immediately dispensed,” a restaurant source told E!. “They were there for several hours enjoying the night.”
March 24, 2020: We learn they’ve talked about marriage.
An Us Weeklysource gave an update on marriage talks between Alwyn and Swift. “[They] have talked about their future and marriage,” a source told the outlet. “They don’t have a set deadline in place, but they’re very much in love.” The source added, “Taylor considers Joe one of the only safe constants in her life. He has always been a huge support and stuck by her.”
April 29, 2020: The lovers finally share some details on social media.
Alwyn also shared a photo of himself drinking a large glass of white wine, which is similar to a May 7 post from Swift where she’s holding a glass of vino. “I love spending a full evening cooking a meal while sipping a glass of wine and listening to old music,” Swift even told People of her quarantine routine, via Billboard.
Instagram
May 13, 2020: More photos arise.
A couple weeks later, Alwyn delivered another quarantine update on Instagram. He posted several photos on his Instagram Story, including a few that showcase Swift’s cat, Benjamin.
Instagram
Instagram
Alwyn also shared a black-and-white photo of himself drinking coffee and glancing over at the camera. Fans have speculated that Swift took that photo, just as they’ve guessed Alwyn is quietly taking hers.
Instagram
July 23, 2020: folklore speculation begins.
Several months into Swift and Alwyn’s relatively quiet quarantine, Swift announced the surprise release of her eighth album, folklore. While fans awaited the 16-track release, social media was already speculating about which songs were inspired by Alwyn.
The first song that some lyrics were available for was “cardigan.” An excerpt of the track’s lyrics were found on the back of a new merch item on Swift’s website. “But I knew you / Playing hide-and-seek and / Giving me your weekends / I knew you / Your heartbeat on the High Line / Once in twenty lifetimes / And when I felt like I was an old cardigan / Under someone’s bed / You put me on and said / I was your favorite,” the romantic lyrics read, hinting at her longtime love with Alwyn.
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🎵 | Lyrics from “I knew you”
But I knew you Playing hide-and-seek and Giving me your weekends I knew you Your heartbeat on the High Line Once in twenty lifetimes And when I felt like I was an old cardigan Under someone’s bed You put me on and said I was your favorite
Another theory regarding Alwyn and folklore was that the song “betty” refers to Alwyn’s mother of the same name. Since then, it’s been reported that the track actually reveals the name of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ third daughter. Even more interesting: Some seemed to think that Swift’s album collaborator, William Bowery, is Alwyn himself. When announcing her album, Swift shared her co-writers and producers for folklore, but didn’t tag Bowery.Conspiracy theorists seemed to think Alwyn and Swift being spotted outside the Bowery Hotel in October 2016, coupled with the fact that Alwyn’s great-grandfather is named William, means he’s behind the pseudonym.
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🔍 | Fans are speculating who “William Bowery” (co-wrote two songs on “folklore”) is, as there are no registered or previously credited songwriters/producers under that name. “William Bowery” is also the only untagged co-write in Taylor’s post. pic.twitter.com/CvClhjf3ZL
— Taylor Swift Updates🧣 (@TSwiftinAsia) July 23, 2020
July 24, 2020: folklore is released.
With the release of folklore, answers to several questions about Alwyn’s musical inspiration were provided. On the track “invisible string,” Swift references a London yogurt shop that Alwyn worked in as a teen, as well as the dive bars of their early relationship and a trip for their third anniversary. Other songs, including bonus track “the lakes” and “peace” also allude to Swift and Alwyn’s relationship. An excerpt from “Peace,” for example:
All these people think love’s for show/But I would die for you in secret/The devil’s in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I could never give you peace? And you know that I’d swing with you for the fences/Sit with you in the trenches/Give you my wild, give you a child/Give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other/Family that I chose, now that I see your brother as my brother.
November 13, 2020: More lyrics are explained.
Swift confirmed that Alwyn helped inspire “peace” during a conversation with Paul McCartney for Rolling Stone. She said that the song “is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.”
When McCartney asked if Swift’s partner was able to “sympathize with that and understand,” she replied, “Oh, absolutely.” But Swift added that her relationship with Alwyn had changed her viewpoint on maintaining privacy in her personal life. “But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids,” she explained. “Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture—the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song ‘Peace’ is taking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? [McCartney’s designer daughter] Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could hope for under the circumstances.”
November 25, 2020: Swift confirms William Bowery’s identity.
Months after the release of folklore, Swift finally confirmed what her fans had long suspected: songwriter William Bowery is Alwyn. Speaking to the album’s producers, Jack Antonoff and The National’s Aaron Dessner, Swift revealed that “betty” and “exile” were co-written by Alwyn in the Disney+ film, folklore: the long pond studio sessions. “So, William Bowery is Joe…as we know,” she teased.
“Joe plays piano beautifully and he’s always just playing and making things up and kind of creating things. And ‘exile’ was crazy because Joe had written that entire piano part,” Swift explained, adding, “He was singing the Bon Iver part, the ‘I can see you standing honey, with his arms around your body, laughing but the joke’s not funny at all.’ He was just singing it. And I was entranced and asked if we could keep writing that one.” Swift said the fact that she and Alwyn are “really, really, really big Bon Iver fans” helped make the collaboration happen.
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Taylor Swift – exile (folklore: the long pond studio sessions | Disney+) ft. Bon Iver
As for “betty” Swift said she heard Alwyn singing “the entire fully formed chorus from another room.” She added, “And I was just like ‘Hello.’ It was a step that we would never have taken because, why would we have ever written a song together?”
It was the couple’s first time working together, something Swift said she and Alwyn approached cautiously. “So this was the first time we had a conversation where I came in and I was like, ‘Hey, this could be really weird, and we could hate this, so because we’re in quarantine and there’s nothing else going on, could we just try to see what it’s like if we write this song together?’” she recalled.
December 3, 2020: The engagement rumors heat up again.
In early December, Swift released a snippet of her re-recorded version of “Love Story,” which could be heard in a Match.com commercial featuring friend Ryan Reynolds. The new recording made waves as it was the first concrete indication that Swift was re-recording her entire catalogue owned by Scooter Braun. But it also sparked rumors about Swift and Alwyn potentially being engaged. Some fans noticed that the lyric “Baby, just say, ‘Yes’” might have been changed to “Baby, just said, ‘Yes.’” Several Swifties tweeted this theory in the hours after the song’s release. Multiple sources told E!, however, that the lyrics to the song had not changed.
While Entertainment Tonightwasn’t able to confirm engagement theories, a source said the couple does talk about “their future together.” The insider said, “Joe has provided such a great support system for Taylor. He is the one constant in her life that she can truly rely on. Joe has helped Taylor with her music, inspiring it. She is so grateful for him and in love with him. He is her cheerleader and rock. They have spoken about their future together, and they love celebrating the holidays together and are looking forward to that.”
ET’s source also spoke about how Alwyn is supporting Swift as she deals with her mother Andrea’s cancer diagnosis. “[Taylor] has been having a tough time with her mom’s health, but her mom is getting treatment and she and her family have been trying to stay optimistic,” the source said. “She has been focusing on her music and spending a lot of time with Joe. Taylor wanted to take some time to herself and her family this year, so in that regard, the quarantine and break has been positive for her.”
December 8, 2020: Swift shuts down engagement rumors.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Swift subtly shut down engagement rumors when she called Alwyn her “boyfriend.” Swift had been discussing who knew she was making folklore during the interview, conducted in early November: “The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team,” she said. “So that’s the smallest number of people I’ve ever had know about something.”
December 11, 2020: evermore appears.
About five months after dropping folklore, Swift announced the surprise release of her ninth album, evermore. When the 15-track record debuted at midnight, Swifties quickly began dissecting which songs could be about her relationship with Alwyn. At least three songs directly involve the actor: “champagne problems,” “coney island” and “evermore.”William Bowery, Alwyn’s songwriting pseudonym, is credited on those tracks. Beyond that, lyrics for “long story short” and “willow” seem to reference Swift’s long-lasting love with Alwyn.
But for those hoping Swift would confirm either an engagement or marriage to Alwyn, no such luck. The only song that references a proposal, “champagne problems,” appears to be about a fictional couple and ends with the woman declining the offer. Additionally, multiple sources confirmed to TMZ that the two are not secretly married either.
January 11, 2021: The couple is finally photographed again.
After 11 months of not being seen out together, Swift and Alwyn were photographed in London while on a walk with Alwyn’s mother, Elizabeth. The two were bundled up in winter gear. According to E!’s sources, Swift had been going back and forth between Nashville and London to spend time with her family and Alwyn’s family.
January 14, 2021: Swift hints she’s ready to bring the relationship into the public eye.
A source told Entertainment Tonight that Swift is ready to be more public with her and Alwyn’s relationship. “Taylor has gotten more and more comfortable being public with Joe and letting fans in on their romance in a way that she feels is still protecting it,” the source explained. “She loves Joe so much and, of course, is not trying to hide their relationship, but she prefers to keep specific details private.” Additionally, the source said the couple was in it for the long haul and sees a future together.
February 17, 2021: Swift reveals Alwyn helped her decide to speak out on political issues.
Swift wrote to Vanity Fair to discuss her documentary Miss Americana, and how she found her voice during the 2018 midterm elections—with the help of Alwyn.
Swift opened up about how her partner helped her become more comfortable speaking out about politics, in rare public remarks about him.
Swift wrote, “As a country musician, I was always told it’s better to stay out of [politics]…The Trump presidency forced me to lean in and educate myself. I found myself talking about government and the presidency and policy with my boyfriend [Joe Alwyn], who supported me in speaking out.”
May 11, 2021: Swift shouts out Alwyn (and many others) in a BRIT Awards speech.
Dressed in a Miu Miu crop top and skirt, Swift told the audience about the joys and challenges of creating her most recent albums: “The world changed, and I ended up putting out three albums instead, so making folklore and evermore was one of the most unique, cathartic, extraordinary experiences I’ve ever had. I would love the opportunity to thank the amazing creative people that I made those albums with. Thank you, Aaron Dessner, thank you Jack Antonoff, Joe [Alwyn, Swift’s boyfriend], Justin Vernon, the National, Marcus Mumford, Jon Low, Serban Ghenea, Laura Sisk, and HAIM. I want to thank my friends and family who know exactly who they are: Whose opinion of me never changed whether my stock was up or down.”
In the clip below, you can watch Swift thank Alwyn specifically (around the 2:20 mark), accented by a slight pause and a sweet smile.
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May 20, 2021: Marriage rumors continue to swirl.
In late May, Entertainment Tonight released a story confirming that Alwyn and Swift’s engagement rumor mill was alive and well.
“They grew closer than ever during the quarantine and she really trusts him,” a source told ET. “They’ve been continuing to be pretty low-key about their relationship to the outside world to continue to protect it…They’ve discussed future plans and Taylor can see herself marrying Joe one day.”
November 23, 2021: Swift visits Alwyn on set for latest movie.
Alwyn did not make an appearance at Swift’s Saturday Night Live musical guest spot in November, and it was because he was away on set filming a new movie. A source told E! that, “Taylor visited her boyfriend on the set of his movie.”
Shooting for The Stars at Noon began in October 2021, according to ScreenDaily. and Alwyn joined the cast to replace Taron Egerton, per Deadline, who “had to leave the project due to personal reasons.”
December 19, 2021: Swift likes Alwyn’s Instagram post from Panama.
On Sunday, December 19, Alwyn posted a series of photographs seemingly from the set of The Stars at Noon, and Swift liked it within minutes.
Instagram
Alwyn posed in the photos with director Claire Denis, who signaled she was in Panama as well with an image featuring the Panama flag.
February 9, 2022: Alwyn makes his first brief comment on Swift in years.
While discussing his upcoming project Conversations With Friends, Alwyn confirms his relationship with Swift is closed. “I think people can do what they want and makes them happy. I’m obviously happy in a monogamous relationship,” Alwyn said, referring to Swift, via E!.
February 18, 2022: After engagement rumors spread, a source says that Swift and Alwyn have spoken about their future.
Life & Stylereported on February 17 that Swift and Alwyn privately got engaged. Their reps didn’t comment on the rumor. A source spoke to Entertainment Tonight, not addressing engagement speculation but saying that the two prefer to keep their personal relationship private.
Swift and Alwyn “are very happy in their relationship,” the source said. “They’ve been enjoying their time as a couple. They have spoken about their future together and feel very secure about their relationship.”
The source added that they’ve mastered balancing their careers with their relationship. “They’re supportive of each other’s careers and of each other in general,” the source said. “Both of them have been busy with work and they completely understand how to balance hectic schedules and still make time for each other. It’s part of why their relationship really works.”
March 26, 2022: Swift and Alwyn attend a pre-Oscars party together.
In a very rare public sighting of the couple, Alwyn and Swift hit up the CAA’s pre-Oscars party at the San Vicente Bungalows. Two sources spoke to E! about what the two were like there. “Taylor was introducing Joe to many people around her,” the first source said. “She looked smitten and proud to be there with him.”
A second source said that Swift and Alwyn “were very coupley and cute and seemed happy to be there together. Taylor and Joe were together all night. He was leading her around introducing her to people, and Taylor also introducing people to Joe. When Joe was leading Taylor around, he held his arm around her back.”
April 2022: In a series of interviews to promote Conversations With Friends, Alwyn touches on Swift…very slightly, including engagement rumors.
On April 13, he told ELLE UKof why he doesn’t discuss their relationship in interviews: “It’s not really [because I] want to be guarded and private, it’s more a response to something else,” he said with a shrug. “We live in a culture that is so increasingly intrusive… The more you give—and frankly, even if you don’t give it—something will be taken.” And that’s all he offered about his personal life this time.
On April 19, to ELLE US, Alwyn said on the subject of writing more songs with Swift, “It’s not a plan of mine [to continue writing songs], no,” Alwyn said.
On April 20, he told WSJon the subject of engagement rumors: “If I had a pound for every time I think I’ve been told I’ve been engaged, then I’d have a lot of pound coins. “I mean, the truth is, if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t say, and if the answer was no, I wouldn’t say.”
On April 30 to The Guardian, Alwyn addressed why he keeps his relationship with Swift private again and how he felt about them winning a Grammy for Folklore.
On what it’s like dating Swift and the attention it garners, he said, “It’s not something I think about, unless I’m in situations like this, and someone says, ‘What’s it like?’ and I have to think about what to say about it. It’s just not for other people [our relationship]. And I don’t say that with aggression.”
“I don’t know how best to talk about it,” he continued. “I mean, I’m aware of people’s … of that size of interest, and that world existing. It’s just not something I particularly care about, or have much interest in feeding, I guess, because the more it’s fed, the more you are opening a gate for intrusion. I think that’s just my response to a culture that has this increasing expectation that everything is going to be given. If you don’t post about the way you make your coffee in the morning, or if you don’t let someone take a picture when you walk out of your front door, is that being private? I don’t know if it is. So I just don’t really feed that. If you and I were having a conversation, and having a shandy in my house, and it wasn’t being recorded, then, of course, other things would be said.” (Alwyn’s last remark echoed the one Swift made to The Guardian in 2019.)
And on winning that Grammy and writing songs with Swift, he said, “It wasn’t like, ‘It’s five o’clock, it’s time to try and write a song together.’ It came about from messing around on a piano, and singing badly, then being overheard, and being, like, ‘Let’s see what happens if we get to the end of it together.’ I mean fun is such a stupid word, but it was a lot of fun. And it was never a work thing, or a ‘Let’s try and do this because we’re going to put this out’ thing. It was just like baking sourdough in lockdown. The Grammy was obviously this ridiculous bonus.”
May 2022: Joe Alwyn says he hopes people “stop caring” about their relationship in new interview.
In a new interviews with GQ, Alwyn reiterated again why he chooses not to speak about his relationship, “I think because the precedent was set—that our choice is to be private and not feed that side of things—the more you do that, hopefully, the more that intrusiveness or intrigue drops off.”
June 2022: Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift are seen kissing during their vacation in the Bahamas.
TMZ shared photos of the couple kissing for the summer solstice while vacationing together in the Bahamas. The blurry images show them embracing while neck-deep in the blue ocean waters.
July 2022: Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift go out for a date in London.
On July 15, the couple went out on a rare public date in London, where they were photographed by the waiting paparazzi. They enjoyed some ice coffee and time in a public park together. Swift’s hand was briefly visible and there was no ring on her left hand, which some people took to mean that she is definitely not engaged.
August 2022: Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift are photographed on a dinner date in New York City ahead of the MTV VMAs.
Swift and Alwyn signaled their relationship is going strong nearly six years in when the two were photographed grabbing dinner with Swift’s longtime friend Lena Dunham during the last week of August. The three dined at Manhattan private members club Casa Cipriani, and once again, Swift appeared without any engagement ring on her left finger, debunking engagement rumors once more.
October 2022: Swift shared that one of her songs is all about keeping her relationship with Alwyn private.
Swift has been discussing the tracks on her upcoming album Midnights and track one, “Lavender Haze,” is inspired by her relationship with Alwyn — and also the series Mad Men.
“I happened upon the phrase ‘Lavender Haze’ when I was watching Mad Men,” the musical artist explained in a post on Instagram. “I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool, and it turns out that it’s a common phrase used in the ’50s where they would describe being in love…If you were in the lavender haze, then that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful.”
Swift continued, “I guess theoretically, when you’re in the lavender haze, you’ll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud. I think a lot of people have to deal with this now, not just ‘public figures’, because we live in the era of social media. If the world finds out that you’re in love with somebody, they’re going to weigh in on it.”
But, specifically, Swift and Alwyn have to deal with it a lot, and she added, “We’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. This song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”
November 2022: Joe Alwyn shares adorable picture of home life with Swift.
On Friday, November 25, Alwyn shared photo on his Instagram Stories of what appears to be his own ankle, with a black and white kitty cat snuggled up to it. The cat reportedly belongs to Taylor Swift and his name is Benjamin.
Joe Alwyn//Instagram
The rest of his Stories that day were from different places, so it may have been taken at another time. However, it was Thanksgiving weekend, the perfect time to stay in bed with the cat and your partner.
Molly Mulshine is a writer and performer living in New York City by way of the Jersey Shore.
Savannah Walsh is an Editorial Fellow at ELLE.com.
Lauren Puckett-Pope is an associate editor at ELLE, where she covers film, TV, books and fashion.
To further prove that every celebrity is ultimately just in love with themselves, Sabrina Carpenter has released a video for her new single from emails i can’t send, “nonsense.” Which is sure to get a playlist boost from her recent photo appearance—the one at the American Music Awards where she was pictured sandwiched between two very tall, FUPA-parading women—Taylor Swift and GAYLE (who will open for Swift during select dates of the already controversial Eras Tour). But even without their help, “nonsense” was a “pop hit’ (as Carpenter refers to it in the song) already.
A large part of that has to do with something of an Ariana Grande-esque formula (and the way Carpenter “hits the octave”). The one she implemented so well during her thank u, next cycle. An album that was better-promoted with the release of a video for “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” the same day as the record came out. Showing off her sense of humor at a time when she had just ended her engagement with Pete “Rebound” Davidson, maybe there was a jocular tone to the idea that Grande would try lesbianism next (she is, after all, into dabbling—if her blackfishing is an indication).
So it is that the big “plot twist” of the video is that she’s been more interested in her pony-tailed lookalike, played by Ariel Yasmine, the entire time. The dalliance commences at a club (how very 2000s) wherein Yasmine and her boyfriend, played by Riverdale’s Charles Melton, invite Grande (sporting a blonde coif that’s more in keeping with her Sweetener era) to join them in their dance. This being Los Angeles, Grande isn’t averse to a one-night throuple scenario. And yet, maybe it isn’t just one night. For how else would a blonde-haired Ariana have had time to pull a single white (yes, white) female by emulating Yasmine’s look (itself emulating Ariana’s during that period)? Maybe she was invited to a party at their house on another night after meeting them at the club… or did she go home and dye her hair before showing up at the party—who knows? But the timeline doesn’t feel linear. The point is, Ari has become narcissistically attracted to someone who looks just like her. Her doppelgänger, if you will (a word that often doubles for “alter ego”—usually embodying a darker [or at least slightly more irreverent] persona).
Carpenter decides to take that concept one step further in the Danica Kleinknecht-directed video for “nonsense” by enlisting none other than herself (as opposed to a “mere” lookalike) to play the alter ego. She goes further still by making that alter ego male instead of female. And then there is the context of this duo’s encounter. Despite being twenty-three (as Olivia Rodrigo was so fond of pointing out her “older” age in “drivers license”), there is a more teenaged (or college, at the latest) sensibility to the concept of the setting in lieu of Grande’s more “adult” nightclub backdrop, followed by a lavish house in the Hills. Conversely, in the opening scenes of “nonsense,” we see Carpenter preparing for a house party (seemingly one that she’s throwing) that the boy version of herself, outfitted with a trucker hat that says “Dipshit” on it, also attends. Because, yes, like Ari before her, Carpenter only really has eyes for, well, herself. Something Lady Gaga additionally proved when she showcased her own male alter ego, Jo Calderone.
Whether Carpenter named her “drag king” is unknown, but it’s quite apparent she’s very attracted to him. Even though he comes off like an even worse version of Amanda Bynes doing drag in She’s The Man. Yet somehow, he has the appearance of someone much younger than Carpenter, who he spots from across the room as he exhales a cloud of smoke from his vape.
It doesn’t take long for the two to find a “quiet corner” amid the red Solo cups and impromptu karaoke sessions. Because, really, who hasn’t been attracted to a male or female version of themselves (see: Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow in the late 90s)? As the two get increasingly drunk, interspersed scenes of Carpenter dancing around and looking at herself in the mirror add to the overall narcissistic motif that Grande also showed us with just as little subtlety in Hannah Lux Davis’ visuals for “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.”
Carpenter even sounds like Grande in general—and then very specifically… closing “nonsense” with some spoken dialogue that reminds one of Ari’s back-and-forth with Victoria Monét at the end of “monopoly.” Both moments feature gigglingly-stated lines. In Carpenter’s case, it’s the brush-off that this song will never make the cut for the album, laughing, “That one’s not gonna make it.”
Luckily for Carpenter’s fans (and even Grande’s), it did. For it’s just the sort of gushing love song that might prompt one to make out with their reflection in the vanity. Self-love (and sologamy), after all, has never been chicer. Even if shown in the self-deprecating way that Taylor Swift does it with her alter ego in the video for “Anti-Hero.” In which she “sarcastically” remarks, incidentally, on her self-obsession via the lyrics, “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism?” In contrast to Grande and Carpenter, Swift appears to more openly admit to it with her take on this ostensible “doppelgänger” trend in music videos (regardless of whether that double is a male or female version of oneself).
Is Searcher Clade the most millennial dad in all of animated moviedom? He has that telltale hipster beard. A sensitive voice sorta like Jake Gyllenhaal. And he feeds his kid avocado toast, with an egg on top.
Oh wait, that IS Gyllenhaal in “Strange World,” Disney’s pleasantly entertaining, gorgeously rendered but slightly heavy-handed meditation on climate change and father-son dynamics. The actor charmingly voices a character drawn to look so much like him, you almost expect an animated Swiftie to come around, asking for that infamous scarf back. (Sorry, but it’s been a Taylor Swift kind of month.)
The very name “Searcher” sounds vaguely millennial, too, but actually it’s a reference to both the blessing and the curse of the Clade family, a storied clan of explorers. In a prologue, we see the young Searcher set out on a family expedition led by his dad, burly Jaeger Clade, whose life goal is to find what’s beyond the forbidding mountains that ring their homeland, Avalonia. But before they get there, young Searcher discovers something shocking.
It’s a group of plants that seem to be lit up, glowing from an unseen energy. What is this magical crop? Searcher argues that they need to bring it back to Avalonia, where it could serve many uses. But Jaeger (voiced with appropriate gruffness by Dennis Quaid) refuses to turn back. He tosses his young son his compass and continues by himself. Twenty-five years go by.
Wait, what? Dad stays away for 25 years? This is truly deficient parenting, and it’s no wonder that when grownup Searcher has his own son, Ethan (an adorable character sweetly voiced by Jaboukie Young-White), he’s a helicopter parent, doting on the boy a bit too much. Grandpa is still lionized in town with a large statue attesting to his exploits. But Searcher tells Ethan that despite his fame, Grandpa was a majorly absentee dad.
Let’s pause to consider the themes at play. We have climate change issues in the form of “pando,” the crucial energy source that Searcher now farms and has modernized Avalonia. And we have three generations of men: the very different Jaeger and Searcher, a boomer and a millennial if you will, and then young Ethan, trying to find his way. There’s much dialogue here about breaking from expectations to forge your own path.
There’s also the not-insignificant fact that Ethan has a same-sex crush. This has led some to call the film the first Disney animated gay teen romance. That’s a bit of a stretch, because this budding romance is a side plot, referred to by a number of characters, but by no means a major topic of discussion.
But maybe that’s the point — if it’s not a major plot point, nor is it a sneeze-and-you-miss it moment like, for example, that quick glance in “Beauty and the Beast” in 2017 that was heralded as the first Disney “gay moment.” It’s just a given that when Ethan talks about his crush, he’s talking about Diazo, a boy, and nobody, not his parents nor his crusty old granddad, bats an eyelid. It’s also refreshing that the Clades are a biracial family, and that too, is not discussed.
The movie, it must be said, is definitely about men, despite the welcome but underused presences of Gabrielle Union as Searcher’s wife, Meridian — a fearless pilot — and Lucy Liu as Callisto, president of Avalonia, It is Callisto who gets things moving, plot-wise, when she arrives at Searcher’s front door in her pando-powered airship with a stark warning: the pando crop is failing. Everywhere. Searcher must come help. Now.
Reluctantly, the homebody Searcher hops aboard. Someone on the ship asks him immediately if he can, like, forge an autograph from his more-famous dad. Aargh. In any case, the ship travels down to the roots that power pando. Meanwhile, Searcher soon discovers that Ethan has stowed away on the ship, eager for his own adventure (and more Jaeger-like than Searcher would want to admit). Meridian has followed, and now they’re on a family trip.
And who should turn up but Jaeger himself? He has some explaining to do. Turns out he got stuck in a stunning, scary, strange underworld. And it’s beautiful. Directors Don Hall and Qui Nguyen have created a stunning universe of psychedelic colors and creatures, most memorably in hues of deep pinks and purples. Wondrous creatures emerge, and also one of the cutest little blobs you’ve ever seen, the aptly named Splat, who befriends Ethan.
Will the family discover what’s imperiling pando, and fix it in time to save Avalonia? Will Jaeger and Searcher come to a better understanding of each other? Will Ethan follow his own path?
Well, there’s not a lot of mystery here, nor nuance to the plot. Energies have been focused on the visuals, and they make the experience worthwhile. That, and an appealing collection of human characters that look a lot more like the real world than usually seen in these films. And that’s not strange at all. That’s progress.
“Strange World,” a Walt Disney Studios release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America “for action/peril and some thematic elements.” Running time: 102 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
MPAA definition of PG: Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
In a bipartisan response to Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift ticket sale fiasco, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced Tuesday that a Senate subcommittee will hold a hearing to appraise the lack of competition in the ticketing industry.
The hearing, which has not yet been scheduled, will take place before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, which Klobuchar chairs and Lee serves on as a ranking member. The announcement comes a week after Ticketmaster, which controls the vast majority of ticket sales in the U.S., came under immense scrutiny for bungling its highly anticipated ticket sale for Swift’s upcoming stadium tour.
“Last week, the competition problem in ticketing markets was made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase concert tickets,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “The high fees, site disruptions and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve.”
Lee added that “American consumers deserve the benefit of competition in every market, from grocery chains to concert venues,” and noted the importance of supporting “an entertainment industry already struggling to recover from pandemic lockdowns.”
In a statement responding to news of the forthcoming hearing, Ticketmaster defended itself, saying it “has a significant share of the primary ticketing services market because of the large gap that exists between the quality of the Ticketmaster system and the next best primary ticketing system.”
Much of the criticism of Ticketmaster over the past week focused on its 2010 merger with Live Nation, which led to the company controlling an estimated 70% of the ticketing market. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was among the first prominent voices to call out the issue amid the Swift ticket sale frenzy last Tuesday, tweeting: “Ticketmaster is a monopoly, [its] merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be [reined] in. Break them up.”
Critics say the company’s apparent monopoly allowed it to get away with providing a subpar service rife with technical glitches that proved unable to meet customer demand. Many people frustrated by last week’s ticket-buying ordeal emphasized that Ticketmaster had approved a set number of customers to access Tuesday’s sale, and thus should have been adequately prepared to meet what it later called a “historically unprecedented demand.”
Instead, many of those customers were met with various error messages and hourslong wait times when they tried to make their purchases. Fans who couldn’t get through on Tuesday were let down again when Ticketmaster outright canceled its scheduled sale of more tickets later in the week.
Swift, one of the most popular recording artists of all time, eventually weighed in on the mess, telling fans she was disappointed in Ticketmaster, too.
“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,” she said of the company. “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.”
Is Searcher Clade the most millennial dad in all of animated moviedom? He has that telltale hipster beard. A sensitive voice sorta like Jake Gyllenhaal. And he feeds his kid avocado toast, with an egg on top.
Oh wait, that IS Gyllenhaal in “Strange World,” Disney’s pleasantly entertaining, gorgeously rendered but slightly heavy-handed meditation on climate change and father-son dynamics. The actor charmingly voices a character drawn to look so much like him, you almost expect an animated Swiftie to come around, asking for that infamous scarf back. (Sorry, but it’s been a Taylor Swift kind of month.)
The very name “Searcher” sounds vaguely millennial, too, but actually it’s a reference to both the blessing and the curse of the Clade family, a storied clan of explorers. In a prologue, we see the young Searcher set out on a family expedition led by his dad, burly Jaeger Clade, whose life goal is to find what’s beyond the forbidding mountains that ring their homeland, Avalonia. But before they get there, young Searcher discovers something shocking.
It’s a group of plants that seem to be lit up, glowing from an unseen energy. What is this magical crop? Searcher argues that they need to bring it back to Avalonia, where it could serve many uses. But Jaeger (voiced with appropriate gruffness by Dennis Quaid) refuses to turn back. He tosses his young son his compass and continues by himself. Twenty-five years go by.
Wait, what? Dad stays away for 25 years? This is truly deficient parenting, and it’s no wonder that when grownup Searcher has his own son, Ethan (an adorable character sweetly voiced by Jaboukie Young-White), he’s a helicopter parent, doting on the boy a bit too much. Grandpa is still lionized in town with a large statue attesting to his exploits. But Searcher tells Ethan that despite his fame, Grandpa was a majorly absentee dad.
Let’s pause to consider the themes at play. We have climate change issues in the form of “pando,” the crucial energy source that Searcher now farms and has modernized Avalonia. And we have three generations of men: the very different Jaeger and Searcher, a boomer and a millennial if you will, and then young Ethan, trying to find his way. There’s much dialogue here about breaking from expectations to forge your own path.
There’s also the not-insignificant fact that Ethan has a same-sex crush. This has led some to call the film the first Disney animated gay teen romance. That’s a bit of a stretch, because this budding romance is a side plot, referred to by a number of characters, but by no means a major topic of discussion.
But maybe that’s the point — if it’s not a major plot point, nor is it a sneeze-and-you-miss it moment like, for example, that quick glance in “Beauty and the Beast” in 2017 that was heralded as the first Disney “gay moment.” It’s just a given that when Ethan talks about his crush, he’s talking about Diazo, a boy, and nobody, not his parents nor his crusty old granddad, bats an eyelid. It’s also refreshing that the Clades are a biracial family, and that too, is not discussed.
The movie, it must be said, is definitely about men, despite the welcome but underused presences of Gabrielle Union as Searcher’s wife, Meridian — a fearless pilot — and Lucy Liu as Callisto, president of Avalonia, It is Callisto who gets things moving, plot-wise, when she arrives at Searcher’s front door in her pando-powered airship with a stark warning: the pando crop is failing. Everywhere. Searcher must come help. Now.
Reluctantly, the homebody Searcher hops aboard. Someone on the ship asks him immediately if he can, like, forge an autograph from his more-famous dad. Aargh. In any case, the ship travels down to the roots that power pando. Meanwhile, Searcher soon discovers that Ethan has stowed away on the ship, eager for his own adventure (and more Jaeger-like than Searcher would want to admit). Meridian has followed, and now they’re on a family trip.
And who should turn up but Jaeger himself? He has some explaining to do. Turns out he got stuck in a stunning, scary, strange underworld. And it’s beautiful. Directors Don Hall and Qui Nguyen have created a stunning universe of psychedelic colors and creatures, most memorably in hues of deep pinks and purples. Wondrous creatures emerge, and also one of the cutest little blobs you’ve ever seen, the aptly named Splat, who befriends Ethan.
Will the family discover what’s imperiling pando, and fix it in time to save Avalonia? Will Jaeger and Searcher come to a better understanding of each other? Will Ethan follow his own path?
Well, there’s not a lot of mystery here, nor nuance to the plot. Energies have been focused on the visuals, and they make the experience worthwhile. That, and an appealing collection of human characters that look a lot more like the real world than usually seen in these films. And that’s not strange at all. That’s progress.
“Strange World,” a Walt Disney Studios release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America “for action/peril and some thematic elements.” Running time: 102 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
MPAA definition of PG: Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
Some of Taylor Swift’s fans want you to know three things: They’re not still 16, they have careers and resources and, right now, they’re angry. That’s a powerful political motivator, researchers say.
Ticketmaster apologized but the bad blood had already been sowed. And now fans — and politicians — have started acting on it.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez directed Swifties to where they could make U.S. Department of Justice complaints. Multiple state attorneys general — including in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, key states in Swift’s origin story — have announced investigations.
Stephanie Aly, a New York-based professional who has worked on community organizing for progressive politics, for years has thought mobilizing fandoms for social progress could be beneficial.
“Fandoms are natural organizers,” said the 33-year-old Swiftie. “If you find the right issues and you activate them and engage them then you can effect real change.”
In 2020, for instance, K-pop fans organized to back the Black Lives Matter movement and sought to inflate registration for a Donald Trump rally. Aly and Swifties from different industries — law, public relations, cybersecurity and more — have joined forces to create Vigilante Legal, a group targeting Ticketmaster by creating email templates to petition attorneys general and providing antitrust information. Thousands have expressed interest in helping or learning more.
“The level of anger that you’ve just seen in the country around this issue is astounding,” said Jean Sinzdak, associate director for the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “People are really sharing their feelings about that and building a movement about that online, which I really think is quite fascinating. It’s certainly an opportunity to engage people politically. Whether it lasts is hard to say, but it certainly feels like a real opportunity.”
In one way, said Sinzdak, this is giving Swift’s large following of younger people a direct line to seeing how policy takes shape. It’s also targeting a demographic that is seldom courted by politicians during election season.
“Nobody goes out and thinks, ‘Let’s target young women,’” said Gwen Nisbett, a University of North Texas professor who researches the intersection of political engagement and pop culture. “Be it about abortion or student loans, that age group is super mobilized and young women are super mobilized.”
Fan culture and community has boosted that tendency toward mobilization. Nisbett was studying parasocial relationships — when fans have strong one-way relationships with celebrities — in 2018, when the previously apolitical Swift posted an endorsement of Democratic candidates to social media. Nisbett found that while such posts may not determine fans’ votes, they still led to the increased likelihood fans would look for more information about voting — and actually vote.
For the record: AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of the U.S. electorate, showed about a third of Tennessee voters in 2018 said they had a favorable opinion of Swift, and among them, a large majority — about 7 in 10 — backed Democrat Phil Bredesen in the Senate contest. That was in clear contrast to the roughly third of voters who had an unfavorable opinion of Swift and overwhelmingly backed Republican Marsha Blackburn.
For Swifties, the ire for Ticketmaster is not just about a ticket: “It’s the fact that you can’t participate in your community and your fandom and it’s part of your identity,” Nisbett said.
This isn’t even the first time a fandom or an artist has targeted Ticketmaster. Pearl Jam took aim at the company in 1994, although the Justice Department ultimately declined to bring a case. More recently, Bruce Springsteen fans were enraged over high ticket costs because of the platform’s dynamic pricing system.
“It’s not just about getting vengeance for Swifties. It’s not about getting an extra million Taylor Swift fans tickets, or all of us going to a secret session,” said Jordan Burger, 28, who is using his law background to help the cause. “It’s about fundamental equality. And when you have a monopolist like that, it’s just so representative of the class structure of a society where there isn’t equality anymore, there isn’t fairness.”
The sheer power and size of Swift’s fandom has spurred conversations about economic inequality, merely symbolized by Ticketmaster.
Aly noted that quite a few of the members of the group did get tickets; the issue is is bigger than Ticketmaster, she said.
“We’ve gotten some feedback that, ‘This is too big, let the government handle it.’ Have you seen the U.S. government? The government only functions when the people push it to and when the people demand that it function and the people are involved,” she said. “Even when something seems too big to fail or too powerful to fail, there are always enough of us to make a difference. Your involvement may be the thing that pushes it over the edge that forces the government to act.”
Aly says many grown-up Swifties have 10-15 years’ experience of being bullied for liking the singer — but what fans have in mind might be better than revenge.
“We have thick skin and nothing to lose, really,” Aly said.
___
Associated Press journalist Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report from Washington. Brooke Schultz is a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Taylor Swift accepts the Artist of the Year award onstage during the 2022 American Music Awards at Microsoft Theater on November 20, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Kevin Winter | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Taylor Swift’s tour promoter is shifting blame for the botched “Eras” ticket sale squarely onto Ticketmaster, potentially fueling even more concerns about the Live Nation-owned ticket seller’s dominant role in the industry.
AEG Presents, the company in charge of handling Swift’s upcoming tour, has rejected claims made by Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s largest shareholder, Liberty Media, that the promoter chose to work with the ticketing site.
“Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on the ‘Eras’ tour required us to ticket through their system,” AEG said in a statement to CNBC. “We didn’t have a choice.”
Live Nation didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
A coalition of activists called “Break Up Ticketmaster” has claimed that because Live Nation controls 70% of the ticketing and live event venues market, performers and their representatives have little choice of where to sell their tickets. They have called on the Department of Justice to investigate Ticketmaster and Live Nation for “hiking up ticket prices” and “charging rip-off junk fees.”
The 2022 American Music Awards have arrived! The hottest acts in music reunited for the annual celebration at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, and a few big names are set to walk away with the night’s biggest honors.
Going into this year’s show, reigning Favorite Male Latin Artist Bad Bunny led the pack with a whopping eight nominations! Meanwhile, superstars Beyoncé and Taylor Swift held the honor of being the most nominated female artists this year, with six nods each, while Adele, Harry Styles, and The Weeknd follow close behind with five a piece.
So who came out victorious and who wound up empty-handed? Check out the full list of winners below, which will be updated throughout the night in bold.
ARTIST OF THE YEAR Adele Bad Bunny Beyoncé Drake Harry Styles Taylor Swift — **WINNER! The Weeknd
NEW ARTIST OF THE YEAR Dove Cameron — **WINNER! GAYLE Latto Måneskin Steve Lacy
COLLABORATION OF THE YEAR Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero, Stephanie Beatriz & Encanto Cast “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” Elton John & Dua Lipa “Cold Heart – PNAU Remix” — **WINNER! Future ft. Drake & Tems “WAIT FOR U” Lil Nas X ft. Jack Harlow “INDUSTRY BABY” The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber “STAY”
FAVORITE TOURING ARTIST Bad Bunny Coldplay — **WINNER! Ed Sheeran Elton John The Rolling Stones
FAVORITE MUSIC VIDEO Adele “Easy On Me” Bad Bunny ft. Chencho Corleone “Me Porto Bonito” Harry Styles “As It Was” Lil Nas X ft. Jack Harlow “INDUSTRY BABY” Taylor Swift “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” — **WINNER!
FAVORITE MALE POP ARTIST Bad Bunny Drake Ed Sheeran Harry Styles — **WINNER! The Weeknd
FAVORITE FEMALE POP ARTIST Adele Beyoncé Doja Cat Lizzo Taylor Swift — **WINNER!
FAVORITE POP DUO OR GROUP BTS — **WINNER! Coldplay Imagine Dragons Måneskin OneRepublic
FAVORITE POP ALBUM Adele, 30 Bad Bunny, Un Verano Sin Ti Beyoncé, Renaissance Harry Styles, Harry’s House Taylor Swift, Red (Taylor’s Version) — **WINNER! The Weeknd, Dawn FM
FAVORITE POP SONG Adele, “Easy On Me” Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero, Stephanie Beatriz & Encanto Cast, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” Harry Styles, “As It Was” — **WINNER! Lizzo, “About Damn Time” The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber, “STAY”
FAVORITE MALE COUNTRY ARTIST Chris Stapleton Cody Johnson Luke Combs Morgan Wallen — **WINNER! Walker Hayes
FAVORITE FEMALE COUNTRY ARTIST Carrie Underwood Lainey Wilson Maren Morris Miranda Lambert Taylor Swift — **WINNER!
FAVORITE COUNTRY DUO OR GROUP Dan + Shay — **WINNER! Lady A Old Dominion Parmalee Zac Brown Band
FAVORITE COUNTRY ALBUM Carrie Underwood, Denim & Rhinestones Luke Combs, Growin’ Up Cody Johnson, Human: The Double Album Taylor Swift, Red (Taylor’s Version) — **WINNER! Walker Hayes, Country Stuff: The Album
FAVORITE COUNTRY SONG Chris Stapleton, “You Should Probably Leave” Cody Johnson, “’Til You Can’t” Dustin Lynch ft. MacKenzie Porter, “Thinking ‘Bout You” Jordan Davis ft. Luke Bryan, “Buy Dirt” Morgan Wallen, “Wasted on You” — **WINNER!
FAVORITE MALE HIP-HOP ARTIST Drake Future Kendrick Lamar — **WINNER! Lil Baby Lil Durk
FAVORITE FEMALE HIP-HOP ARTIST Cardi B GloRilla Latto Megan Thee Stallion Nicki Minaj — **WINNER!
FAVORITE HIP-HOP ALBUM Future, I NEVER LIKED YOU Gunna, DS4EVER Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers — **WINNER! Lil Durk, 7220 Polo G, Hall of Fame 2.0
FAVORITE HIP-HOP SONG Future ft. Drake & Tems “WAIT FOR U” — **WINNER! Jack Harlow “First Class” Kodak Black “Super Gremlin” Latto “Big Energy” Lil Nas X ft. Jack Harlow “INDUSTRY BABY”
FAVORITE MALE R&B ARTIST Brent Faiyaz Chris Brown — **WINNER! GIVĒON Lucky Daye The Weeknd
FAVORITE FEMALE R&B ARTIST Beyoncé — **WINNER! Doja Cat Muni Long Summer Walker SZA
FAVORITE R&B ALBUM Beyoncé, Renaissance — **WINNER! Drake, Honestly, Nevermind Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars & Anderson .Paak), An Evening with Silk Sonic Summer Walker, Still Over It The Weeknd, Dawn FM
FAVORITE R&B SONG Beyoncé, “BREAK MY SOUL” Muni Long, “Hrs And Hrs” Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars & Anderson .Paak), “Smokin Out The Window” SZA, “I Hate U” Wizkid ft. Tems, “Essence”
FAVORITE MALE LATIN ARTIST Bad Bunny — **WINNER! Farruko J Balvin Jhayco Rauw Alejandro
FAVORITE FEMALE LATIN ARTIST Anitta — **WINNER! Becky G Kali Uchis KAROL G ROSALÍA
FAVORITE LATIN DUO OR GROUP Banda MS de Sergio Lizárraga Calibre 50 Eslabon Armado Grupo Firme Yahritza Y Su Esencia — **WINNER!
FAVORITE LATIN ALBUM Bad Bunny, Un Verano Sin Ti — **WINNER! Farruko, La 167 J Balvin, JOSE Rauw Alejandro, Vice Versa ROSALÍA, MOTOMAMI
FAVORITE LATIN SONG Bad Bunny ft. Chencho Corleone, “Me Porto Bonito” Becky G x KAROL G, “MAMIII” KAROL G, “PROVENZA” Rauw Alejandro, “Todo de Ti” Sebastián Yatra, “Dos Oruguitas” — **WINNER!
FAVORITE ROCK ARTIST Imagine Dragons Machine Gun Kelly — **WINNER! Måneskin Red Hot Chili Peppers The Lumineers
FAVORITE ROCK SONG **New** Foo Fighters, “Love Dies Young” Imagine Dragons x JID, “Enemy” Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” Måneskin, “Beggin’” — **WINNER! Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Black Summer”
FAVORITE ROCK ALBUM **New** Coldplay, Music of the Spheres Ghost, Impera — **WINNER! Imagine Dragons, Mercury – Act 1 Machine Gun Kelly, mainstream sellout Red Hot Chili Peppers, Unlimited Love
FAVORITE INSPIRATIONAL ARTIST Anne Wilson for KING & COUNTRY — **WINNER! Katy Nichole Matthew West Phil Wickham
FAVORITE GOSPEL ARTIST CeCe Winans DOE E. Dewey Smith Maverick City Music Tamela Mann — **WINNER!
FAVORITE DANCE/ELECTRONIC ARTIST Diplo Marshmello — **WINNER! Swedish House Mafia The Chainsmokers Tiësto
FAVORITE SOUNDTRACK ELVIS — **WINNER! Encanto Sing 2 Stranger Things: Soundtrack from the Netflix Series, Season 4 Top Gun: Maverick
FAVORITE AFROBEATS ARTIST **New** Burna Boy CKay Fireboy DML Tems Wizkid — **WINNER!
FAVORITE K-POP ARTIST **New** BLACKPINK BTS SEVENTEEN TOMORROW X TOGETHER TWICE
As Taylor Swift reckons yet again with having the kind of clout that could invoke the swarming of various attorneys general onto Live Nation and Ticketmaster, another deeper issue has come to the surface in the wake of The Eras Tour presale. That issue being, well, presales are founded on the very principle that has wrought so much havoc in this society: elitism. The idea that if you assert yourself as being some kind of “VIP” by spending the money to be as such (whether it’s through paying to exist within a fan club or having an American Express), you can get whatever you want. Money buys everything. That’s the “benefit” of capitalism. Especially for pop stars who know the power of their worth to fans in a parasocial relationship with them. No one knows that worth better than Swift.
Maybe that’s why she included in her statement on the matter in the aftermath, “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.” Nonetheless, Swift and other performers are left with little choice but to rely on Ticketmaster for their concert ticket sales. After all, the “entity” and its parent company, Live Nation, control roughly seventy percent of the live ticketing marketplace. Something that might have been prevented twelve years ago upon the sealing of the merger, but that no one appeared too bothered by at the time. Nor has the notion of “presales” seemed to vex any ticket buyers over the years. Instead, music enthusiasts ostensibly relish the opportunity to jump ahead in the proverbial queue. It gives them a delight to know that they’re “beating” other fans to some worshipping-in-person punch.
As Ticketmaster “politely” describes the concept of a presale, they’re “usually sold from a separate allocation of seats, which may not be the same as the tickets being released to the general public.” This implies, of course, that a bulk of objectively “better” tickets are made available to those “elite” ones. Or, at least, the ones who believe in the American concept that class can be bought (something the British are only slowly coming around to). In the case of Swift’s presale, it’s not about having an AmEx card, but a Capital One card. For Swift, like any adept capitalist, is obliged to cross-promote her endorsement deal with said credit card company. And it was this demographic of Capital One cardholders for whom the second wave of presale tickets catered to as Ticketmaster tried again to lead more casual fans down a primrose path to “hell.” Hell to “First World” ilk inferring that they have to stare at a screen and watch the clock count down the minutes as they “wait in line” for their turn to buy.
Considering the second presale was meant to commence on Tuesday, November 15th, but was pushed back to Wednesday, it’s clear Ticketmaster persisted in its ill-preparedness and incompetence… once again. So much, in fact, that the ticket sale intended for the general public had to be cancelled. Who needs “average” buyers anyway, when one can sell millions of tickets to “special” people without them? And yet, perhaps there wouldn’t be false ideas of “specialness” if presales were abolished altogether. If everyone was “allowed” the same opportunity to purchase concert tickets at the same time, surely the initial bum-rush wouldn’t be so intense as a result of everyone viewing these lots of tickets as inherently better by sheer virtue of being able to choose from them “first.”
To this end, juggernauts like Ticketmaster are possibly only feeding into what the people “want.” Or rather, what they want to believe about themselves. That they are somehow more superior to others—a more “diehard” fan, etc.—and should be given the divine right to access the best seats before the hoi polloi. By this logic, one could ask if Ticketmaster can fully be blamed for driving the bloodlust for presales. The answer is, if you don’t build it, they will not come. In short, permitting 3.5 million customers to register for the presale hardly makes anyone feel “special” regarding their preliminary access to tickets. And, the way the presale went, it only served to remind that it is forever people with “real” influence who can actually get what they want easily.
What’s more, Swift is no stranger to invoking political imbroglios, which began when she finally decided to grow a political voice and speak out against the election of Marsha Blackburn in October of 2018, when the U.S. was faced with yet another extremely close midterm election. Evidencing her power to make website usage surge, in the two days after Swift posted about the importance of registering to vote, vote.org saw a spike of 102,000 new voters registering (seventy percent of whom were under the age of twenty-five). And yes, they knew it was attributable to Swift telling her hundreds of millions of followers, “So many intelligent, thoughtful, self-possessed people have turned eighteen in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count. But first you need to register, which is quick and easy to do. October 9th is the LAST DAY to register to vote in the state of TN. Go to vote.org and you can find all the info. Happy Voting!” Cue the onslaught of registering voters. But hundreds of thousands are nothing compared to millions, which, evidently, even the strongest of interfaces can’t withstand.
With Swift’s popularity manifested anew amid The Eras Tour presale, a fresh spotlight was placed on something political. She being the catalyst for politicians to weigh in on a pop cultural matter (even though government and pop culture have been enmeshed for quite some time—*cough cough* Marilyn and JFK). Specifically, the inability of customers to go elsewhere for their tickets making it all the more apparent in this particular scenario that Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with Live Nation constitutes a monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. The insanity of trying to secure a presale seat prompted Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar to remark, “When there is no competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.” And yes, what a “tragic” consequence—not being able to attend a little stadium concert.
Even the presidential level of government weighed in via a quote that Joe Biden said earlier this year. One dredged up by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who reminded, “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.” Does anyone have the heart to tell Biden that capitalism is full-stop exploitation no matter what? Oh well. There’s no stopping this system until it implodes anyway—and Swift’s presale tickets were yet another harbinger of that inevitable implosion. The patent unsustainability of “everyone” (read: a lotta white folks who listen to Swift) wanting to be “elite.”
This largely due to the American dream still being peddled—the one that insists each person can have a piece of the “pie.” Just not the Taylor pie. Or any other, for that matter. Because the greatest lie ever sold is that “everyone” can be “elite” when the entire reason the “genuine” elite (a.k.a. those with generational wealth) relish being such is because no one else will actually be “let in.” Ergo making the Ticketmaster fiasco a prime example of middle-class aims turning out to be too relatively lofty.
Swift might do her best to shirk any blame (what with having a song called “Don’t Blame Me” and only admitting to being “the problem” in “Anti-Hero”), but surely she must have some say in kiboshing such Ticketmaster disclaimers as, “Ticket prices may fluctuate, based on demand, at any time.” For this is the woman who can bring down (or at least bring into question) entire institutions with a single post. Even so, Swift herself isn’t immune to the temptations of “more money,” with Forbes commenting of the ticket sale setup, “Swift could have put Swifties’ names on the concert tickets, set a fair price and turned off the resale market… she did not do this because it would not ‘have been as profitable.’”
Thus, perhaps as her on-again off-again foil, Billie Eilish, is known for touting, maybe Swift truly believes that, regarding some “catering-to-the-little-people-pretending-to-be-VIP” matters, it’s “not my responsibility.” For music, whether “art” or not, remains a cold, hard commodity in the undiscerning eyes of the “free” market.
By Tionah Lee, ETOnline.com. Published: Last updated:
Taylor Swift has made her official return to the American Music Awards. The 32-year-old pop superstar was bejeweled in a backless gold jumpsuit as she accepted the award for Favorite Pop Album for Red (Taylor’s Version) at Sunday’s ceremony.
The “Anti-Hero” singer wore her hair in waves and completed her look with her signature red lip.
It was a big night for the songstress, who was tied with Beyoncé for the most nominations by a female artist at this year’s ceremony. She’s also bagged awards for Artist of the Year, Favorite Music Video (“All Too Well 10 Minute Version”) and Favorite Female Pop Artist.
In 2019, Swift secured her place as the artist with the most American Music Award wins of all time.
Swift’s last appearance also saw her hit the stage and perform a medley of hits including, “The Man,” “Love Story,” and “I Knew You Were Trouble.”
During the ceremony, the singer — who was in the middle of a legal battle with her former manager Scooter Braun — was presented with the Artist of the Decade award. During her final speech of the night, the singer thanked her fans for their constant support.
The 50th American Music Awards are taking place on Sunday night at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
The show, produced by dick clark productions and ABC, is being hosted by Wayne Brady.
The star-studded event celebrates the year’s best music and performances, as voted on by fans.
Puerto Rican performer Bad Bunny topped the list of nominees this year with the most nods, earning eight, including his first-ever for artist of the year.
Beyoncé, Drake and Taylor Swift followed, each earning six nominations. Adele, Harry Styles and The Weeknd came in with five a piece.
First-time nominees include Jack Hawlow, Latto and BLACKPINK.
Performers set to take the stage include Pink, who opened the show, as well as Dove Cameron, Lil Baby, Bebe Rexha, Carrie Underwood, Imagine Dragons and others.
Lionel Richie, a 17-time AMA winner, will be honored with the Icon Award for his career contributions to the music industry. Charlie Puth, Stevie Wonder and other artists will take the stage in tribute performances for Richie.
The show announced some of the winners prior to the broadcast.
Elton John, first nominated for an AMA in 1974, is now regarded as the longest-recognized artist in the awards show’s history. He took home his first AMA win since 1988, for best collaboration with Dua Lipa.
Taylor Swift led the pack with three AMA wins ahead of broadcast, including best female country artist.
Below is a list of nominees for this year’s American Music Awards. The list will be updated with winners in bold throughout the broadcast, along with the winners from non-televised categories.
Ticketmaster has issued a formal apology to Taylor Swift and her fans following a ticketing catastrophe this week that left millions outraged — and lawmakers demanding answers about the company’s problematic operations.
The debacle happened after many fans could not purchase tickets for the Grammy winner’s highly-anticipated 2023 “Eras” tour earlier this week, leading Ticketmaster to cancel the general sales.
“We want to apologize to Taylor, and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets,” Ticketmaster tweeted on Friday. “We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened.”
We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened: https://t.co/1Gn4kRIvq8
Ticketmaster also provided a link to an extended explanation on its website about why the pop star’s throngs of fans, known as Swifties, couldn’t buy tickets.
During the presale earlier this week, the site crashed shortly after launching as over 14 million fans, and slews of bots flooded the site, causing service disruptions.
Sales for Swift’s new tour began on Tuesday, but the high demand rapidly locked customers out of the sale, leaving fans who could not pocket a ticket utterly furious. Some even reported the site sending them back to the beginning of a virtual queue with thousands ahead of them after attempting to purchase seats.
Numerous customers also complained and reported that the platform was not loading and didn’t grant them access to tickets, even if they had a pre-sale code for verified fans.
The “Bad Blood” singer addressed the “excruciating” mishap, apologizing to her fans on Friday.
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” Swift wrote in an Instagram story. ”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,” she said in the message, which didn’t name Ticketmaster but alluded to the ticketing failure.
“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,” she continued. “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.”
She added that it was “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,” she wrote.
On Thursday, Ticketmaster tweeted that “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand” were to blame and “tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled.”
The ticket sales and distribution company announced earlier that day that more than 3.5 million people pre-registered for Swift’s Verified Fan sale, the largest in its history, per The New York Times.
After the cancellation, ticket prices soared on re-sale sites, with seats at various venues running as high as more than $20,000 as of Friday.
Addressing the incident, the singer wrote on Instagram: “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.”
She added, “Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
Swift recently added 17 dates to the U.S. tour, which launches in March in Arizona and ends in August in Los Angeles. The tour will include 52 concerts.
The electronic music community is constantly evolving with new sounds every week, as artists become more innovative with their compositions. EDM.com’s weekly “Playlist Picks”series highlights the top releases in the genre, helping uncover the latest tracks that will soon dominate the dance music scene.
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Ticketmaster knows it has a crisis on its hands. “We want to apologize to Taylor [Swift] and all of her fans—especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets,” the typically “our way or the highway” agency said in a statement late Friday. This came at the end of a brutal week in which the organization failed at its core function: selling tickets to upcoming events. If that weren’t enough, the company got harshly dissed by arguably the biggest star in the galaxy, and then found itself under investigation by the Department of Justice on charges of abusing its market dominance. (The look into whether the company’s methods and potential monopolization of the industry predates the Swift debacle, but sometimes the timing of things works out nicely.)
After days of headline-making ticketing chaos, Swift made a statement on Friday in which, without naming Ticketmaster or its parent company, Live Nation, essentially said, “these guys botched it.”
“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,” she wrote on Instagram. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
The music industry’s biggest current draw, known for maintaining a nurturing relationship with her innumerable fans, had been on the receiving end of some unusual criticism from her acolytes, who were vexed that their attempts at purchasing tickets to her upcoming The Eras Tour were unsuccessful, despite assurances that pre-sale registration of “Verified Fans” would lead to smooth sailing. Demand was so high it crashed the site. (If you were a non-Swifie trying to access cloud-based tickets for something else during that time, you were out of luck.)
Furthermore, Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model led to ludicrous rates during the mayhem for those lucky enough to even get to the purchase point in the online queue. And then, despite it all, bots and scalpers started putting the coveted seats up on resale sites. (The least expensive current listing for an individual ticket on StubHub for the Saturday night gig at East Rutherford, New Jersey’s enormous MetLife Stadium, with a concert capacity record well over 85,000, is about $800 for a sky-high perch behind the stage.) All this before the commencement of general sales, which has since been canceled.
In their statement, Ticketmaster admits they did not anticipate demand. Quite a thing for the leading (only?) company that services the delivery of tickets for large-scale tours like this. One would think that it would be in their interest to keep a finger on the pulse of who is popular.
What this means going forward remains a little ambiguous. As mentioned, the planned public offering has been nixed, due to “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.” (Is the total of remaining seats zero? Unclear.) The statement concluded by saying that the company is “working to shore up our tech for the new bar that has been set by demand for the Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour. Once we get through that, if there are any next steps, updates will be shared accordingly.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is leading the charge of antitrust concerns against the company, which has only grown larger since its 2010 merger with parent company Live Nation to form Live Nation Entertainment. “Ticketmaster is the story of a monopoly gone wild,” she said. “They are a vertically integrated giant with Live Nation that can drive up prices and offer subpar service.” (Little known fact: the Saudi Arabian government has a $1 billion stake in the company.)
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Anyone who has bought tickets to an event at a venue larger than a club (and, in many cases, even at a club!) has surely scratched their heads over the various vague fees. Pearl Jam has been railing against Ticketmaster since 1994, but ultimately realized they simply couldn’t put on shows without them. In the end, it looks like the woman who took the time to re-record her back catalog when seemingly trapped in a rotten publishing deal may be the only one to deliver us from evil.
The Department of Justice is investigating Ticketmaster parent Live Nation, the company that sparked chaos and anger this week with its mishandling of ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming “Eras” tour, two people familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News. On Friday night, Ticketmaster issued an apology via Twitter to Swift’s fans.
The investigation, which predates the Ticketmaster failure with Taylor Swift ticket sales, is focusing on whether Live Nation is abusing its market dominance in the ticket industry. Ticketmaster’s site crashed during a pre-sale period this week, sparking anger from fans who waited hours to get tickets, only to be disappointed.
The Justice Department’s antitrust division has recently contacted music venues and participants in the ticket industry to learn more about Live Nation’s methods, with a focus on whether the company has a monopoly over the industry, according to The New York Times, which earlier reported the investigation.
This week’s Taylor Swift ticket-sales debacle has sparked renewed calls for more scrutiny of the company. Several lawmakers called for an inquiry into Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which has sold more than 115 million tickets to events in the first nine months of the year, up 37% from 2019.
Ticketmaster on Friday night apologized to Swift’s fans, saying on Twitter: “We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened.”
The tweet included a link to Ticketmaster’s site, where the company explained why the issues occurred.
On Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Ticketmaster of acting as a monopoly in ticket sales and called on the company to be broken up, with the New York Democrat tweeting that the 2010 merger between the company and Live Nation “should never have been approved.”
The site’s crash has also sparked an investigation by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmettian, who has launched a probe into how Ticketmaster handled the event.
“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled,” the company tweeted.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Ticketmaster regrets Taylor Swift’s “excruciating” experience of watching her fans go through the equivalent of “several bear attacks” to get tickets for her next tour. The company apologized in a statement issued Friday night after Swift blamed them for the ticketing system’s failure.
Ticketmaster said it strives “to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift ‘The Eras’ Tour.”
We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened: https://t.co/1Gn4kRIvq8
“First,” the statement continued, “we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.” Then it continued on to explain in detail why its system failed and so many encountered problems making a purchase.
In the past, Ticketmaster said it has been able to manage a massive onslaught of customers. “However,” the statement read, “this time the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak.”
As a result, the company elected to slow down a certain number of sales and “push back” others to give its systems time to stabilize and handle the load. “The trade off,” according to Ticketmaster, “was longer wait times in queue for some fans.”
The statement closed on a positive note, however, reporting that more than “2 million tickets were sold on Ticketmaster for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour on Nov. 15 – the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day.”
The apology comes after the New York Times reported that the Dept. of Justice is investigating Ticketmaster owner Live Nation Entertainment for possibly abusing “its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.”
Taylor Swift performs onstage during iHeartRadio’s Z100 Jingle Ball 2019 Presented By Capital One on December 13, 2019 in New York City.
Kevin Mazur | Getty Images
Taylor Swift responded to her fans Friday after Live Nation‘s Ticketmaster said a general public sale of tickets to the superstar’s “Eras” tour would be canceled because there weren’t enough tickets to meet high demand.
“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 in a message posted on Instagram. She did not mention Live Nation or Ticketmaster in her statement.
“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,” she wrote.
Separately, The New York Times reported Friday that Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into parent company Live Nation’s practices. The probe predates the Swift ticket sale this week, according to the report. The Justice Department declined to comment.
Live Nation, Ticketmaster and the company’s largest shareholder, Liberty Media, also didn’t immediately comment about Swift’s Friday statement or the Times’ report on a Justice Department investigation.
Ticketmaster announced the cancellation hours after Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei defended Ticketmaster on Thursday. Maffei blamed a surge of demand from 14 million users, including bots, for site disruptions and slow queues for presales earlier this week.
“It’s a function of Taylor Swift. The site was supposed to open up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans,” Maffei told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots, which are not supposed to be there.”
Maffei said Ticketmaster sold more than 2 million tickets on Tuesday and demand for Swift “could have filled 900 stadiums.”
The “Eras” tour is set to kick off in March 17 in Glendale, Arizona.
Read Swift’s full statement:
Well. It goes without saying that l’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, l’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.
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.
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.
Earlier this week, increasingly angry Taylor Swift fans dominated Twitter, and videos of young women radicalizing against capitalism became a trend on TikTok. You might have even seen in real time a mass Swiftie meltdown as the Ticketmaster website crashed Tuesday morning, overloaded with demand for the pop star’s 52-date Eras tour launching in March. Despite hours-long waits and bugs in the system forcing customers to the end of the line right as they were selecting seats, ultimately 2.4 million tickets were sold. By Thursday, Ticketmaster had canceled plans to open sales to the general public due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand,” as the company explained in a tweet.
For some artists, these events would represent a success, as selling out more than 50 stadium shows is no small feat. Still, the confusion, technical failures, and lack of transparency were disappointing to Swift’s devoted fan base, and the artist herself has built a reputation for nurturing her relationship with the groups of people who have made her one of the few musicians who can still move physical units. So it wasn’t a surprise when Swift responded with an uncharacteristically pointed note to her 232 million Instagram followers. “It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” she wrote. “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.”
She didn’t mention Ticketmaster by name, but did say that her team had discussed the possibility of high demand with the company in advance. “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,” she wrote. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
On Friday, The New York Times reported that the affair has also led to an Justice Department investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation. (Vanity Fair has reached out to Live Nation for comment.) For decades, Ticketmaster has been derided by music fans, and difficulty queuing for and purchasing tickets is nothing new. The unusual thing about Tuesday’s event was the fact that it was technically still a presale event intended for fans who had registered in advance. So while the general practices of Ticketmaster will be under the microscope because of this week, the collapse on Tuesday was the end result of a perfect storm that had been brewing for years, and a few momentary bad decisions.
First, as Ticketmaster pointed out, the demand for tickets was extraordinary. The Eras tour will be Swift’s first since she spent several months on the road promoting her 2018 album Reputation. In 2020, tickets had already been sold for four US dates of the Lover tour when COVID-19 forced her to scrap her plans. Unlike many artists who went dormant during the pandemic, Swift surprise-released two new records in 2020, won a Grammy for album of the year, rereleased two records of old material, and shot a short film that is getting awards buzz.
When Swift announced the tour earlier this month, it was obvious that competition for tickets would be fierce, and early on there were signs that a historic amount of interest was brewing. When Ticketmaster launched the registration for the Verified Fan program in early November, there was already a long queue just to sign up, and soon Swift added eight more dates, and then 17 more, to the schedule.
Verified Fan was launched in 2017, and in a press release at the time, Live Nation said that the program would “utilize unique fan-first technology to level the playing field and ensure fans compete against other fans for tickets—not software.” The idea behind the program is that various online interactions, activities, and purchases give a fan “a boost,” which ensures them a better place in the ticket. In 2017, the presale for Swift’s Reputation tour used the program and she garnered criticism for the perception that it seemed somewhat exploitative for previous purchases to translate to better ticketing options.
This time around, the press release for Swift’s tour mentioned that Verified Fans who bought a ticket to Lover Fest would “receive preferred access to participate” in the new presale, and a select number of fans were told in an email from Taylor Nation, her fanclub platform, that they did receive “boosts” for their place in line. Whether or not that actually happened is difficult to say, but on Twitter, multiple users complained that they were given boosts, but didn’t actually get a presale code.
Tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. local venue time Tuesday, amounting to dozens of shows going on sale over the course of two hours, and almost immediately the site began to struggle. Putting so many events live at the same time might have been the most consequential decision in terms of stressing their system. So far, Ticketmaster hasn’t gone into detail about the outages and their causes, but in a Thursday interview on CNBC, Live Nation’s chairman, Greg Maffei, mentioned an onslaught of traffic that outstripped their expectations. “The Live Nation team is sympathetic to the long wait times and fans who couldn’t get what they wanted,” he said. “Reality is, it’s a function of the massive demand that Taylor Swift has. The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots—another story—which are not supposed to be there.”
Soon after the presale, tickets began to appear on secondary resale sites. That doesn’t always mean that those tickets exist—some sellers post tickets with the hope of acquiring them later. But ultimately it was a sign that the Ticketmaster plan for eliminating bots hadn’t succeeded in ensuring that the tickets only went to customers who planned to use them. There is still plenty of uncertainty around tickets for the tour, and other than mentioning “insufficient” inventory, Ticketmaster hasn’t commented on whether any tickets remain.
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