The two biggest tours of the summer were Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” and Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, without question. Seeing as both Taylor, 33, and Beyoncé, 42, are two of the biggest popstars in the world, the comparisons were instantly drawn. The Midnights singer opened up about the narratives that the two tours were competing in her interview with Time after being named “Person of the Year’ for 2023.
When it came to discussing the tours, Taylor highlighted how the way that the “competing” tours were portrayed was “vexing,” as Time put it. “There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyoncé,” she said. “Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.”
Despite calling out the comparisons, Taylor did speak about how the huge success of art made by women will likely lead to more opportunities for women to share their voices with the world. “What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening,” she explained.
Besides talking about the way their tours were portrayed in the media, Taylor also had so many wonderful things to say about Bey. “She’s the most precious gem of a person—warm and open and funny,” she said. “She’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices.”
Both of the singers have shown support for one another, as their respective concert films have premiered. Queen B made a surprise appearance at Taylor’s premiere for her The Eras Tour movie in October. The “Anti-Hero” singer also flew to London to attend Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour film at the end of November. When Taylor posted a photo of herself at the Renaissance premiere, she captioned it showing love to Bey. “Got invited to London by The Queen,” she wrote on Instagram.