'Swifties' in Southeast Missouri dedicated to artist

"Taylor Swift", "Fearless", "Speak Now", "Red", "1989", "Reputation", "Lover", "Folklore", "Evermore", "Midnights".

Ten albums, with three (so far) having been re-recorded in 17 years, Taylor Swift is an icon and inspiration to many.

Her concert tours are legendary, and she is now on the "Eras" tour, which will have 131 concerts across five continents. It began in March and will end August 2024.

Fans -- "Swifties" -- from around the world, including several in Southeast Missouri, have been excited at the idea of seeing Swift play her three-hour set with songs from each of her albums.

Swift played two concerts in Kansas City, Missouri, last week.

Chrissie Roché and her daughter, Taven Roché, attend a Taylor Swift concert in Kansas City, Missouri. They wore homemade shirts that had a lyric from the song "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things".Submitted

Chrissie Roché and her daughter, Taven Roché, attend a Taylor Swift concert in Kansas City, Missouri. They wore homemade shirts that had a lyric from the song "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things".Submitted

Getting to the concerts, which are often hundreds of miles away is one thing. Getting tickets is another. A pre-sale virtual queue for Swift's concerts has had a number of issues, and then there is the resale market, where tickets can cost hundreds of dollars.

Hayley Harris attended the first of Swift's recent concerts in Nashville, Tennessee. She said the virtual queue was an absolute mess and it took about eight to nine hours to go from the start of the queue to buying the tickets. She said there were multiple times she or one of those in the group would be kicked out of the queue and have to start again.

"All the people that I went with, we all work full-time jobs. So we were passing it off from person to person. Like, 'Hey, I have to go see this patient ... it's your turn to monitor it.' And you know somebody would get so far, and they would get tickets in the cart, and they would go to buy them, and then they would say they've been sold. So it was like this constantly, and the girl that actually ended up doing the buying when it was her turn, she didn't even know what she bought," Harris said.

Ticket prices for the "Eras" tour have been an ongoing topic for Swifites, from those able to buy tickets at face price to others who wanted to go and were not able to get pre-sale tickets and had to buy tickets that were upward of five times the face value price.

Maggie Penrose said she would classify herself as a "pretty diehard" Swiftie. Penrose has been to three Swift concerts -- "1989", "Reputation" and now "Eras". She was able to attend the first concert in Kansas City, Missouri, the night "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" was released. Penrose said Swift made Kansas City feel special with the extra things she did, such as show a music video, and had actors Taylor Lautner (one of her exes) and Joey King as special guests. Penrose described the night as one she would have expected to happen in New York or California, not in Kansas City.

Maggie Penrose and her friend attend a "1989" Taylor Swift concert in St. Louis in 2015.Submitted

Maggie Penrose and her friend attend a "1989" Taylor Swift concert in St. Louis in 2015.Submitted

"Just the amount of detail that she put into it. She was just really performing. It wasn't just her and a microphone, but as far as specifically Kansas City Night 1, my favorite thing was getting the music video. She made Kansas City feel really special. What everyone was saying was that she was just very individual. It was just different from all the other tours because we got new songs, and then on top of it, the surprise song she did and the music video and the special guests."

Lifetime memory

After the concert, Penrose and her friends each got a Taylor Swift tattoo from something that happened at the concert. Penrose got a Koi fish tattoo in honor of Swift bringing out a unique Koi fish guitar that had been in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum in Nashville, and one friend got the iconic heart hands Swift does.

A large part of the "Eras" tour is dressing up, trading bracelets and enjoying the positive environment. TikTok has been an influential part of this with those attending showing the effort put into each outfit and the number of bracelets that were made to trade with others.

Penrose said she and her friends got together a week before the concert to make bracelets to trade. She said they traded with those around them, security guards, concession stand workers and anyone else they could. Maddy Glueck did not make bracelets for her concert experience in Nashville she and her mother attended, but she did dress up from head to toe. Glueck said she wore a hot-pink fringe dress, with white rhinestone boots, pink sunglasses, heart dangle earrings and lots of heart clips in her hair. She described her outfit as a mix of the pink of her favorite album, "Lover", with Swift's country feel in "Fearless".

Light-up bracelets make a colorful photo in Kansas City, Missouri, as Chrissie Roché and her daughter, Taven Roché, attend a Taylor Swift concert.Submitted

Light-up bracelets make a colorful photo in Kansas City, Missouri, as Chrissie Roché and her daughter, Taven Roché, attend a Taylor Swift concert.Submitted

Glueck attended the third of three Nashville concerts -- the first rain show of the tour. She said that when she realized it was going to be a rain show she was a little excited because all Swift fans know she never cancels a show due to the weather. After four hours of waiting in a men's bathroom that had been converted to a women's bathroom for the night, Glueck and others were able to go back out to the stadium and see Swift perform.

"I feel like some part of the rain is maybe even more fun because Taylor herself was saying, this is the first rain show that we've had on this tour. That means you guys are very special. And everybody heard that and after that everyone went absolutely crazy," Glueck said about the rain at the concert.

Chrissie Roché and her daughter, Taven, did not dress up to the level others did with the ball gowns, glitter, sequins or off-the-wall outfits. Instead, they wore shirts they made that had a lyric from the "Reputation" album song "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things". Roché's daughter's shirt said "Here is to my mama" and Roché's said "had to listen to the drama".

"It was amazing to see everybody's creativity and devotion to the fan base. I'm a big comic book nerd, and I go to a lot of comic cons and cosplay and stuff. It was just really akin to that," Chrissie Roché said. "So it was kind of neat to see everybody getting dressed up for one specific thing versus going to comic cons and seeing everybody getting dressed up for things like anime or comics or just superhero movies. So it was nice. It was really neat to see it all niche down so far and still see all this creativity going on."

Chrissie Roché and her daughter attended Kansas City Night 1 as well. She said being almost exactly the same age as Swift, she has grown up with her in her music. Roché said Swift has a huge catalog of songs that can relate with all walks of life. From Swift releasing a song when both she and Roché were 16 about high school love to her releasing songs now at 33 about navigating adult life.

Maggie Penrose and her friend on the floor at the "Reputation" stadium tour in St.Louis in 2018.Submitted

Maggie Penrose and her friend on the floor at the "Reputation" stadium tour in St.Louis in 2018.Submitted

"I remember reading an interview or an article about her, and it's just a very rare phenomenon that all of her songs have a timeless quality to them," she said. "Even the 'Speak Now' songs like, they're just effective to me 10 years later, or 12 years later, that they were when they came out, and she just has an ability to relate through all walks of life. ... So I think that's a very interesting quality about her. It's just how she can be so relatable, and then it can be so specific, just depending on the feeling and the emotion and the time period you're going through in your life."

Roché said being at the concert with her daughter when Swift played "Never Grow Up" for the first time on tour was an emotional time for not only her but many of the other parents in the audience.

"I definitely got emotional and cried a lot," she said. "And that song had a special place when my daughter was born, and now she's 12, she's about to be 13, so like, it means a lot more now. I definitely saw a lot of parents crying in the audience with their children during that song. ... I'm not a sports person, but I imagine that's like Super Bowl feelings."