So, up until recently, I had never been to a Taylor Swift concert. When she announced her Reputation Stadium Tour, I decided it was finally time for me to go. I signed up for that Verified Fan thing, watched the "Look What You Made Me Do" video ten times a day for several weeks (mostly muted in another tab- sorry Taylor, it's an amazing video and song, but there is no song I love enough to listen to at that frequency). I found a friend who was willing to go with me and it happened to line up with a time I was already going to be in the Foxborough area to visit family, so we got our tickets for 7/28 (originally the only date for that venue). We got floor seats, too; section B5.

Now, when I say I hadn't been to a Taylor Swift concert before, I also haven't been to very many concerts in general. My friends were never really into the same kind of music as I was, it wasn't in my budget, and I wasn't always a very fun person. The two concerts I went to before this were the Boys Like Girls 10th Anniversary Tour, which was in a very small, non-air-conditioned venue, general admission. Backstage passes plus the tickets & a merch bundle were only $100 (which is less than my Taylor ticket) so I got the full experience. I was originally close to the stage, but there was a mysterious substance dripping on me that I could not be 100% sure was water, so I backed up a bit, but I was still pretty close. The speakers weren't great, so I could hardly hear the band sing over everyone in the crowd (not that I didn't enjoy singing along, but like, I paid $100 to hear Boys Like Girls sing these songs, not 500 of their fans). It was over a hundred degrees and my claustrophobia was pretty bad, but overall it was a great experience.

OliviaAM

The other concert I went to was Lorde, back in March. I unintentionally bought my tickets through a third party, so my mid-section tickets ended up being more expensive than floor seats were on Ticketmaster, but I was just glad they let me through the door because the website was pretty sketchy once I realized it was third-party and looked into it. There was air conditioning, so that was definitely a plus. She played every song I wanted to hear, and it was, dare I say, a spiritual experience. I left that concert with amazing levels of mental health I hadn't felt in months. My only complaint was that one of her opening acts kind of overstayed their welcome. Quoth someone behind me, "It's not your f*cking concert." They were really nice people, but the fact that the music style didn't exactly match up to Lorde and they stayed out for about an hour made them a little hard to take in.

OliviaAM

As for Taylor, I knew it was going to be an outdoor venue, so I was grateful that it wasn't too hot outside by the time we got there. The clear bag rule threw me off, so my friend and I had to find a store that sold clear bags for us to take our bare minimum of things in. Because it was such a big venue, our floor seats still gave us about the same view I had of Lorde from the middle section. Her opening acts both took about half an hour each and were comparable music to Taylor, so I enjoyed them, too. My friend and I were a little upset that we missed Hayley Kiyoko by literally two days, but alas. Oh, but at some point, after the concert, we were scrolling through Twitter and found out we were within mere feet of Gigi Hadid and had no idea.

OliviaAM

What annoyed us was when a large amount of people pushed into the row right in front of us (people who definitely did not pay for those seats) and crowded the aisle so that when she came to the B-Stage, we were just that much further away from her with that much worse of a view. Security did nothing about them. My friend and I even got stepped on multiple times while getting climbed over, and the fact that they sold all the beverages without lids made for a really sticky situation (pun intended).

OliviaAM

Of course, because all those people crammed into the row right in front of us, the row that happened to be the row Taylor walked past on her way to the other stage, we realized that had they not done that, we would have been able to reach her as she walked past us. Once we realized that, we stopped letting them step on us. I blocked a girl with my arm. My friend cheer-screamed in someone's ear when Taylor asked us a question. It was great.

Overall, the concert itself was fantastic. We had a great time, rude fans aside. That being said, our journey out of the parking lot had me thinking I might have been in actual Hell.

See, when the concert was over, we decided to go straight to the parking lot where we were getting picked up. We had plans to stop for food and use the bathroom on the way home rather than wait in the long lines at the stadium. There was probably a drive-through open on the way home; we knew everything nearby was already closed. First, we took a "shortcut" that we didn't realize was closed off due to all the tour buses, so we ended up having to walk all the way around the stadium.

OliviaAM

Once we got to the car, the way traffic was being managed, it took us (not an exaggeration) two hours to start moving in the line out of the parking lot. People tried to cut us off. At this point, I was so done that I shouted out my window at them that cheating would get them nowhere in life. Their windows were rolled up so they probably didn't hear me, which was good because we had to stop next to their car for a minute while different sides of the parking lot took turns getting out.

At both Lorde and Boys Like Girls, I was out of the parking area within minutes of leaving the venue, so I didn't expect this at all. I wasn't sure if it was just this venue or what. My point is, being stuck in a parking lot for two hours when you have no food, water, or access to a bathroom (and bonus: I definitely started my period early at some point during the concert, and was wearing brand new jeans) really puts a damper on the pleasant experience you just had at the concert. The silver lining was that at some point, Taylor flew over that parking lot in a helicopter (or so we heard). Still, not fun.

So, overall, I'd rate the concert itself a solid 8.5/10, but the parking lot situation would have brought it down to about a 7 or even 6.5. 10/10 for the actual performance, though.

Hope to see you again next tour, Taylor! But I think I'll stay somewhere within walking distance of the venue I go to.