Arizona city renamed ‘Swift City’ to honour Taylor Swift
Later this week, Taylor Swift will be kicking off her much-anticipated ‘Eras Tour’ in Glendale, Arizona. As one of the biggest concert tours of the year, pretty much every performance on the jaunt is going to be newsworthy in some way. Apparently, Glendale is so tickled to be the launching point for the tour that they’re changing the entire city’s name in Swift’s honour.
Yup, for a brief period (probably only as long as Swift plays her concerts there), Glendale will officially be known as “Swift City”. Besides the fact that “Swift City” sounds like a dust broom emporium store, Glendale is ripe for a rebrand. The city’s name came from founder William John Murphy originally named the city after… nobody. There was no “Glen” that gave Glendale its name, although it was given the name just a few short years after the California city of the same name was also christened “Glendale”, so there might be some overlap.
“There is no need to calm down, we’re fearless and doing something highly unusual to celebrate the fact that Taylor’s concerts start right here!” the City of Glendale officially writes. “We know all too well that she’s one of the most influential artists of her generation and we are writing our own love story for her and greeting every Swiftie in style!”
Oof. Whoever is working in the PR division of Glendale’s local government might want to rethink that hammy public statement. In case you desperately need to know, that’s ‘You Need to Calm Down’ from Lover, ‘Fearless’ from the album of the same name, ‘All Too Well’ from Red (most beloved as the 10-minute re-recording known as ‘Taylor’s Version’), ‘Love Story’ from Fearless, and ‘Style’ from 1989. The city’s Twitter account also references the Midnights track ‘Bejeweled’, which is equally ill-advised.
‘The Eras Tour’ famously broke the record for most tickets sold in a single day when it went on sale late last year. The sale also infamously caused quite a stir with fans who blamed Ticketmaster for numerous bugs, failures, and generally poor business practices in relation to the tour. While 2.4 million tickets eventually got purchased, the Ticketmaster site crashed numerous times during the pre-sale, leaving literally millions of fans in limbo trying to get access to tickets.
Swift herself has been able to deflect any errant criticism that has come her way for the debacle, and ‘The Eras Tour’ is set to be one of the highest-grossing tours of all time on pre-show numbers alone. “Swift City” will host the first concerts of the tour on March 17th and 18th.
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