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Check this out. Taylor Swift, I swear, or her lookalike in the grocery store line. Maybe, even two of her earlier looks and locks, and she used to get this all the time! Made a jaunt this way between concerts? And I just saw early-evening at a different Dick’s a singer with much similar style, “Adele” also, having a drink alone. Parallels to, and apologies to, Dan Fogelberg.

A music buff, I assume, could not call my bluff when I asked her at Dick’s Market – at check-out not in the frozen foods, and I did not touch her on the sleeve, and she did not spill her purse, to pay the self-serve machine — if anyone had told her she looks just like Taylor Swift.

She used to get that all the time, the fan as such added, but now she was a little older and Swift had again changed her hairdo, too. But she was still a tall, cool one, in fact both of them.

Swift in fact, has all kinds of her personas and style looks shown as she rides an elevator, and hits the concourse like in a concert stadium, during a commercial you probably have seen umpteen times, unless you’re not into pop music and/or live under a rock. My new acquaintance, blond or not so blond or not at all, could now after years only sport a couple of those looks, but she was wearing one as we spoke. Concert is coming.

All this would make for a good trivia question, as when the Hudson Tap has at times had on a weekend day, the exclusively Swift challenge. Tailor your trivia to Taylor.

Why the picturesque pictures on what fans would love to call love in an elevator? A commercial shows all her different looks throughout the years. Her mega tour is aptly dubbed The Eras (Eros?) Tour. A fellow music critic over at the Pioneer Press raved that she is indeed the big deal, responding after her late June performance(s) here. Other metro papers and TV stations are often abuzz with Swift commentary, things from helping out with a personal touch a fave fan fallen on hard times, to calling out security for roughing up a patron, a few rows back from the front row.

Speaking of fans, what if you are a youngster? Mom and dad can use their best judgment for if you are ready, and take you to that show tonight, as there’s a light on, but kids are staunchly prohibited from being in The Pit upfront. Moshing madness at a non-metal concert?

There are other interesting and exacting stipulations. Yes, still cameras are allowed, and patrons are encouraged to capture the joy, but no video taping. Lens can be no more than six inches, and methinks they may be yet another boyfriend problem behind that?) And yes, posters are allowed, but only can be up to 24-inches-by-24 inches. Coulda made it easier and just say two feet twice.

There were two shows here and they were not Swift, lasting a full three hours, even after a couple of warmup bands hit the stage at around 6:30 p.m. When you have that many hits! That’s why there were a sellout total of 120,000 fans attending and ticket prices started at 80 dollars. Thus needed when you put on, and have to pay for, this kind of high-level production! Swift from the stage said the Minneapolis fans, plus those trekking here from all around the Midwest, were the “most generous.” Much needed.

Much of this is great marketing. The commercial that has flooded the airwaves shows Swift hawking Capital One credit cards, although with their stringent credit limits I doubt that she carries one. So does she really need that extra cash, after singing about beauty and singing about truth at $80 or more a patron?

Swift is a great business person, and has been said to have an IQ of about 160, and it shows now and when she was a child singing wiz. (Anything above 150 is thought to be statistically insignificant.) There are a lot of Mensa-and-past level geniuses in the rock world, and they don’t all sing super-deep songs about philosophy. Enter believe it or not Gene Simmons of KISS, and I bet you’d never see both of them mentioned in the same sentence/paragraph.

So for now, hope you all made the diagonal trek to Chicago to take it at least one of the three, count them, shows there.

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