Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are the biggest music stars on the planet. They both spent the summer embarking on massively popular and successful world tours, Renaissance and The Eras Tour, respectively. As someone who loves both of these women, I have been following the “stan wars” for years. These wars can be extra annoying when you are dealing with women artists, unfortunately. I do not like these feuds because more than one woman can succeed at the same time. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have been great examples of this. Regardless, some people have chosen to create divisions anyway. Which album is better, Renaissance or Midnights? Who has a bigger influence? Who has better songs? Which concert film will make more money? It goes on and on and on! I think these arguments are not helpful, though if I had to pick one, I’m going with Queen Bey. However, I love Taylor Swift too and think she’s tremendous!
So in a world that loves to pit women against each other, imagine the shock when Beyoncé showed up to Swift’s “Eras Tour” premiere in Los Angeles. Yes, these two actually like each other in real life! I am being cheeky by saying “shock,” because rational people like myself have known that they are cool in the real world. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is a concert film that documents her wildly popular tour. Aside from admiring T-Swizzle, this film is probably of interest to Beyoncé, as she recently announced that she will be releasing her own concert film, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé. The film hits theaters on December 1. it’s just so cool to see these two megastars in the same place at the same time!
Swift posted a cute video online of the two together in the theater. They looked fabulous (of course) and Beyoncé added some silliness by tossing popcorn around. I love it when she is playful! Taylor wrote, in part, one of the sweetest captions I have seen by an artist, writing “I’m so glad I’ll never know what my life would’ve been like without @beyonce’s influence.”
It is just such a lovely way of phrasing how important Beyoncé has been not just to us regular folk, but even to artists as huge as Taylor Swift herself. It just warmed my little heart. She went on to describe the queen actually showing up to her event as a “fairytale.” Yeah, you’re telling me! The internet went wild at the pairing.
People on X had some really amazing reactions. One user, amazingly named BEYTHOVEN, showed a pic of the two together in the theater and said “This is MY Roman Empire!” I laughed out loud, honestly. Many of us feel this way though, if we are being real. This user illustrated the power of these women and I love that. Another user took a different route. They used a funny video clip to equate this epic event with actual violence. The video shows a clip from a Michael Jackson performance. I am laughing just thinking about it! There is a deeper point and message here with Queen Bey’s appearance. As I stated before, we are conditioned to pit women against each other. But these two artists have no history of verbal altercations, their partners battling each other, rude spokesperson statements, NOTHING! The wars between them have literally been created simply because they are both very successful women. For heaven’s sake, they don’t even make the same kind of music. Hopefully, this great cultural moment will help remind us that many, many women can thrive.
I am sure Swift’s movie will do very well! I hope to see it myself. Now if only we could get a joint album!
(featured image: John Shearer/Getty Images for TAS)
