Taylor Swift Makes It Official: ‘Lover Fest’ Shows Won’t Be Rescheduled

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Taylor Swift has made official what most fans already suspected: the handful of “Lover Fest” shows that she was scheduled to do in the summer of 2020 won’t be happening in summer 2021, either, or ever. While fans had previously had the option to hold onto their tickets in case rescheduling was possible, she’s put the kibosh on that possibility.

“I love coming on here to tell you good news, or to share a new project with you,” Swift wrote on her Instagram and Twitter accounts. “It’s not my favorite thing in the world to have to tell you news I’m sad about. I’m so sorry, but I cannot reschedule the shows that we’ve postponed. Although refunds have been available since we first postponed the Lover Fest shows, many of you hung onto your tickets” — and, she affirmed, “I too hung onto the idea that we could reschedule.”

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She continued, “This is an unprecedented pandemic that has changed everyone’s plans and no one knows what the touring landscape is going to look like in the near future. I’m so disappointed that I won’t be able to see you in person as soon as I wanted to. I miss you terribly and can’t wait til we can all safely be at shows together again.”

The announcement was expected, as virtually no one in the music business is seeing vaccinations ramping up rapidly enough that any superstar could spend the months necessary to plan and put on sale summer stadium shows. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino did express optimistic in an earnings call last week that concerts might resume as soon as mid-summer, but it’s unlikely that would happen at the level that sees theatrically designed productions of the sort Swift fans are used to being put on in full of football stadiums at their full capacity.

Swift might also have artistic reasons for wanting to finally put the Lover Fest shows to bed, even in the unlikely event that full stadium shows had become plausible this year. Since the “Lover” album came out in 2019, she’s subsequently released two 2020 albums recorded in quarantine, “Folklore” and “Evermore,” that represent the opposite of the “Lover” m.o. in almost every way, from color palette to production style, and it’s difficult to imagine Swift holding onto her ideas for touring behind “Lover” when her fresher material represents as radical a left turn as any pop star has made in such a short time. In other words: It might be hard to tour behind “You Need to Calm Down” after having calmed down.

First announced almost a year and a half ago, the Lover Fest shows were to have represented a mini-tour on a very maxi level. In the U.S., she was to have done only four shows in total — two at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, which would have been that venue’s first music concerts, and at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

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