South MS fans are heading to NOLA in style for Taylor Swift this weekend. ‘It’s insanity’

Dressed in glitter and rhinestones, florals and pink fluffy jackets, the caravan driving west from Mississippi is finally done waiting for Taylor Swift.

“We’re all bedazzled and ready to go,” said Shera Moran, a financial analyst from Ocean Springs, who is wearing an outfit with “flowers popping out of it” and earplugs to quiet everything but Swift’s voice.

“I’m so excited,” said Lexi York Newell, an IT service desk writer from Bay St. Louis, who has loved Swift since the song about riding shotgun with your hair undone first played from her MP3 long ago.

Dozens of South Mississippi fans are driving to New Orleans this weekend for three marathon shows that sold out immediately last year and are the latest tour stop in what might be the biggest outpouring of fandom any musician has inspired in this lifetime.

Passion runs strong everywhere Swift goes. Fans follow each word, outfit and nail polish color, for subtle clues about what she might release next. Extraordinarily high demand after Swift announced this tour crashed Ticketmaster. People travel to see her and spend thousands of dollars. The Federal Reserve last year credited her with boosting the nation’s economy. Fans at a tour stop in Seattle last summer danced so hard it registered as an earthquake.

“It’s insanity,” Moran said.

Swift has already played in faraway places such as Paris, Australia, Singapore and Brazil. But to these fans, the New Orleans show is special: It is one of the last. The Eras Tour ends in Vancouver this December.

This weekend, New Orleans will likely be filled with too many people celebrating for any of them to think about the end. The Caesar’s Superdome, where Swift will perform, has hung a 140-foot inflatable friendship bracelet that looks like the ones fans collect and trade. Fans are already guessing what celebrities might appear: Perhaps Lana Del Rey and her new husband, a Louisiana swamp tour guide? Merchandise is selling. Hotel rooms are booked. Swift-themed lunches, brunches, dinners, cocktails, parties, bar crawls, Halloween decorations and riverboat cruises are already rolling.

South Mississippi fans searched hard for tickets. Moran bought a resale ticket for more money than it cost to see Swift in Milan, Italy, which she also did last summer. Delphine Shannon, a doctor in Gulfport, saw Swift in Nashville last year and miraculously found floor seats again in New Orleans. Krislyn Branford, who serves in the Air National Guard in Gulfport, was deployed when tickets went on sale but also found floor seats through a friend. Newell’s father surprised her and her mother with tickets just recently.

“I was literally crying,” Newell said.

They love Swift because she works hard, because her lyrics remind them of their lives and because her concerts make them happy.

“You laugh. You cry. You hold hands,” Shera Moran said. “It’s just the best therapy. You feel so, so good coming out of it.”

“It’s the longevity,” said Olivia Moran, her sister-in-law and a physician’s assistant in Gulfport. “The energy. The comradery. You can relate to all these people.”

“She seems like she would be a good friend,” Delphine Shannon, Olivia’s boss, said.

“She’s the girl next door that made it big,” her husband, Matt, added.

The costumes fans wear at each stop are almost a show of their own.

Olivia Moran is wearing an outfit inspired by Swift’s song “The Man,” which she performs in a bedazzled blazer and knee-high boots. The Shannons are wearing ringmaster costumes. Branford is putting green gems on her face in the shape of a snake, and dressing in a sheer, glittering black mesh hoodie with patches that say “blind for love.” Newell said she is wearing “really rhinestone-y cowboy boots.”

They have prepared for months, pre-paying at expensive hotels and coordinating rides for what will probably become a traffic nightmare. Shera Moran is going alone because her ticket cost so much. But she met two women from Gulf Shores and Hattiesburg, and they will carpool. They are strangers, but Moran is not worried. The crowds of mostly women are kind and supportive, she said: “It feels like everyone in the stadium is your friend.”

Branford still remembers discovering Swift on MySpace in the early and mid-2000s, when the social networking site was popular.

“She hasn’t toured in so long,” Branford said.

“We’ve been waiting. We’re here for her.”

This story was originally published October 25, 2024 at 5:00 AM.