RATING: **** out of four

The Swifties were more than ready for it as Taylor Swift kicked off two sold-out nights at Rogers Centre this weekend.

The Grammy-winning singer’s Reputation Stadium tour had everything, including snakes (some of them inflated to the size of a small building), girl power (thanks to her fabulous backing singers and openers Charlie XCX and Camila Cabello), fireworks, a fountain (yes, a fountain), gigantic screens, stage balloons, a seesaw, a throne, pyro and confetti. Lots of confetti.

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Like all the great artists that have come before her, Swift has demonstrated she’s not just going to repeat herself. So everything here was bigger, better, bolder and yet more intimate. She worked hard to convey a feeling that even though there was 50,000 people in the building, she wanted to forge a connection with the person in the very last row. There have been plenty of stadium shows that have come through Toronto already this year, but this was a redefinition of that that experience can — and should — be. It was a wild extravaganza built around great music and it was one of the best concerts I’ve seen in 2018.

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The theme of the show, particularly owing to the repeated use of snakes, also addressed Swift’s attempt on Reputation to reconcile her private life and public persona. “You definitely see the ups and downs that I’ve gone through,” she remarked during one of the several instances she broke from the song and dance to really connect with the audience.

Swift has been playing stadiums in Toronto since her 2013 tour behind Red, but as she told the crowd this is her first full stadium tour. She also reminded fans that Friday night was her 10th time playing in the city.

“We’re now into double digits.”

Leaning heavily on last year’s Reputation LP (her sixth), and coming on to the stage to the sounds of Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation, Swift’s 19-song set list covered a musical career that’s seen her go from country wunderkind to pop princess.

Starting with a splashy bang of …Ready for It? and I Did Something Bad, she segued into a medley that included Gorgeous, Style and two of her deeper cuts, 2008’s Love Story and You Belong With Me. There was a funny cameo from Tiffany Haddish, appearing onscreen to to advise fans the Old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now (“Because she’s dead!”) before she launched into a glitzy, over-the-top rendition of Look What You Made Me Do.

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But the real highlight came partway through the show. After a fun-filled rendition of Shake It Off, accompanied by Charlie XCX and Camila Cabello on a side stage in the middle of the crowd, Swift stood with just her acoustic guitar and recounted how people tried to steer her away from shifting genres as she started to transition her sound on Red and then 2014’s 1989. People wouldn’t understand it, she said. “I remember saying, ‘I think (my fans) are like me’… so because of you, I’ve been able to play around.”

She then reimagined two of her more heavily produced songs — Dancing With Our Hands Tied and Out of the Woods — by herself and proved that she has one of the best voices in modern music. It actually left me thinking that she she should do an entire solo acoustic tour.

Running through the crowd, she moved over to another side stage where she played Blank Space and Dress before a serpent contraption whisked her back to the main stage as she sang a blistering version of Bad Blood that featured her dancers suspended in mid-air.

Plunking herself in front of a piano, Swift made one of the night’s strongest connections as she drew a line between herself and her fans before playing a medley of Long Live and Reputation’s closing track New Year’s Day.

“I understand how time works. I understand calendars. I understand people get older… Over the years, I’ve gotten to see people go through the phases of their lives… but it’s a pretty public life that I’ve got going on, so you’ve definitely seen ups and downs I’ve gone through and yet, here we are in this stadium all singing together and it makes me feel so, so… supported.”

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Ending the concert there would have provided a nice emotional coda, but this tour is all about partying and having fun.

Desert scenery breezed by during a closing run of runes that kicked off with Getaway Car. Then on Call It What You Want and the show closers We Are Never Getting Back Together and This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Swift and her dancers frolicked around a fountain while images of a Gatsby-like mansion were projected on the screen and fireworks blazed off the side of the stage.

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It was opulent and a fitting end to such an extravagant stage production.

The show ended — no encore — with the words “And in the death of her reputation, she felt truly alive” emblazoned on the screen.

It was again a reminder of how Swift used Reputation to reconcile her public image.

But now, the only reputation she has to worry about is being one of the best live acts playing today. I can’t wait to see what she does next.