We brought our daughter to the Taylor Swift concert last night.  She is 7 years old.  Her first concert was Outside Lands Festival in Golden Gate Park.  She saw Drive-By Truckers, Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene among others on Day 3 of that festival.  She saw Okkervil River open for Wilco at Red Rocks and Chris Isaak at the Botanical Gardens.  And she continues to tell me she does not like concerts!

Well, that changed last night when she got to see Kelly Pickler open for Taylor Swift on the first of two nights of the Fearless 2010 Tour at the Pepsi Center.  Tickets for this show sold out months ago, but they released a batch of tickets last week….so I decided to snag a few.  I was worried it would be too loud for her, because we were up to the side of the stage…but the sound didn’t seem to bother her.  (even though she complained Wilco were too loud at Red Rocks…hmmm).

Our seats were a little scattered and the venue staff were less than friendly when it came to letting us sit on laps or squish together.  So our 7 year old sat with her Grandpa Tony while her mother and I wandered around and spent most of the show standing and watching from a distance.  According to Grandpa…she was singing and dancing and flipping her hair around in her best Taylor impersonation the entire night.

As for the performance itself, I have to say I was impressed.  This 20 year old has a great voice, writes her own songs and has a stage presence almost too big for the Pepsi Center.  She blasted through almost every song from her two albums; changing outfits, backdrops and stage scenes to match all the high school drama that play out in her songs.

There were a few promotional videos played during some set changes and after one of them the spotlight found Taylor in the audience.  She worked her way through the crowd, hugging hundreds of fans, on her way to a center stage where she performed her first hit song, Tim McGraw.  The crowd was a frenzy of screaming girls, flashing cameras, braces and pimples.  Oh, high school…man, I don’t miss it!

Love Story was the song our daughter was waiting for and it was quite a production…with a princess castle and characters and dancers straight out of The Princess Bride. I figured that would be the finale, but she went on to do a few more songs before leaving the stage around 10:15.  This is when we decided it was time to go.  As we were walking out, we did hear her coming back on for an encore, but our night was over…and our daughter was asleep before we got home.

Overall, I think it was a great production put on by a talented artist.  Sure, I would love it if my daughter would be into Jenny Lewis, Karen O or Bat For Lashes like she’s into this pop stuff…but if there is a pop artist out there for her to look up to, I will sign off on Taylor any day.  She still seems real (except for her look of disbelief when the crowd cheers for her) and has a pretty good message for young girls.  I just hope she doesn’t go off the deep end like most of these young stars do…because I’m afraid in Taylor‘s case she just might kill one of those boys she likes to condemn in her songs…the ones who ‘do bad things’.

(there you go Ken…I blogged bout Taylor Swift!  Didn’t think I would do it, did ya?)