Taylor’s 13 Trailer

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour docuseries premieres a month tomorrow, December 12, but 13 is her favourite number, and today is November 13. So a gift for Swifties – she shared the first trailer for the series today. And, well, it has everything. Because she says in the preview, her goal is to overserve her fans. 

In general, in most environments, overserving is not a good thing. Not at the bar, not at the table, and not usually in art. This goes back to the writing principle – giving the audience what they need, and not what they want. Too much is what they want. Just enough is what they need. Taylor Swift, however, has always been a too much girl. 

There are exceptions to every rule though. And this is an exception. I don’t mind the too muchness that we’re likely getting in the docuseries because it’s hitting every appetite. For the Swift nerds to need to know everything about everything, this obviously works. For the not-quite-as-tapped-in gossips who need their TNT fix, this works too because as you can see, Travis Kelce is present and accounted for and we’ll get a proper helping of their private moments to keep the mythology around their relationship going. 

For those obsessed with the work that goes into being Taylor Swift, and I include myself in this. And I don’t mean the dance choreography or planning whatever Easter eggs and other stunts, but really the bit at the end, as she’s – I think – building out how she wants to merge multiple songs together, and layer them on top of one other, as part of the surprise track section of the show. 

Taylor has never restrained herself from documenting her proficiency, how capable she is where music is concerned. It might be my favourite thing about her, this particular and personal vanity, that she considers songwriting to be her superpower and that she’s conceited AF about it. Conceit is usually seen as an unattractive attribute. Or, rather, in women it’s much more pejoratively weighted. In a male athlete, they call it “confidence”. And we could sub out “conceited” here for “confident” in Taylor’s case but I don’t want to. Not when she’s flexing it, not when she wants it to be filmed, and broadcast, by choice, with intention. Why? Because she can back her sh-t up. These are her songs, she wrote them, she knows them front and back and can twist and reshape and reimagine them on the fly and with the wind. Bonus – she can make it entertaining, this is GOOD TV. 

It’s good holiday TV. Which is why I’m saving it for holiday viewing, not on the day the first episodes drop but when the series is complete, for a one-shot gorge of the whole thing – Taylor overserves, and I will overeat.