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Super Saturday Night

Superbowl Weekend | February 4, 2017

In February 2017, Taylor headlined DirecTV‘s 12th “Annual Super Saturday Night pre-Super Bowl” concert in Houston, Texas. According to Rolling Stone, tickets to the event were given away via promotions, so people in audience knew they were lucky to be at the show.

The weekend of Super Saturday Night included the ultimate invite-only fan pre-party prior to the concert. It was attended by 9,000+ fans and was a Swiftie wonderland complete with makeup/glam stations, donuts walls, a custom T-shirt design station, a flower wall photo op, gourmet food and drinks, and a special message from Taylor herself shown prior to the concert.

The Show

Prior to Taylor’s performance, actress Ruby Rose amped up the speakers and hit the turntables for a DJ performance to hype up the crowd. “If you guys scream loud enough, Taylor will hear you,” she hollered from behind her turntables. Not to mention, the club was also filled with actresses, celebrities, NFL athletes and invited guests. If the crowd wasn’t amped up before, they were sure to be then.

About 15 minutes later (no doubt after she heard fans’ chants of “Taylor! Taylor!” from her cat- and Haim-sister-filled dressing room), Taylor emerged to face 9,000 screaming fans. What followed was a 90-minute exercise in pop perfection. “You have come from all over the world — possibly to see football, but would it be all right with you if we played some music first?” Taylor asked the crowd during the opening number, 1989 bonus track and single “New Romantics.” The answer was a resounding yes. Next up were the hits “22”, “I Knew You Were Trouble.” and “Blank Space”. Fans were given LED bracelets upon entering the venue, which changed colors in sync with each song, from “Style” to “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story.”

But, the show wasn’t just filled with hits that fans have heard her sing live several times before. Taylor performed “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” from the Fifty Shades Darker film, for the first time as an acoustic solo number. She also ran through a pair of songs she wrote for other artists: Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s “This is What You Came For” and a terrific take on Little Big Town’s “Better Man” that proved she still had plenty of country twang left in her. She took to a sparkling piano for fan-favorite “All Too Well” and an “Enchanted“/”Wildest Dreams” mashup before closing with a trio of 1989 tunes: “Bad Blood,” “Out of the Woods” and, of course, “Shake It Off.”

Sunday may belong to football fans. But Saturday night was all about the Swifties.

Only Concert of 2017

Last year, Taylor’s Grand Prix performance in Austin was her one-and-only live event of 2016. And this turned out to be it for 2017, too. As in, she didn’t plan to perform another concert until at least 2018. At the time, this was shocking news. Taylor said:

«I have to be really honest with you about something: As far as I know, I'm doing one show in 2017. And as far as I know, this is that one show. So what I'm trying to tell you is, by coming here tonight, you're essentially attending 100 percent of my tour dates for the year, so thank you! You're the crowd in my most recent daydreams, when I'm thinking about being onstage, so I was wondering: If you don't feel like dancing for yourself or screaming for yourself, you don't feel in the mood or whatever, you're like stressed out, would you do it for me tonight?»

Taylor Swift

Concert TV Special

In the weeks following, the Taylor Swift NOW channel debuted a 3-part series with exclusive footage of Taylor’s performance. For fans IRL, AT&T recreated the excitement of the Super Saturday Night pre-party atmosphere with a follow-up event at The Grammy Museum Mississippi that debuted an early look at the series and included many of the party elements from the original. Through social, AT&T engaged the Swiftie community with content pieces that showed them how to recreate elements of the SSN pre-party at home as they hosted their own watch parties to tune-in and view the concert. Setlist posters were created for the series, all focused on highlighting favorite songs and imagery from the event. Fans also gravitated towards the punny food items that were served and then shared in photos on social. There were recipe how-to videos so fans could recreate “Shake It Off Milkshakes,” “Loving Him Was Red Velvet Cupcakes,” and “I Knew You Were Truffle Fries” — all based off of Taylor’s biggest hits. The Super Saturday Night excitement was concluded with a splash by releasing a Super Satuday Night Special Cut in the final week of promotion.

The Infamous Livestream

The Great Flower Mural Incident of 2017

In the Taylor Swift fandom, the “Great Flower Mural Incident of 2017” is known as the biggest scam by Taylor Swift and “Direct TV Now” to date.

When nearing Taylor’s AT&T promoted pre superbowl concert, the company planned a “special Swiftie surprise”, and an “incredible” livestream with amazing surprises for the fans. Because of Taylor’s long running break and the months previous news that she was back in the studio, her tendency to release new music during livestreams, and AT&T’s constant “you don’t want to miss it” statements, the fans anxiously expected new music.

In the end, it was a flower mural where you could put a tag with your name (you could also send other friends “flower shoutouts”). Nikki, the hostess, was incredibly uneducated in Taylor Swift and geography. Asking “is Turkey a nickname or a country” and calling Taylor’s mom a cat as well as constant mumbling and shaking. It is known by Swifties all over the world as one of the biggest let downs in the fandom’s history, following RED‘s loss of the Grammy award for “Album of the Year” in January 2014. #REDdeservedaGrammy

Highlights of the Livestream

“Is Turkey a nickname or a country?”
“I know you are very into Taylor’s cats. I know you’re very into Andrea’s life.”
“Do you as hard as you can.”
“Take a bath sometime.”
Someone screaming about Nikki when they unmuted the feed
*guy in background violently drops metal pan*
*aggressively promoting Taylor Swift NOW*

The Year Is 2089
Child: “Grandma! Here are some flowers.”
Grandma: **flashback to the great flower mural incident of 2017**
or:

Person 1: “Wow, that’s disappointing.”
Person 2: “Not as disappointing as the great flower mural incident of 2017.”

Flower mural today.
Flower mural tomorrow.
Flower mural forever.