The Queens have arrived. Let’s start with the Black one, they call her Beyoncé. We covered the Renaissance from its release back in 2022, read the review by Tahyira Savanna here. Savanna also attended the RWT on Bey’s 42nd Birthday. Watch her story on Youtube here.
NPR is reporting that Beyoncé single-handedly raised inflation in Sweden when adoring fans from all over showed up for the kickoff of her Renaissance World Tour, sending prices of hotel rooms and restaurant meals, among other things, skyrocketing.
Danske Bank Chief Economist Michael Grahn said it led to a bump up in Sweden’s inflation in May. “It’s quite astonishing for a single event. We haven’t seen this before,” Grahn told the Financial Times.
Not only did she go on an international tour, she released a film that was purposely distributed in locations she could not actively put on a show. Beyoncé‘s ninth concert tour pulled in $579 million, making it the highest-grossing tour by a female artist in history prior to Taylor Swift, and the seventh-highest-grossing tour overall as reported by Entertainment Weekly. Live Nation has announced that the superstar’s global trek earned more than $579 million worldwide, with 2.7 million fans attending across 56 dates in 39 cities. The tour, produced by Parkwood Entertainment and promoted by Live Nation, was a cultural phenomenon, with attendees dressed in their finest silver outfits meticulously documenting every stop on social media.
Beyoncé wrote, directed and produced “Renaissance,” which is focused on the tour for her Grammy-winning album. It debuted in 2,539 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, as well as 94 international territories.
Unlike her 2009 VMAs stage mate who she happily returned a VMA too, Taylor Swift is still on tour. Her film, released back in October blew the Renaissance post-Thanksgiving weekend.
“Welcome to the Eras Tour” – Taylor Swift.
Swift, who produced the film, went around the Hollywood studio system to distribute the film, making a deal directly with AMC, the largest exhibition company in the United States. With her 274 million Instagram followers, Swift hardly needed a traditional marketing campaign to get the word out. “The Eras Tour,” directed by Sam Wrench, is not just playing on AMC screens. The company, based in Leawood, Kansas, worked with sub-distribution partners Variance Films, Trafalgar Releasing, Cinepolis and Cineplex to show the film in more than 8,500 movie theaters globally in 100 countries.
Her “Eras Tour” grossed over $1 billion — $1,039,263,762 — making it the single highest-grossing trek of all time and the first tour ever to cross the 10-digit threshold. The stadium tour, which continues internationally, famously crashed Ticketmaster’s site and re-sale prices became astronomical. The speed with which she broke the touring record, March-November, is also unprecedented. By comparison, Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour” this year set the previous touring record with an impressive $939 million haul, but he did it in 328 shows — more than five times as many shows as Swift. It also took the legendary Sir Elton five years, from Sept. 8, 2018, to July 8, 2023, to set the record due largely to pandemic delays and his hip injury. Additionally, “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour” primarily played arenas where Swift was all stadiums, with an average capacity of 72K. (Source Pollstar)
Swift had three albums in the top 10 best-selling of 2023: two re-recorded versions (Speak Now and 1989), and her latest studio record, Midnights. Last month, Harvard announced that I would be teaching a class next semester called “Taylor Swift and Her World,” an open-enrollment lecture partly about Swift’s work and career and partly about literature (poems, novels, memoirs) that overlaps with, or speaks to, that work. When the news came out, my inbox blew up with dozens of requests, from as far away as New Zealand.
Come Barbie, let’s go Party!
In 1959, Ruth Handler created the plastic icon with a small waist, high-heels and (as we all know) quite the bust. Barbie fell out of style in recent decades, and the company that introduced her to our toy shelves, Mattel, neared bankruptcy. But in 2023, she made a comeback as the protagonist of the highest-grossing film of the year, which earned $1.4 billion globally. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling play the stereotypical versions of Barbie and Ken, who leave behind their seemingly perfect reality to confront the highs and lows of life in the real world. America Ferrera, Issa Rae, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu and Michael Cera also star in various roles. The film infused the Summer with women empowerment pink.
Not only just entertainment, women won the year in fads, fast – fashion, and tik tok fame.
Girl Math – justifying a purchase.
