The Eras Tour and The Renaissance World Tour: A Celebration Not a Comparison

This past year has been an incredible time to be a fan of pop music thanks to two of the most iconic women in the industry: Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. With their new albums Midnights and Renaissance, respectively, coming out mere months apart and shattering records left and right, fans were swamped with news about the artists’ successes for months. 

Naturally, after seeing the earnings that they did, the next step was to announce tour dates, and so Swift’s The Eras Tour and Knowles-Carter’s Renaissance World Tour were born. Since the albums by these performers came out close together, their 2023 tour dates overlapped a bit, but that shouldn’t be an issue, right? There’s no reason why these two insanely talented women can’t share the spotlight for just a handful of weeks. 

Well, unfortunately, the internet went in a different direction in terms of how they wanted to keep the buzz about these concerts going, and that is to go to battle over which singer is “better.” Yes, as disappointing as it sounds, there are some Swifties and members of the Bey-Hive who think that in order to prove loyalty to their favorite singer, they must tear other women down. Let’s talk a little bit about how harmful the behavior of pitting women against each other is and how it ultimately accomplishes nothing but upsetting some strangers on Twitter. 

Successful, powerful women are by far one of society’s biggest fears. People get easily intimidated by women with the star power that Swift and Knowles-Carter possess. When two women that are famous both trend at once, some people tend to become frustrated by hearing so much about them. Have you ever heard someone around you say “I like her stuff, I’m just sick of hearing it so much” or “She makes good music but it’s not that good.” That’s because people get burnt out on female artists’ successes way faster than they do with men’s. 

Male artists like Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars can dominate the radio for months at a time without anybody batting an eye, but female artists’ new music tends to have an expiration date before people get annoyed. Due to these feelings, and general internalized misogyny, people develop an urge to tear these women down to, more or less, put them back in their place. In this particular instance, the mission is now to tear one woman down in order to build the other one up. 

Of course, there is nothing wrong with having a favorite performer, but a problem arises when people insist that their favorite is superior to someone else’s favorite. Super fans of musicians will say or do anything to protect the honor of their favorite singer, and they have no shame in bullying another artist or their fans online all because they can’t accept the fact that someone has a different opinion. It’s not just fans, media outlets also seem to think that it isn’t interesting enough to write an article about the millions and millions of dollars both of these individual tours are making. In their eyes, there has to be an element of drama and competition, or else nobody will pay attention. 

The concept of the “catfight” is outdated and sexist and accomplishes nothing but fooling people into thinking there’s an issue when there isn’t. Two remarkable women embarking on economy-saving tours at the same time is an inspiring win for young girls everywhere who dream of singing their way to that level of success. Claiming that Swift has superior skills in one aspect of performance won’t diminish Knowles-Carter’s earnings and vice versa. There is nothing stopping us from celebrating these two for their impressive talents except the standards that we as a society have created that other women do nothing but threaten each other’s success. Did we learn nothing from the ending of Mean Girls? Nobody can steal your fave’s crown when everyone already has her own piece. 

This behavior has also never been something that Swift or Knowles-Carter have encouraged. Both women have shaped their careers around feminist messages and the knowledge that their fans have been disrespecting another female artist would not earn these negative people the brownie points from their hero that they think it will. In fact, this isn’t even the first time that these two women have been pitted against each other and I am certain they are not looking to relive that memory anytime soon. 

We all remember that incident during the 2009 VMAs where Kanye West thought it was necessary to jump on stage and hijack 19-year-old Swift’s acceptance speech for Video of the Year to tell the world that, in his opinion, Knowles-Carter deserved the award. Even watching that video fourteen years later, the awkward tension in that room is almost palpable, and when the camera panned to Knowles-Carter’s reaction to this situation, it is clear from her expression that she took no pleasure in West’s attempt at avenging her loss. As a matter of fact, she was so mortified at being associated with this stunt, that later on in the evening, Knowles-Carter was accepting another award and used her speech time slot to bring Swift on stage and give her back her moment to shine. This situation has become undoubtedly infamous and although it’s nice to know that it had a happy, girls-supporting-girls ending, you would think that society would’ve learned its lesson about comparing these two. Besides, if there’s no bad blood between the artists, there shouldn’t be any between their fans.

So what exactly do we gain from, as Swift herself sings, “comparing all the girls who are killing it?” Absolutely nothing because, at the end of the day, you can have all the opinions you want, but these two pop icons aren’t going anywhere anytime soon so you might as well just relax, listen to whatever you like and keep quiet about what you don’t.

• beyonce
• eras tour
• Kent State Universtiy
• ksu
• olivia weber
• Renaissance Tour
• Taylor Swift