Concordia students share the lengths they have gone to attend the year’s biggest concerts.
This summer, pop superstars took the world by storm by concurrently embarking on international tours. With Taylor Swift and The Weeknd breaking records every week, their concerts have been flooding social media feeds for months.
However, none of these tours included any stops in Montreal. For Concordia students, this meant catching these shows would have been impossible without travelling considerably long distances. The Concordian spoke with some of the students who went the extra mile (thousands, even) to see these shows and asked about their experiences.
7000 kilometres for Harry Styles
After Harry Styles’ 2021 Montreal show was cancelled, second-year psychology student Samantha Vizzi decided she had finally had enough: “I took this opportunity to see him as many times as I could,” Vizzi said. Since last summer, she has put in 27 hours and 7700 kilometres of travel by bus, train, and flight to catch Love on Tour three times. Harry Styles waved at her on her birthday during his New York show, and she attended the tour’s final show in Italy.
Maria Luisa Velez, a second-year communications student, also caught Love on Tour last year in New York, flying in from Colombia. She explains that sometimes, travelling for a show is the easier solution: “They don’t do tours there [certain cities] or they only have a few dates available, which makes it harder to get tickets.”
5,500 kilometres for Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE World Tour
Alexandre Jevans Silva —also in his second year in communications— credits his home country France with helping him secure tickets to see Beyoncé in Paris: “I would not have been able to get Club Renaissance tickets anywhere else” In France, Ticketmaster uses a first-come, first-serve system instead of verified fan presales. His €500 seats in Paris cost $1000 CAD in Toronto. He especially cherishes having made the trip home due to the “special feeling of wanting to see your city represent and be the loudest” (or for Beyoncé, the quietest).
The Eras Tour: turning dreams into reality
Daniela Orrego-Grosso, a first-year economics student, is seeing Taylor Swift in Toronto next fall alongside her cousin, who is joining her all the way from Peru. The two share childhood memories of listening to Swift’s albums and dancing together. “My cousin didn’t hesitate to come, even if it meant lots of paperwork to get a Canadian Visa.”
For these students, travelling was not an obstacle, but rather an opportunity to create more memories beyond the shows.
