Slowly the stadium lights dimmed, but only to be replaced by all of the hundreds of handmade signs reading things like “Taylor Swift you are my idol!” or “1989.” The background suddenly illuminates into a bird’s eye view of a city at night, all of the windows filling the stadium with a comforting yellow light. The ground starts to open, and slowly she rises, the one we had all been waiting for. Taylor Swift steps out, microphone in hand, trailing behind her all of the backup dancers. It is with this that every girl in the stadium let out their most high pitched scream and some even cried at the sight of their idol. She began to sing, and the chorus of the entire Pepsi Center joined her.

Honestly, before attending the Taylor Swift concert myself, I had never really been a fan of her music. It was too mainstream and I liked the idea of going against the flow. Opposed to most of my friends (and practically every girl my age), I had refused to listen to any of her music or acknowledge that she was indeed talented. But then my best friends were all going and the flight to Denver, tickets, and hotel were arranged, so I was in.

From the start everything seemed surreal, too surreal. The opening city scape background for her song “Welcome to New York” seemed over the top and a little cheesy. Every move was choreographed to perfection, and her outfit even had the right sparkle to it to match the windows of the buildings projected into the background. The opening song was fantastically overdone, but with each passing number I felt myself growing more and more fond of Swift.

I was part of what seemed like the 1 percent of the audience that didn’t know every lyric to every song. Surrounding me, everyone was staring up at the singer with open mouths and tears streaming from their eyes. But despite the overdone emotion, Swift made it easy to become absorbed, and made me feel like I really did know her music, and even her as well. She stopped frequently, and at length to express to the audience just how amazing we were. While she has likely said the same to every venue she has ever been to before Denver, it felt good to hear that we were an “outstanding crowd” and very near and dear to her heart. I fell for it with the rest of the crowd.

Before the concert, every audience member was handed a lit up bracelet that corresponded with the lighting in the stadium and the song that Taylor Swift was singing. At one point, she told us all to raise our hands in the air, and with it you could see 13,000 little lights start to wave in a united flowing motion. It was at this moment that you could look around and see the culmination of an audience brought to tears. Swift went into a short and sweet speech about how we were all connected and all of our paths had collided here, to be with her. And in a way it was true. We were all there to see her, we were all looking up at her (figuratively and literally, considering she was standing on a raised podium).

Swift succeeded in connecting with what seemed to be every single person out there, myself included, and that is a large part of what made the concert so special. With every song there was a new outfit, a new choreographed dance, and a new audience member having lost their voice from singing so loud. It felt like a community in her concert. Everyone was there sharing in all the fun to be had, but also sharing in the struggles she talked about in her speeches. At one point, I was even moved to tears because of how much I had felt connected to her and her own problems during her speech about high school before playing the song “15.”

Midway through the show, Swift said, “Happiness is not something that is always there, or easily achieved. It is something we have to work for, and therefore something we should recognize when it comes to us. If you are happy right now, I want you to acknowledge it.” I was happy, and thankful to her for that. Here I am acknowledging that Taylor Swift really did bring me an immense amount of joy. Her music was fun to listen to, and even more fun to dance and sing along to. The sets were incredible and the dances were fantastic to watch. Never before has an artist been able to make me cry, sing, dance, laugh, and lose my voice, all in the course of a little over two hours. I must admit that I have converted and I am now a fan. In fact, in complete honesty, as I finished this review, her song “Out of the Woods” was blaring through my speakers.