Taylor Swift's Red tour – review

Considering it was a two-hour show, the set list was lean, but then, there was a lot of talking to fit in. This was the first of five sold-out dates at the O2, and Taylor Swift discussed feelings and heartbreak and who to approach if you felt you were being bullied. She talked about London and her friends and complimented the 15,000-strong crowd on their galaxy of flashing signs. She asked, aw shucks, if she "Er, could get a picture with you guys?"

There's an internet meme called Taylor Swift Looking Surprised, which comes with a less-than-kind implication that there is somehow dishonesty or at least disingenuousness in her "who me?" humility. Certainly, tonight, Swift seems staggeringly nice. She's a consummate crowd pleaser, at one point even changing into a union jack T-shirt, as if trying to make friends with her location. But in an arena heaving with homemade T-shirts, banners with heavily felt-tipped messages such as "Taylor we're proud of you!" and awestruck girls silently mouthing every word to every song, it is difficult to be cynical. Swift is a professional big sister, and she's very good at it.

What's clear, too, is that she knows how to put on a show. There was little of the country ingenue left in this slick spectacular, other than the banjo inflections of Mean, but Swift appears to have found her feet as a pop star. You Belong With Me's soft-rock genesis received a girl-group makeover, adding to the occasional prom feel that peppered the night. I Knew You Were Trouble's dubstep rumble wobbled the rafters. The Lucky One was transported to the 1920s with a silent movie staging, its doo-wop backbone given a music hall twist. Dancers emerged from a toy box by way of Versailles. She changed costume repeatedly, even mid-song, whipping off her wedding dress in I Knew You Were Trouble (as she did at last year's Brits) to dance more freely in black lace and glittery boots.

Interestingly, Swift doesn't appear to be a natural mover. She does not possess the liquid flexibility of some of her arena-pop peers; she obviously puts her all into the choreography, but seems most at home when she's behind an instrument. In addition to the sparkles, which are truly fun, there are frequent reminders of the quality of the songcraft. All Too Well is transformed into a piano ballad that is genuinely wrenching and it's a welcome crack of vulnerability in the fixed-smile act. The audience was predominantly very young; this felt like a concession to their chaperones.

Throughout the Red tour, Swift has invited a guest on stage with her. Tonight it's the turn of "one of my best friends" Ed Sheeran, who wombles on to perform Lego House. It's another sign of that determined niceness that he gets to do one of his songs, rather than one of hers. And of course there's time for a story: Swift tells us how she heard it on the radio and knew instantly that she had to write with him, and the rest is history, etc etc.

After two hours, the ending, when it comes, is surprisingly punchy. There is no encore, just a celebratory We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, which explodes into a hail of streamers as 15,000 people attempt, somewhat jarringly, to sing along to the spoken words "Like, ever". Earlier, Swift had thanked the crowd "for deciding to hang out with me when there are a thousand other things you could be doing". The volume of the screams that see her off-stage suggest that niceness really does go a long way.