How Taylor Swift and Beyoncé’s Eras Tour coverage ignored female crews
Although Beyoncé’s stadium run was billed as Renaissance rather than Eras, commentary frequently folded the two tours into one “Eras” conversation. Across Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s parallel spectacle, the celebrity became the guaranteed centre of the story: set lists, costume changes, ticket prices and filmed choreography.
Fan affection was treated as a force of nature; backstage work was treated as an inconvenience. Female tour crews supply the skills that let an arena stage function, yet their names tend to vanish when the cameras turn towards the performer.
This was a choice within journalism, not a shortage of available material. Production credits, professional profiles and interviews with touring workers offer plenty of information about who builds the show, how it travels and what the work costs.
Feminist criticism does not require dismissing the thrill of stadium spectacle. It asks what our reporting makes visible, whose labour becomes evidence of success and which workers remain scenery.
Fans got the story, crews got the margins
Star coverage tends to present the stage as a finished product. A costume change, a surprise song or a perfectly synchronised lighting cue produces a memorable clip, while the monitoring, maintenance and preparation behind it remain unseen.
Women working in those roles face a particular visibility problem. When a report mentions them, they can become interchangeable “behind-the-scenes” figures, valued as human-interest details but denied the professional credit given to the star. That imbalance turns real expertise into atmosphere.
What counts as tour crew?
“Tour crew” covers more than the famous performers. It includes guitar technicians, stage managers, lighting programmers, wardrobe teams, hair and makeup artists, drivers, security staff, medics, caterers and the specialists who keep equipment safe.
Their jobs combine technical knowledge with relentless timetables. Load-in, sound checks, the show, load-out and equipment maintenance can stretch across exhausting hours. Touring can provide paid work and rare expertise, but fixed-term contracts, insecure schedules and limited recovery time can make that opportunity costly.
Gender shapes which tasks attract notice. Hair, makeup, wardrobe and hospitality work can be framed as supplementary because it is associated with women, while technical roles are presented as naturally masculine. The result is a hierarchy of attention that has little to do with the actual length or difficulty of the work.
Gender makes some labour easier to dismiss
Public examples show how different the crew story can be. KelliSade has toured with Swift as a guitarist and drummer, while Grace McGinness has worked as guitarist and guitar technician. On Beyoncé’s tours, drummer Sharon Pakpaha, known as Shak, and percussionist Yemi Alade have performed prominent musical roles.
Naming these women does more than correct a credit. It challenges the assumption that technical authority belongs to one kind of body, and that women are present mainly to maintain an image. Their careers also reveal skill developed through repetition, touring networks and trust between colleagues.
An intersectional account should ask how race, sexuality, disability and migration status change a worker’s experience of the same schedule. “Women in the crew” is not a single social position. Reporting that treats every woman as the same backdrop will reproduce the flattening it claims to correct.
Australian coverage followed the star format
In Melbourne, Swift’s Eras dates at Marvel Stadium made stadium logistics and resale prices familiar local stories. At Sydney’s Accor Stadium, the same tour generated breathless accounts of queues, transport and fan behaviour. These economic impacts matter, but the framing again placed the star above the tour managers, riggers, cleaners and wardrobe workers who made each event function.
Australian media also brought familiar linguistic habits to the spectacle. The brisk “arvo” interview and the reassuring “she’ll be right” can make celebrity coverage sound lively while its questions remain fixed on the artist. Adding a crew member to that format as an afterthought would not change the hierarchy; giving workers a substantive voice would.
Broadcast music coverage on triple j and other outlets has often favoured artist interviews and performance highlights. The trans-Pacific time difference also shapes the rhythm of coverage: American late-night clips become Australian morning material, while local load-in and load-out work happens outside those broadcast hours. Time zones can quietly decide whose labour fits the news schedule.
The work behind the eyelines
Official credits, award listings, trade interviews and workers’ own posts already contain the material for a fuller story. A useful profile would explain a guitar technician’s role during a costume change, a stage manager’s authority over a delay or a wardrobe worker’s process for repairing a costume mid-tour.
Reporting should also examine conditions rather than treating backstage work as picturesque adventure. Questions about pay, contracts, shift length, injury prevention, harassment and access to changing facilities reveal whether a tour’s glamour rests on a sustainable working life. None of this requires invading anyone’s privacy; it requires asking people with relevant expertise.
Comparing spectacle with backstage labour
The same hierarchy shapes coverage of online slot multipliers: a software change can eclipse the technicians who keep the platform running. Live-event journalism can make the same substitution, elevating the superstar and hiding the production team.
A better comparison keeps the audience and the workers in the same frame. It asks how a show feels, who enables that feeling and who carries the consequences.
| Coverage focus | Work left out | What fuller reporting can add |
|---|---|---|
| Sell-out crowds, queues and resale prices | Hospitality teams, security staff, drivers and overnight load-ins | Worker accounts, shift conditions and economic contributions |
| Costume reveals and choreography | Wardrobe construction, hair and makeup, dancers and costume repairs | Trade interviews, credited specialists and repair processes |
| Celebrity interviews and performance highlights | Guitar technicians, touring musicians, stage managers and lighting programmers | Names, expertise, authority and decisions affecting the show |
Name the people who make the show possible
Next time a tour arrives, start with the credits. Look for the guitar technicians, lighting designers, stage managers, wardrobe specialists and safety workers behind the images, then ask publications to report their names and expertise alongside the star’s.
Read the archives at SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS, subscribe to its newsletter, and tell editors and other readers that crew credit belongs in every tour story. Make the people behind the spectacle visible.