Live music: Taylor Swift: 1989 World Tour

Before a note is played, we learn the names of Taylor Swift’s cats, and what her parents grew on their farm. We learn that Swift likes to make cookies for fans, and she gives us her pre-show nutrition tips. We even learn some of her darkest fears, such as not having fresh breath.

Okay: Kurt Cobain she ain’t, but this is enough to make you mistake her for an actual girl next door, rather than a seven-Grammy-winning pop behemoth. So, does she get any more interesting when she shuts up and sings?

The short answer is yes, but it takes a little while. A lot of this show, like Swift’s current album, 1989, takes nostalgia to new extremes — that was the year she was born.

So, it’s not such a surprise that ‘Welcome to New York’, her anthem to the dulling gentrification of the Big Apple, opens with a deluge of visual cliches: skyscrapers, Broadway signs.

Borrowings from Madonna (but without the transgressive sexual politics), Kylie Minogue, hiphop, and Hollywood musicals follow, all rendered in the emollient, over-produced style of 1989.

Swift is a pop Swiss army knife — there’s nothing she can’t do. But because of that, the music can feel a little cosmetic, compared with her lyrics, which are of a higher order than the average pop tune.

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This is not to say that Swift doesn’t have spirit. She raises the roof on the 3arena, from the moment our individual wristbands light up to provide a continuous, ‘crowd-sourced’ lightshow.

Some dazzling set pieces follow, especially for ‘You Are in Love’, for which a raised platform makes a front row of the balcony seats.

Swift peppers the songs with earnest monologues that range from sensible advice about the dangers of social media to bizarrely conservative lessons in love that would not look out of place in a 1950s girls’ magazine.

Her ‘crew’ of friends, all famous, or thin, appear on screen for the costume changes, to moan about the difficulty of “relationships”. Swift is the pop queen of the over-sharing age for a reason,but the third time this bunch appears is genuinely dismaying.

Taylor swift singing Enchanted in Dublin tonight! pic.twitter.com/q35ioMqSne

— Lauren (@EndUpHere33) June 29, 2015

Swift, though, is always able to raise spirits, especially with an atmospheric version of ‘Out of the Woods’. ‘Shake it Off’ follows as the encore — a sweetly satisfying finish.