To say the crowd skewed young at The Eras Experience by Xenna - a popular Taylor Swift tribute act who performed at Cornerstone Arts Centre last Friday - is an understatement.

The vast majority of the sold-out seats were filled by girls aged 7-11-years old.

More on this in a moment, but first: in case you’re unfamiliar with the format of Swift’s actual Eras Tour (yet still somehow wanted to read this review), it was a gargantuan 22-month worldwide tour that aimed to recreate almost all of of Swift’s previous albums and their very distinct flavours. It broke records, both for stretching to over three hours in length, and for being an enormous critical and commercial success.

Taylor Swift has over 250 songs to her name, so the Eras tour was always going to be just a small cross section of her life’s work. The Eras Experience takes this even further, shortening the show to a less sprawling hour and fifty minutes. This was a wise choice given the age of most of the audience, who screamed and stamped their feet with abandon at Xenna’s impersonation. I couldn’t help thinking that as much as the show was likably aware of its cheap-and-cheerful substitute status, younger audiences probably enjoyed it far more than they would’ve the overstimulating marathon of an actual concert, especially the maximalist Eras Tour.

We were sat in assigned seating - at least at the Cornerstone - and while we were pulled to our feet for a simple dance routine during ‘Shake It Off’, for the most part, the audience was contained within our own personal spaces.

The show was clearly aware of its demographic, with lyrics like ‘The Man’’s “bitches and models” becoming “all of the models” and curse words simply omitted with a tiny pause. The show also (wisely) focused on Swift’s more fast-paced, bouncy tracks and young themes, rather than the contemplative, regretful, and sultry material found in her later albums.

There was almost nothing in terms of set design - a twinkling screen above Xenna simply said the show’s name in cursive and changed shades of pastel as the concert went on, and looked a tad cheap, like a random social media filter. The costumes were more thoughtful, with a real effort to ape the key details of Swift’s most iconic tour outfits, from the sunrise sequinning on her Lover leotard to the slinky one-legged bodysuit of Reputation, to the stark white tailoring of her Tortured Poets Department jacket.

This precision did not extend to Xenna’s quartet of backup dancers, who were simply put in vaguely on-theme matching outfits. It didn’t need to. The dancers added so much life and glee to the show, freestyling joyfully during Xenna’s costume changes, and bringing ice-breaking enthusiasm to the stage that cracked the initial awkwardness.

Xenna herself was a masterclass in professionalism, easing the crowd into chants and whoops and staying on note throughout. I mean as a complete compliment that by the end of the show, I was none the wiser as to who ‘Xenna’ was. She understood completely that her role was not to make the material her own, but to act as a conduit between us, the fans, and the songs we love to sing along to. And sing along we did.

In the audience, there were multiple girls’ birthdays, we found out during one of Xenna’s crowdwork interludes. The dancers handed out friendship bracelets in another. It was the safest of safe spaces. Swift has long been ridiculed for writing music that appeals to little girls and her ultra-feminine but somewhat sexless persona. But what critics miss is a deliberate choice on Swift’s part to align herself more with little girls than grown men who wish to objectify her. Her songs teem with desire - her own. Even as a teenager, her message has always been: my feelings matter, and yours do too. And being in a room with the next generation of girls, who clearly felt incredibly cool, singing their hearts out to this woman whose music was telling them they mattered, felt beautiful. I cringed in my seat for the first two minutes of the evening, and then I shook it off, sang along with every word and left with a huge smile on my face. It was a fantastic experience.