Taylor Swift battles public foes, personal demons in Santa Clara tour stop

Taylor Swift doesn’t seem like a mean-spirited person. But she’s really trying.

On the second date of her “Reputation” stadium tour, which kicked off a two-night run at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on Friday, May 11, she emerged ready for battle.

As flames shot above the huge stage set, with strobe lights flashing and an army of dancers in stylishly rigid armor flanking her under an angry red glow, Swift stomped into view to “… Ready for It?” and its taunts of “Let the games begin! Let the games begin!”

After a particularly trying period that saw Swift fall from grace amid a seemingly endless series of high-profile public feuds with fellow pop stars, exes and entire industries (all vaguely revived through a teaser video ahead of the set), she no longer wants to shake it off — she wants to smash it up.

It’s a role she seems to relish.

Wearing bloodred lipstick, thigh-high boots and a short sequined black catsuit, she looked like a femme fatale out of a James Bond movie, strutting through songs like “I Did Something Bad” (“It just felt so good!”) and “Look What You Made Me Do” (“I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me!”), both from her most recent full-length album, 2017’s triple-platinum-selling “Reputation.”

But it didn’t take long for strains to show in her new, tough-as-nails persona.

It started with a few pleasantries early in the evening, shortly after she took note of the near-perfect weather.

“I played a lot of times in the Bay Area in the last 15 years,” Swift said, surveying the sold-out crowd of 55,000. “You guys are always so insanely welcoming. … You guys are so next level.”

At heart, she remains a people pleaser, and no amount of posturing can hide that. So even as the stage was taken over with inflatable, virtual and mechanical snakes of every size — in response to being called a snake by Kim Kardashian (it’s a long, complicated story) — Swift dropped the hokey scowl and fully embraced the moment.

Besides, it would be impossible not to feel beatific during a medley of “Style,” “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me.”

Swift made full use of the stadium, working her way out to a pair smaller stages in the middle of the floor for an acoustic interlude and totally bonkers versions of “Shake It Off,” on which she was joined by supporting acts Camila Cabello and Charli XCX, and “Blank Space.”

She also didn’t waste a moment of the more than two-hour set, making sure — with the use of light-up wristbands handed out to the audience before the concert — that even those in the farthest corners of the stadium felt as though they were part of the show during the lush ballad “End Game” and a head-spinning version of “Bad Blood.”

With nemesis Katy Perry making peace via a literal olive branch on the opening date of the tour and Kanye West once again making an oaf out of himself, much of the air was taken out of the songs that were explicitly written to tear them down. Swift didn’t make for a convincing antagonist, but she did manage to keep it real with her fans.

“I decided to take a little bit more time off to figure out what my life would be like without a spotlight on it all the time,” she said, explaining her brief hiatus before the release of “Reputation. “Thank you for understanding I needed that. And thank you a million times for being here when I came back.”