Nissan Stadium is quiet, but radiating with anxious excitement. The titular lyrics of each album loop in between the heavily reverbed repeating line: “it’s been a long time coming.” Dancers float across the stage carrying sunset tapestries on their backs, blooming like dahlias.
The energy builds: “My name is Taylor, and I was born in 1989…Loving him was Red.” The LED wristband on our hands light up, glowing pink and white as it illuminates in sync with each synth of the instrumental.
“Meet me at Midnight … Lover … Lover.” In a cathartic flash, the music crescendos and Taylor Swift appears from beneath one of the tapestries, standing on the pastel riser in a pink and blue bodysuit singing: “It’s you and me, that’s my whole word.” The Eras Tour has just begun in Nashville.
Nearly two years and a journey across the globe later, the tour has consumed the lives of millions worldwide. The Eras Tour, all 149 shows played and 517 hours of music performed, is a once in a lifetime endeavor that has led to the birth of a new era of live music.
With hundreds of thousands of fans joining Swift every night, whether that be in person or watching a grainy live stream from miles away, the beast of a performance has infiltrated culture since its inception.
This tour is nothing like we’ve seen before because it was a dynamic, breathing thing.
This is seen in the fact that, as fans, we’re still a part of the phenomenon and the allure long after that “Karma” confetti has collected on the floor of our stadium: hanging our show’s poster on our walls, wearing merchandise we bought at the show, and tuning in online every weekend to see what heartwrenching mashup she’ll play next; we’re still involved in the culture of the show.
I, Hayden Arnett, went to the first Nashville show, and I, Marlee Fleming, went to both Nashville and New Orleans, and observed this first hand. Each city took on a new energy for the weekend that Eras was in town.
It was as though the cities themselves were putting on an Eras Tour outfit of their own: bars and restaurants had Eras themed menu items, arts and craft shops were cleaned out of supplies, and Etsy shops boomed with business.
Everywhere on those weekends, there were stray holographics beads on the ground, smudges of glitter eyeliner and lipstick on the corners of tables, and people of all walks of life excitedly drawing thirteens on their hands and trading bracelets with each other.
Even Caesar’s Superdome, the venue that hosted Swift in New Orleans, put jumbo friendship bracelets outside the stadium. Hotels had special photo opps specifically for Swifties visiting that weekend, and hotel staff gave out bracelets to guests who were staying with them.
At popular tourist spots, employees could be found with friendship bracelets adorning their wrists, given to them by Swifties as a way of thanking them for making their weekend even more special.
This anticipation and success is likely due to the fact that Swift knew fans expected a lot from this tour, given that she had released three brand new albums and two re-recorded ones since the last time she toured—on the Reputation Stadium Tour—in 2018.
Announcing the tour back in November 2022—right off the tail of releasing her album Midnights—Swift labeled it a “journey throughout the musical eras of my career (past and present),” which also fit nicely with Midnights’ lyrical narrative: “songs about thirteen sleepless nights throughout my life.”
But it was ultimately born from Swift falling back in love with her past work through rerecording her first six albums—Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation—after she lost the master recordings of them when she left her previous record label, Big Machine Records, for Republic Records in 2019.
Wanting to commit to each era “musically, stylistically, and aesthetically,” Swift designed the three and half hour show to represent each era individually, complete with its own outfits, visuals, and renditions of beloved songs.
By the end of the tour, the eras went in the following order: Lover, Fearless, Red, Speak Now, Reputation, Folklore/Evermore, 1989, The Tortured Poets Department, and Midnights.
Formatting the show in this way allowed for each album’s sonic world to exist in all of its nostalgic glory—which was what ultimately propelled the show to be the phenomenon that it was.
It’s rare that an artist is able to refer to their past work—whether satirically, fondly, or indifferently—and still keep it interesting and relevant in the way that Swift has. There’s a certain power that comes from reclaiming past versions of oneself, from acknowledging both the flaws and the beauty simultaneously: it strengthens who one is presently—which is exactly what Swift has done.
What also works so well about the concept of this tour is that, like Swift, we are constantly looking to the past to reckon with and understand the present. The thesis of this tour is to not just celebrate the phases of our lives but to learn something from them.
And we could see this very message portrayed in the crowd, and across the world, every night.
Swifties drew glittery thirteens on their hands because it’s Swift’s favorite number and because she used to wear one herself during her earlier tours.
They spent hours making friendship bracelets with song title acronyms and cryptic inside-joke-only references because Swift wrote: “make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it” on her song “You’re on Your Own, Kid.”
Their outfits were obscure references to ones she’s worn before or were interpretations of Swift’s songs and ideas. They wore sparkly cowboy boots and sheer shimmery dresses; the crowd was its own Eras Tour as much as the one on stage was.
Furthermore, Swift kept the show interesting very deliberately. Throughout the entirety of the tour, she changed the setlist at random, keeping concert-goers on their feet.
She swapped out “Invisible String” for “The One” a few weeks after opening night, added “Nothing New” and “No Body, No Crime”—performing them with Phoebe Bridgers and Haim during their respective tenures as opening acts—and included “Long Live” after the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) in the first U.S. leg of the tour alone.
Perhaps her largest setlist change came on the first night of shows in Paris, France, where she condensed the Folklore and Evermore sets into one, and rearranged the flow of the whole show, just for the addition of the The Tortured Poets Department set after the release her eleventh studio album of the same name.
But among setlist changes, what keeps fans tuned in every night is the acoustic section of the show—where Swift plays both a guitar and piano rendition of deep cut songs at random, which leaves people strategically guessing and hoping to hear their favorite.
Swift went on to also announce her fourth re-recorded album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), at her final show on the first leg of the U.S. tour in Los Angeles, California.
These two announcements, along with Swift’s knack for ‘easter-egging,’ left many Swifties in 2024 to speculate that singing songs from her unreleased re-recorded albums, Taylor Swift and Reputation, meant she would make a spontaneous surprise announcement.
With Swift’s love for surprising fans with an album, re-recording, or music video, elaborate theories analyzing every aspect of her actions while performing helped to promote the tour without her even trying.
Even though the Eras Tour has mostly been an enchanting era in Swifties’ lives, it has not all been positive.
During her South American leg, Brazil faced sweltering heat, which unfortunately resulted in many injuries and one shocking death. 23-year-old Ana Clara Benevides Machado waited months for the best day of her life, but passed before she could live her dream.
Horribly, many fans confirmed that the venue made water practically inaccessible, adding to the horror of the Brazil shows.
In addition to the tragedy in Brazil, Swift had to cancel all of her shows in Vienna, Austria due to planned terrorist attacks. The day before her first show in Vienna, police arrested two men who were planning to attack the tour.
Despite the devastations, the Eras Tour has not only been a cultural success, but an economic one too. Grossing a little over $2 billion in ticket sales—according to a report from the New York Times published the day after the tour ended—the tour is the highest grossing tour of all time (for a second year in a row).
This is a momentous accomplishment, as she surpasses touring moguls like Coldplay, Elton John, and Ed Sheeran, who all rank in the top five of highest grossing tours.
But among the tour taking over cities and communities across the world, it’s also immersed itself in ours.
Juniors Jenna Reecher and Atalaya Burden attended the tour during its weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, but experienced the rainy night three of the concert in music city.
The show was pushed back hours from its scheduled 7:00 p.m. start time due to thunderstorms and lightning near the downtown area. However, Swift waited and went on with the show at 10:00 p.m., performing the three hour show in the pouring rain until early in the morning.
“[The rain delay] made when it actually happened so much more special because we had all the anticipation,” said Reecher. “I just felt pure happiness.”
Dressed in matching Midnights shirts, Reecher and Burden attended their Eras Tour show together, making the experience even more meaningful. Together, the best friends enjoyed every aspect of the night, but especially the moment when Swift first appeared.
“When she came out for the first time, the whole crowd was like extra electric and exciting. And it was so magical, that moment was one of my favorite parts,” said Burden.
From the whimsically cathartic opening of Lover to the joyously unapologetic closer of Midnights, the Eras Tour has captivated Swift’s fan’s lives not only during the show, but through the life it has lived in its two year tenure. Swift’s dedication to her craft has left a lasting legacy on the way music is enjoyed, and The Eras Tour will have a place in musical history forever.
“I think that’s the lasting legacy of this tour, the fact that you have created such a space of joy and togetherness and love,” said Swift at the closing night of The Eras Tour in Vancouver, Canada. “I just want to say that you’re why this is so special.”
