The Eras Tour: Taylor Swift’s Case That She’s the Best — Ever
“It’s been a long time coming.”
A video on TikTok from Anna and Greg Albert recently went viral (almost 100,000 likes) on the platform for depicting a woman’s reaction to the beginning of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stop-over at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois during the first weekend of June 2023. She avoided spoilers (and there were spoilers) for the two-and-a-half months that they existed and was able to witness Taylor’s entrance to the concert with pure bliss. She’s not holding a phone or a screen (her husband is recording for her, but noticeably, he pans to Taylor sparingly and keeps the camera focused on his wife’s face and the overwhelming emotions that pour down it). She is simply immersed in the hype-inducing opening to the Eras Tour and the promise that somewhere underneath the Festival of the Lion King-esque plumage is the artist who she clawed through Ticketmaster, re-sellers, congressional intervention, and a 2000+ person/bot queue to obtain.
I love this video for so many reasons. I love that she allows herself to fully experience the moment she avoided spoilers for. I love that she maximized the love she could feel in her heart for the concert of a lifetime. I love that Anna’s husband is connecting with her in the camera, rather than Taylor (there will be countless thousands of videos from every angle if you want to relive those on TikTok or YouTube — and a forthcoming documentary surely). And I love that she avoided spoilers because it helped show me that I was not the only one who did so.
There have been concerts in my life I’ve known the set lists for ahead of time. I primed myself on Paul McCartney to know how much of his concert would be solo work v. Beatles work. I was aware of Billy Joel’s Fenway Park set because he posts his itineraries on Instagram constantly. With the Eras Tour, though, I wanted to go in as blind as I did with some of the other seminal cultural events of my life, like Avengers: Endgame or the final season of Game of Thrones. Before the Eras Tour, I’d never seen Taylor Swift live (I became a Swiftie during the Lover Era; R.I.P. Loverfest). I knew her concerts were capital-E Experiences and I wanted as pure an experience as possible. I could predict songs like “Love Story,” “Blank Space,” and “Anti-Hero,” sure. But I wanted no part of awareness for what would be coming at any turn.
I wanted this experience because I realized that the Eras Tour may very well go down as Taylor Swift’s definitive concert-going experience. (She’s spoken before about how she knows an apex is — by definition — limited.) Crucially, based on all the effort that went into this tour and how Taylor is committed to shattering records and remaking what the concept of touring music can be — coupled with everything she’s accomplished musically in her career (and especially in the past four years) that is unprecedented even when compared to The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Mariah Carey, and more — I realized the Eras Tour needed to be spoiler-free for me for something more than a glorified Taylor Swift-Con. I knew this would go down as the definitive concert-going experience from the greatest musician of all-time.
That is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and a moment I am so grateful to have been able to be a part of — for so many reasons (being alive, being old enough, being Swiftie enough, being financially independent enough; I recognize those privileges). I’m not writing this article to make the case that Taylor Swift is the GOAT in the music industry (that will come another day in the future). I’m observing that the Eras Tour is Taylor Swift’s boldest, most underlined item on her “I’m the best to ever do it” resumé yet.
Yes, it is my opinion that — at the age of thirty-three — Taylor is already on the Mount Rushmore of music and The Beatles are maybe the only thing in her way. But even then? I think it might be over. The Eras Tour for Taylor Swift is like Super Bowl LI (versus the Atlanta Falcons) for Tom Brady or Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in the same year for Steven Spielberg. It will be forever an iconic aspect of Taylor Swift’s career, one of the most defining events of her story and of the culture, writ large (certainly the seminal concert tour of the 2020s, if not the entire millennium), and a shoe-in for the first paragraph of her obituary (which will come in the 2200s). The Eras Tour is seemingly constructed by and for Taylor Swift to officially position herself as an undeniable fixture in the world’s eternal culture.
If you’re a Swiftie, you understand what I mean. If you’re Swift-curious, you might be uncertain what the Eras Tour even is exactly and why it is happening in this exact manner that has buoyed the singer of mega-hits into the position of the “most famous” and “most on top of her game” that she has ever been. In Taylor Swift’s career, each of her albums also coincides with “eras” in her artistry. Fearless debuted in 2008 and with it came an era of flowing summer dresses, spinning, acoustic guitars, cowboy boots, and an overall young country vibe. Reputation debuted in 2017 and with it came an era of high heels, black lipstick, latex outfits, snakes, and electropop music. Each album has its own style, aesthetic, and mindset: its own era.
For a long time, Swift’s albums would roll out on a strict schedule of every two years. Her aforementioned sixth album, Reputation, broke this with a three-year gap after 1989 and though her seventh album, Lover, aimed to return to “every two years,” the pandemic shattered it. In 2020, one year after Lover, she debuted Folklore and Evermore in the same five-month period. In 2021, she released re-recorded versions (“Taylor’s Version” is an endeavor from Swift to reclaim ownership over her first six albums which had their masters and creativity held hostage by Big Machine owner Scooter Braun and CEO Scott Borchetta) of both Fearless and Red that came complete with never-before-heard “From the Vault” tracks. In 2022, she premiered Midnights, her return to the pop genre, which became the closest thing the Eras Tour has to a focal point. In 2023, she has announced her next re-recording, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), released additional bonus tracks for Fearless, Lover, and Midnights, and seems to be existing in all eras at once. She is currently a Doctor Manhattan nexus point for her own career.
Because of this deluge of music, there was immense uncertainty for what Taylor’s next tour would be. The Reputation Stadium Tour wrapped in 2018 and before the Eras Tour was announced in the autumn of 2022, it was clear we’d reach five years without a global, live Taylor Swift experience. With four original albums and two re-recordings since her last live tenure, she had limitless options for the identity of her tour. She could chalk Lover and Loverfest up as a loss; she could recreate Loverfest in 2.0 fashion; she could adhere to touring only her most recent release, Midnights; she could embark on a smaller, more intimate tour to perform Folklore and Evermore, which many insiders considered unable to exist in a stadium setting. The only thing that was certain was that she was going to tour again soon — and with more demand than ever in her career.
Instead of any of these options, though, what Taylor Swift created and designed (with her indefatigable team of artists and producers behind her) was a sweeping retrospective of her entire career: The Eras Tour. She described the initial release of Midnights on Instagram as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” Clearly, between Midnights (which explores moments from her past, both recent and distant) and the re-recordings of her classic albums, Taylor has found herself in a nostalgic, reflective, celebratory headspace. The Eras Tour is a statement display of everything she has loved from throughout her career and all the complicated emotions that resurfaced while she unearthed her past musicality.
Every concert in the Eras Tour begins with a soft, intermittent musical prelude that combines aural music, the “It’s been a long time coming” lyric from “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” and a representative refrain from each era (“Loving him was red,” Taylor sings. “And they said speak now,” she croons from years gone by. “I’m Taylor and I was born in 1989!” she announces). This is the emblematic tease of what the Eras Tour features: a journey into each individual era of Taylor’s career (sans Taylor Swift, her 2006 debut album) with song(s), outfits, styles, and demeanors to celebrate each of her albums, each of her musical identities, and each of the musical facets of her career that so many have loved and resonated with. The concert begins with six songs from Lover and continues with three from Fearless, five from Evermore (which she does not hate), four from Reputation, one from Speak Now (“Enchanted,” princess-style), four from Red, seven from Folklore (“The 1” also supplanted “Invisible String” midway through the tour with a dreamy redo of “You meet some woman on the Internet and take, her, home”), five from 1989, two acoustic/piano surprise songs from any era, and finally, seven from Midnights.
Any one of these sections on its own would be enough to sear Taylor’s live performance into my memory forever, but she does all of them. Every night. That is the Eras Tour set list. The concert experience began on St. Patrick’s Day 2023 in Glendale, Arizona and it will wrap its U.S. leg in Inglewood during August before going global with stops in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia through to August of 2024. Millions will attend, billions will be generated, and an infinite amount of memories will support the surefire-ceaseless legacy of the Eras Tour — all because of Taylor Swift, her art, and the connections people have to it.
Aside from any meta contexts or economic records, the Eras Tour is simply an astonishing concert on its own. Truly, Taylor is delivering a performance on that stage every night. And I mean a performance. It’s closer to the storytelling performance of a Broadway musical than any other concert I’ve been to in my life. Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, and Josh Klinghoffer rocked the Boston Garden for two hours with their instruments when I saw them in February 2017. Taylor Swift has immersed herself in the narrative arc of the Eras Tour and committed to the performance element of it as much as she hopes her fans will. Every moment of the concert is meticulously planned and choreographed, allowing for breakout applause sessions (following “Champagne Problems”) and the occasional personalized moment (explaining why “Cruel Summer” will be a Lover single four years later), but never taking a detour from the core structure of the show. If anything deviates, it’s because Taylor wants it to. If she wants to adhere her performance to the expectations she set for herself, she does. The performance only varies when she finds it necessary. Otherwise, no amount of adoration or euphoria can alter the set list from delivering the next hit that will ripple shrieks throughout the latest city to be subsumed by the Swift tree.
I was glad to have the shriek-proof (but not music-proof) ear plugs in these moments, as I was able to hear and commit myself to the music Taylor played effectively, especially since I didn’t know what was coming next. (It was amusing to witness how many people who were shrieking and feeling their minds melt down at every opening chord were the same people who did spoil the set list for themselves ahead of time by poring over Setlist.FM and watching TikTok Lives of the concert; Swift’s power is incomparable when heard live.) Each of my favorite moments felt as if I was being physically clobbered by the strength of the instruments in front of Taylor. If you’re also trying to avoid spoilers for Eras, stop reading and just let these moments of musical merriment move you with as much surprise as they moved me. But I will also not be linking any videos or audios for them. I believe they are incomparable to experiencing them live or, at least, until a documentary is released.
Beginning with “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” was a complete shock to me. There were so many songs I thought would occupy that initial slot (“Anti-Hero” with “It’s me. Hi!” or “Lavender Haze” with “Meet me at midnight”) and one of my favorite (but certainly a lower-key) songs from Lover was not on my radar. I was elated, especially when it cascaded into “Cruel Summer,” which Taylor made a point of sharing the bridge of the song together. The Fearless era, while never my favorite, was so moving, too, because how can you not get excited about hearing “Love Story” and “You Belong with Me” live? They’re iconic for a reason. “Marjorie” was a beautiful, tear-jerking tribute to her late grandmother (and as much of a throttling surprise to hear as part of the set list as “Tolerate It” was). The transition between “Don’t Blame Me” and “Look What You Made Me Do” opened a new religion to the world. “Enchanted” was a gorgeous performance with a stunning dress that made just one song from the Speak Now era absolutely count and get its own show-stopping moment. Singing along to “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” was exceptionally cathartic, as if we’d all been waiting to do it for centuries. The spoken word poetry of “Seven” made me want to sob. The transition between the ethereal “August” (a top three Taylor song) and the power ballad version of “Illicit Affairs” put me off balance and forced me to say, “Oh my fucking god.” (“Illicit Affairs” was my personal highlight of the night.) “Shake It Off” and “Bad Blood,” never at the top of my rankings, became incredible in a stadium setting because she knows what she’s doing (I thought, Are these the best pop songs ever made? when I’d never thought about them at all before). The surprise songs were so intimate and satisfying and emotionally wrenching (my concert was blessed with two songs from my wishlist, “I Wish You Would” and “The Lakes”; for the rest of my life, I will be able to say I heard “The Lakes” live). “Vigilante Shit” was hot. “Mastermind” was stunningly rendered. “Karma” was a party and the best choice to end the concert with (I hoped hard for it when I first heard Midnights). And that is all without mentioning she performed my favorite song of all-time (Taylor or otherwise), “‘Tis the Damn Season,” with no flair or frills — just the pure emotion of the song and her gutting lyrics and the soaring musicality from Aaron Dessner. I was floored that my favorite song made the set list and would have never predicted it over anthems like “Getaway Car” or “Maroon” or “Red” or “Sparks Fly.” But I will be forever grateful that Taylor gave her best song the spotlight it deserved. She made time for the best and I’ll never forget it; I’ll cherish it forever.
Is that what we could call a run-on paragraph? Doesn’t matter. It’s all only a sliver of A) the sensational moments in the Eras Tour and B) what it is like to experience these performances live. It will forever be the marquee concert of my lifetime. Likewise, it seems the Eras Tour has become the monocultural event of 2023. At a time when DC and Pixar movies are both struggling to make an impact and television viewership is splintered across cable networks-turned-streaming services, the Eras Tour has collected the most amount of attention from the most amount of people this year. Musicians tour all the time, but Taylor’s tour has generated engagement and interest across even bodies of people who aren’t Swifties or who aren’t even that into pop music. Today and Rolling Stone and The New York Times have regular features about the latest in Taylor Swift news, as if she could be her own tab next to “Politics” and “Weather” on any website.
Part of the reason for this is that Taylor has crafted myriad reasons to “tune in” to her concerts whenever they are performed. The surprise songs have attained a level of this in the sense that around 10:40 P.M. EST, thousands comb TikTok Live to learn which songs will be crossed off the list of “surprise songs” that they’ll be able to hear at their forthcoming ticketed events. But there are also plenty of viral moments (some rehearsed, some not) that have generated awareness and intrigue for her tour that hundreds of artists could only hope for. She gave a speech about Pride Month on June 2. She tried to bring a little girl on stage before realizing it was not the best idea. She accidentally ate a bug. She screamed at security during a “Bad Blood” performance. She delighted in the screams of others during the first night of her tour when they did not realize what would be coming next.
She changes her t-shirts for the Red era, she drenches herself in the rain and laughs as her piano gets clogged, she provides clues to what’s coming next in her career, she brings guests on stage (Dessner, Maren Morris, Ice Spice, Jack Antonoff, Taylor Lautner — to continue the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe, or TSCU), she debuts music videos, she announces albums, she sings to celebrities in their own tent (Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd), she shares friendship bracelets, she rotates Costume Design Oscar-caliber outfits, she encourages Swiftie-specific chants (“One! Two! Three! Let’s go, bitch!” during “Delicate”), she curses NBA teams (the Suns, 76ers, Celtics, and Knicks were all eliminated after she performed in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, respectively; the Denver Nuggets won the championship and she’s not been to Colorado yet), she dives into the stage and swims back to the Midnights era. All of these moments are reasons for people to make videos, write articles, and provide a global eye to the Eras Tour — when it could so easily be confined to just the rounded edges of each stadium she visits.
Each have varying degrees of fun and delight attached to them, but each have also made it clear just how much euphoria is attached to these concerts. They smashed expectations for fans in the sense that the Eras Tour is more than any of us could have hoped for. Yes, a lot of money has been spent on the Eras Tour and yes, a lot of stress and travel and anxiety and planning has been part of it, too. But every aspect of the creative behemoth that Taylor has developed with the Eras Tour has proven all the hardship worth it for a seminal experience in this lifetime.
The Eras Tour is an unprecedented explosion of post-pandemic ecstasy and an artistic jubilee that we once thought may have never happened again. Eras is an unmitigated achievement in this meta context, but also in the context of a performance it is staggering. Eras is over three hours long with over forty songs every night for what has now been confirmed to be — at least — a year and a half of touring around the world. There is no comparison to any artist for the ambition that has led Taylor for this to be her first global artistic endeavor since the world shut down. All of these hits, all of these deep cuts, all of these surprise songs. There is no one-to-one parallel here for Taylor; she is singular.
Regrettably, I did not feel an interest in the 1989 World Tour or the Reputation Stadium Tour at the time, but even with Eras being my first Swift concert, I felt completely immersed in each era in a way that I also don’t have a precedent for. Sometimes, the Emmys try to immerse audiences in the sense that “this is the Comedy section of the ceremony” or “this is the Drama” section. Disney theme parks are famous for attempts at immersion into lands of fantasy, tomorrow, frontier, and adventure. Every Black Mirror episode strives for immersion into a specific story that is part of a larger world. But in each of these, I am always — on some level — aware of where I actually am on the planet or in a viewing experience. During the Eras Tour, though? Immersive is truly the best word. When it was time for Red, I felt like I stepped inside of the Red album. (“We are now in the Red Era!” some clambered on the first night in Glendale, mirroring that seamless immersion between chapters of an ongoing journey.) When it was time for Reputation, I felt like I was at that 2018 stadium tour. I felt transported and like I was traveling through time, as if Taylor was providing every Swiftie with a taste of what her re-recording sessions have been like for her. To be able to revisit a time in life — like we all wish we could. Yet, the story of her music has invited us all in and made that possible because we all attach specific memories and associations to the varying eras. In her archaeology for her own life, we are transported into the specific nostalgia of our own. Fearless may be a coming-of-age, “Oh shit, I’m famous now” era for her. For me, it’s the feelings and memories tied to finishing a school year in spring.
Yes, this could be seen as “parasocial” and yes, she is still the one performing. But I think the Eras experience is just as much about us as it is about her and the conception of a “Swiftie.” Nostalgia is universal and the Eras Tour is an artistic statement about how the best versions of ourselves are the ones that look forward with purpose and betterment while infusing their lives with the beauty and imperfections of the past. This is true for everyone and Taylor’s current concert endeavor is an attempt to make this as genuinely sweeping and resonant for as many people as possible, even those who don’t consider themselves Swifties. Concerts don’t usually craft thematic intent like this (nor must they), but with this bittersweet thesis at the core of Taylor’s current Renaissance of creative explosiveness, I struggle to consider any other option besides her visage in the pole position on Mount Rushmore.
Still, I think the woman who wrote “Long Live” and still puts a handmade heart to the crowd every night would be the first to say that, yes, this is as much about what meaning we can derive from the Eras Tour as it is about her staking her claim as the defining musician of more than a generation. When she makes eye contact with people in the audience, they squeal and gasp to their friends first — not to Taylor. It’s all about the times and memories we are sharing with the people we love and care about in our own lives. Perhaps this is what “Make the friendship bracelets” is actually alluding to in “You’re on Your Own Kid.” Based on the title, Taylor may be saying we need the memories we share with each other more than we need the memories we project onto her and her career.
I was blown away by my experience at the Eras Tour, the first event since Hamilton or Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar that I would define with Michael Schur’s Poscast-coined phrase, “one of the few things that lives up to your expectations.” The environment left me utterly rapt. The colors, the energy, the way everyone in the crowd threw themselves — with inexhaustible spirit — into every moment of the concert. Every “Holy shit” I uttered as I realized Taylor was hitting all my boxes during the Folklore set, the most awe-inspiring section of the most incredible album in her discography. I was wholly consumed by the fact that the Eras Tour is just a ecstatic party on the biggest stage possible (just wait until Wembley or the G; small Taylor Swift/DJ parties at Orlando bars would tremble, though they serve us well in the interim), but a party that will never evaporate. This is not the fleetingly Roaring ’20s and this is not the cautionless Y2K celebrations. This is a party that is eternal, flowing through every era naturally and effortlessly without care for chronological order, but with a focus on what the perfect vibes would be for a stadium and the thematic procession of musical chords and eras that makes the most sense. This is my experience, but so many people have been similarly clobbered by it that it is clear we Swifties are not alone. Taylor has transcended the concept of a “Swiftie.” She has threaded the impossible balance of being ubiquitous while still being specific enough for everyone to adore in their own niche, custom ways that can still feel personal to their love of her art.
Clearly, the Eras Tour has been transformative for so many. Many have proposed to significant others during “Love Story” and many more have devoted an obsession to the point of licensing out merchandise from friends in other spots in the country or wearing diapers during the set. Some have even reported excitement-induced memory loss from the concert. The Eras Tour has become the concert tour of our lives. Other Taylor tours were more album-focused (and this is bigger than them as we near 75,000 people in each stadium, an increase of roughly twenty percent from Reputation, and a marked step up from the 1989 World Tour that was once thought impossibly massive). In the sense that obviously a movie about the Guardians of the Galaxy wouldn’t reach as many people as a movie with the Guardians and Spider-Man and Iron Man and Captain Marvel and Black Panther, the same is true for Eras, which is the 1989 World Tour and the Reputation Stadium Tour and The Red Tour and a commemoration of her most recent four studio albums. Eras is the definitive, Endgame (not “End Game”)-esque statement on what she has meant for all these years and ten albums (and counting).
Also external of Swift, the Eras Tour has become the concert tour of our lives because we just haven’t had a live music experience that has been like this among the younger generations. Beyoncé, Coldplay, and Harry Styles are the only contenders we can consider, but if they’re in the same ballpark, then Taylor is on the mound and they are in the turnstiles. Other iconic tours (from Bruce Springsteen or Fleetwood Mac or The Beatles, certainly) were assuredly profound to behold and life-changing for so many, but by all measurable logos, the Eras Tour has topped them all (Forbes projected the Eras Tour as being on track to being the highest-grossing concert tour of all-time with “$1.6 billion” — and that was before she announced international dates). The Eras Tour has also resonated beyond logos, too, with ethos [hundreds of articles and podcasts have chronicled the Eras Tour and have only just begun to realize the seismic impact on both streaming charts (Taylor is currently charting her entire discography, per Billboard) and on a shifting, Swift-influenced pop culture landscape] and undeniable pathos (search “Eras” and “crying” together on TikTok and the thousands of archived emotions crystallize); her Eras Tour is resonating like nothing ever has before in music.
And it all comes back to Taylor Swift. This is the multi-billion dollar endeavor of an artist who ensures this unprecedented global domination stems from her own creativity and capability (with the help of untold hundreds, certainly); she has achieved a benchmark that is reserved for the craven by virtue of her own artwork. That is deeply special when someone’s own mind and creative spirit can generate what we’re witnessing in the summer of 2023. [To borrow a Bill Simmons phrase, we may look back at this as Taylor’s “apex mountain,” but the safer bet is that she will find yet another level to unlock in a few years’ time (like 1989 before this); she defies expectations every time.] Taylor is 5'11", but when she is on that Eras Tour stage, she is not towered over by a stadium or a stage or fans who outnumber her seventy thousand to one. Her true height is unparalleled and insurmountable; her voice can reach across the world. It is not physical, but it is spiritual and emotional — to billions.
While she has crafted this current, moment-in-time identity, she has also cemented the Eras Tour (seventeen years into her career, ten albums in, and halfway through her re-recordings) as the signature moment on her musical resumé of “the greatest ever.” The most insane aspect, though, is that her height still has not yet reached a ceiling. There is more to come and even though the Eras Tour may be her forever apex, there were apexes before this, too. Crucially, though, there is no reason to doubt or regret or predict. Just take the moment and taste it. This is all beyond exulting and a moment filled with ecstasy. I’m enjoying it as long as we all are and as long as she is and I’ll enjoy it forever because I’ll never forget the greatest concert experience of my life. Because of the fun we can have every weekend, sure. Because the concert explored resonant sentiments of nostalgia and understanding who we are, who we have been, and who we can become when we blend it all together, yes. Because of the ability to hear forty-five of my favorite songs ever written live in one night, of course. Because of the time I shared a musical voice with Taylor fucking Swift, undeniably. But most importantly, the Eras Tour is the defining moment in Taylor’s case that she is the best to ever do it because she brought me (and millions) memories with people I care about. That is what matters the most when we stroll through the confetti as “Maroon” plays and the stadium is swept clean. The love founded through these memories with new levels of joy will last longer than the concert. Eras makes Taylor eternal and the time spent at the concerts makes the love eternal for all of us. The love lasts so long.
