Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is the Tour of our Wildest Dreams: Review
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is the Tour of our Wildest Dreams: Review
“It’s been a long time coming” are the first words you hear from Taylor Swift as she launches into a 3+hour spectacle she so named The Eras Tour. She’s right, it has been a long time – this marks Swift’s first tour since The Reputation Stadium Tour set the record for highest grossing tour in 2018. Since then, she’s added four albums to her discography – or as Swift calls it, her “musical family” – Lover, folklore, evermore, and Midnights. For those unsure of how she would put together a show that not only showcases the best of four albums that have not had their own respective tour, but also highlights her six previous beloved albums, have no fear. She’s done it – and she’s done it marvellously.
Opening the show with the Lover era feels right. Swift’s Lover Fest (the headlining festival-style concerts that were scheduled in lieu of a tour post album release) were canceled due to the pandemic in 2020, and we got a nice taste of what those would have looked like, starting with the fan favourite “Cruel Summer.” Although this track wasn’t an album single, it appeared that all 72,000+ people in the stadium knew every single lyric.
Gold fireworks were layered over the yellow-hued Lover house backdrop as Swift transitioned “back to high school” for her 2008 breakout era, Fearless. Embellished in a gold Roberto Cavalli fringed dress, Swift twirls and guides us through the album’s title track (complete with her famous hand heart) “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me.” Along with her four new albums, Swift also began releasing her re-recorded albums under her current record deal, with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) being the first of the six.
Fans online have made jokes about Swift “forgetting about” one of her two made-in-quarantine records, evermore. However, hearing the opening piano chords for “‘tis the damn season,” sent the crowd into an uproar, giving the album a 5-track long section of the show. The album’s single “willow” dropped with the album in December of 2020, and its corresponding music video came to life on stage, as Swift and her dancers were adorned in forest green capes and gold dresses as they danced across the stage.
Flashes of snakeskin stretch across the stadium screens as Swift demands the stage in a black and red, snake covered bodysuit, taking us back to the Reputation tour show opener, “…Ready For It?” She flawlessly transitions from the powerful “Don’t Blame Me” into Reputation’s lead single “Look What You Made Me Do,” with her dancers and backup vocalists dressed in many of Swift’s iconic looks throughout her career, reminiscent of the ending of the track’s music video.
After Swift performed “Enchanted” during her 1-song long tribute to her self-written album Speak Now, the entire stadium erupts as a red wave takes over the crowd. Dressed in a sequined version of the t-shirt she wore in the “22” music video, Swift takes us back to her 2013 Red Tour, complete with its signature black fedora hat (and hand off of said-hat to an adoring fan in the first row.) Red (Taylor’s Version) is the second re-recorded album she’s released, featuring the 10 minute version of her critically acclaimed song “All Too Well.” This song has taken on a new meaning to swift over the years – a true testament to Swift’s songwriting ability, “All Too Well” is a song that Swift thanks her fans for loving so deeply, and has subsequently earned Swift her first short-film directing credit. “I have one more song from the Red era I would like to play for you, if you have an extra 10 minutes to spare,” Swift states.
A moss colored cabin, reminiscent of the one she and her music collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner performed in at the 2021 Grammy Awards, appears on stage for Swift’s opening track of the folklore album, “the 1.” “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit” she sings atop the cabin. Swift floats across the stage in a flowy lilac dress, taking us through seven of the tracks featured on folklore, the album that earned her a third Album of the Year Grammy. She closes the era with the album’s lead single “cardigan.”
1989 is arguably the most well-known album of Swift’s worldwide, and the album that solidified her as a bonafide pop star, so it’s no surprise that the crowd exploded with energy as she strutted down the catwalk during “Style,” “Blank Space” and her first ever pop-labeled single “Shake It Off.” In a fuchsia two-piece beaded set, she pranced her way down the stage with her dancers and flames set off in the background as she closes the 1989 era with “Bad Blood.”
One of the most anticipated sections of the show is the most intimate – at the front of the stage, Swift spontaneously chooses two surprise songs that aren’t on the setlist, promising that no song will be repeated throughout the entire tour (the only exception is if she “messes it up”). “This is a song that I wrote when I was like 13 years old… I think I relate to it more now 20 years later,” Swift admits as she plays “A Place In This World,” a song off her 2006 debut, self-titled album. She then walks over to the piano for her second surprise song of the evening, “Today Was a Fairytale.”
Swift’s most recent studio-album Midnights (2022) is the brand finale, a triumphant pop return at a time when the world was finally returning to normal post-pandemic. Surrounded by papermache clouds and dressed in a purple shag coat, she moves from “Lavender Haze” to the album’s 15-week top 10 single “Anti Hero.” She closes the show with the next rumoured single from the album, “Karma,” complete with fireworks and confetti filling the floor in the colours that represent all 10 of Swift’s albums displayed on her Eras Tour.
“Ask me why so many fade, but I’m still here?” – a lyric from “Karma” that’s self-explanatory. Taylor Swift has done in her 17 year career what most artists strive to accomplish in a lifetime. The Eras Tour beautifully celebrates the art that spans across ten studio albums that she has so generously shared with the world, but she has proven that she is nowhere near the end of her career. She somehow continues to top the last project, all while staying true to everything that she embodies, which is why this tour is her most successful yet. Playing in stadiums across the country that hold up to 100k people, Swift somehow has the ability to make you feel like she is singing directly to you in an intimate room, which is why she is one of the greatest performers of our time. And don’t call this her ‘greatest hits’ tour, because she’s proven that she’s got a lot of hits left in her.