A year of the Eras Tour: A look back at Taylor Swift's record-breaking show
One year ago, the crowd in Glendale, Arizona, erupted into a massive cheer in State Farm Stadium when Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" began playing and the backdrop screen transitioned to a countdown clock starting at 2:24.
None of the Swifties who traveled from all over the state of Arizona and the nation, dressed to the nines as one of her 10 eras, knew the tour would be three-plus hours. The fan screaming next to me from Pennsylvania who bought a ticket on StubHub.com for about $400 didn't know that we would go era-by-era through a 44-song track list. I don't think the singer, herself, knew when she hid inside a cleaning cart wheeled backstage, that her show would lead to a billion-dollar enterprise, Time magazine person of the year and an inundation of friendship bracelets. I didn't know the behemoth success following the Eras Tour star would send me packing from Phoenix to Nashville, Tennessee, to become the inaugural Taylor Swift reporter.
Swift's dancers flowed onto the stage through fog with pink, purple and orange parachute flaps. A compilation of songs from Swift's 10 albums — or eras — played as "it's been a long time coming" boomed into the stadium. Goosebumps covered the arms of thousands and tears cascaded down cheeks as the flaps revealed Miss Americana rising to begin her "Lover" set.
Eighty three shows later, here's a look back at the unprecedented tour that set a Guinness World Record. And fair warning, like her tour this article is an extensive rollercoaster.
Oh, hi!
Swept up in the hype, the world became Taylor Nation. Glendale, "Erazona," was renamed "Swift City." Las Vegas lit up its arches in all 10 era colors. Arlington, Texas, dubbed one of its streets "Taylor Swift Way." Tampa, Florida, gave Swift a key to the city and invited her to be an honorary mayor. Houston renamed its venue "NRG Stadium (Taylor’s Version)."
Nashville, Tennessee, dedicated a bench in Centennial Park to the hometown singer. A Philadelphia radio station, 96.5 FM (WTDY), renamed itself Ninety-Swift-Five W-T-A-Y. Gov. Philip D. Murphy dubbed the "Taylor Swift ham, egg and cheese sandwich" the "state sandwich of New Jersey." Chicago lit up the top of Willis Tower in her album colors. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey renamed his city "Swiftie-apolis," and Santa Clara, California, Mayor Lisa Gillmor switched the city's name to "Swiftie Clara."
Internationally, fans in Brazil caught the attention of Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes and Father Omar, the rector of the Christ the Redeemer Sanctuary, who arranged to project a "Junior Jewels" inspired T-shirt onto the Christ the Redeemer statue. Flinders Station in Melbourne, Australia, flashed a wallpaper glaze of lights to welcome the Eras star. Singapore painted the Marina Bay Sands Resort all colors of vibrant lights.
It's a cruel summer with you
All four seasons met the fifteen dancers, four backup singers, six bandmates and hundreds of production and crew members, adding unpredictable weather to the mix. Mother Nature danced in a lightning storm to "Fearless" in Tampa and made the song "Midnight Rain" a reality in Nashville. Rain poured through the open-roofed stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where Swift pushed puddles forming on her piano. The Swiftie fandom created its own natural phenomenon in Seattle after a seismologist registered a 2.3 magnitude earthquake on her Richter scale.
The intense heat in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, caused Swift to throw water bottles to fans and temporarily halt her show. Ana Clara Benevides Machado, 23, passed out and died of heat exhaustion. The heartbreaking news prompted changes at the Estádio Olímpico Nilton Santos to allow fans access to water. Swift invited Benevides' family to her concert in S?o Paulo.
I want you to think of the memories made
Swift incorporated custom messages into each tour stop. At her international destinations, she welcomed fans in their custom languages. "Bienvenidos al Eras Tour," she said in Mexico City before hoisting her hands in the air. While donning either her pink or blue guitar before the title track of "Lover," she commonly announced the stadium attendance often record-breaking.
Outside of stadiums, thousands "Taylorgated," or showed up without a ticket to hear Swift's beats and dance on the concrete. Tens of thousands more logged on to watch livestreams from fans with tickets who agreed to spend concert time holding up their mobile devices in a tricep-burning position.
The number of viewers would jump before the "Champagne Problems" speech and acoustic set. To keep things fun and interesting each night, fans filled out "Swiftball" ballots guessing the singer's outfits from four "Lover" bodysuits and accompanying "The Man" jackets, three "Fearless" dresses, two "Evermore" dresses, six "Speak Now" gowns, three bedazzled "22" shirts, five "Folkore" dresses, four "1989" crop top and skirt combos, six "Midnights" T-shirt dresses, three "Midnight Rain" body suits and four "Karma" faux fur jackets. To see how many times the Eras star wore each outfit, check out the "Data Swiftie."
For fans who wanted to get alerts to watch the shows without having to calculate time changes, Swift Alert became the app for that.
Double clap, audience chants
A secret language formed between fans and Swift as new traditions popped up along the tour. The four lines fans screamed at the top of their lungs, no matter the city or country, were "cause shade never made anybody less gay" in "You Need To Calm Down," "what a shame she's f----d in the head" in "Champagne Problems," "f--- the patriarchy" in "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" and "don't call me kid, don't call me baby" in "Illicit Affairs."
Swift started every show strong with a very important question: Did her fans know the bridge to "Cruel Summer?" "Prove it!" she'd yell at some stops and the audience would, every single time, bellow, "I'm drunk in the back of the car." For "The Archer," fans printed and dispersed signs that read, "We will stay," to hold up when Swift asks, "Who would stay?"
In the "Fearless" era, fans double clapped with "13" drawn on the back of their hands in the middle of the bridge to "You Belong With Me." A trend of marriage proposals during "Love Story" picked up during the 2024 leg with partners popping the question as Swift sang, "He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring."
During "Marjorie," Swifties turned their phone flashlights on in tribute to Swift's grandma. Fans started timing the standing ovation and ear-shattering applause after "Champagne Problems." Livestreamers, like Tess Bohne, would display a clock and fans guessed if the cheers would surpass one, two or three minutes.
A snake shape slithered through the light-up braceklets handed out before the show at the start of the "Reputation" era. Fans yelled "1, 2, 3, let's go b----" before the first verse of "Delicate" as Swift counts on her fingers. Later in the song, Swift sings, "Do the girls back home touch you like I do?" and fans reply, "No, they don't." On rare occasion, Swift would let out a three-note riff during her "Don't Blame Me" belt.
After rereleasing her third album, the "Speak Now" singer added "Long Live" to the set list, bringing the total to 45 tracks. In the first verse when she croons "the crowds and stands went wild," the crowd indeed went wild.
In the "Red" era, Swift crowned a deserving fan with a black fedora during "22." They were typically children, but one adult Swiftie was crowned in Melbourne. Dancer Kameron Saunders had the only speaking line on the tour besides Swift during her song "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together." He said "like ever" at the American shows, but when the tour went international, he switched up the phrase each night. And yes, we track that. Swift knew all too well each crowd had "10 minutes to spare," and she played her longest song, in total, for about 14 hours.
She was only tied to the "Invisible String" for five shows and traded the opening "Folklore" era number to "The 1" in Arlington, before news of her split from actor Joe Alwyn. She brought "Invisible String" back for one night in Nashville because the Tennessee capital is home to Centennial Park. Nashvillians also noticed that Swift switched a note during "The 1" lyric "you meet a woman on the internet and take her home." She kept the key change for every succeeding show.
Right before the first lyric of "Style" during the "1989" set, fans began a tradition of saying, "What time is it?" to which the singer replied, "Midnight, you come and pick me up." In Sydney, Australia, a "Blank Space" chant from the 1989 World Tour was reborn and repeated in Singapore. Taylor Nation, Swift's marketing team, tweeted that it hopes fans at every tour stop going forward shout their city. In Philadelphia, a "Bad Blood" remix originated when Swift noticed a security guard hassling a fan. "She's fine. She wasn't doing anything. Hey! Stop! Hey, stop!" became the cool thing to say after, "It's so sad to think about the good times, you and I." Fans also incorporated a Kendrick Lamar line from the "Bad Blood" remix: "You forgive, you forget, but you never let it go."
And then came the surprise set. (More on her collaborators and announcements below.) Each night, Swift performed one song on the guitar and one on the piano that she hadn't yet performed on the tour. That is until 2024, when she added mashups and threw out her rule of never repeating songs. At the end of the set, she swan dives into a hole in the stage. Fans later caught a red light that turned green to signal it was safe to jump.
After meeting her at "Midnights," fans sang Jack Antonoff's version of "Anti-Hero." When Swift sings "tale as old as time," the crowd chimes in, "Taylor, you'll be fine." Tyler Conroy made a viral video of him screaming, "Where you going Taylor?" during "Bejeweled" before she sings, "I'm going out tonight," and the trend caught on like a blaze ripping through the Lover house. Finally, after Swift changed the lyrics to, "Karma is the guy on the Chiefs," in Argentina with her boyfriend Travis Kelce in the crowd, that became the standard for fans. She has only sang it that way four times, when he was in attendance in Buenos Aires, Sydney and Singapore.
If you would direct your attention to the back screen
In addition to boosting economies everywhere she went, Swift created an abundance of news. She announced "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" in Nashville. She announced a new version of "Midnights" and premiered the "Karma (Remix)" music video featuring Ice Spice as the upstart rapper joined Swift in East Rutherford, New Jersey. She released "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" right before her Kansas City, Missouri, stop and then debuted the "I Can See You" music video starring Taylor Lautner and Joey King who were at the show. Lautner backflipped on the catwalk.
It might have seemed strange that Swift ended the American leg of her tour on a Wednesday in Los Angeles, but not to the eagle-eyed Swiftie who realized the date was 8/9. That's the day she announced the rerecording of her fifth album, "1989 (Taylor's Version)." The album came out during her break before her Argentina tour dates. It topped the Billboard charts and allowed her to bypass Elvis for the most weeks with an album at No. 1.
Then, she announced her 11th album, "The Tortured Poets Department," at the Grammys after winning her 13th career award. At her tour stops in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore, she revealed there were four total versions of "Tortured Poets" and told fans they would get a different bonus track on each one: "The Manuscript," "The Bolter," "The Albatross" and "The Black Dog."
Welcome to the acoustic set
One of the most anticipated portions of an Eras Tour show is the acoustic set. At most of the concerts, she only spoke before the guitar song. In rare instances, she tested the microphone before the piano song and made an announcement.
Occasionally she invited collaborators to join her onstage. Marcus Mumford surprised fans in Las Vegas to play "Cowboy Like Me." Her co-producer and close friend Aaron Dessner from The National joined her six times on stage, in Tampa (twice), Nashville, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Santa Clara. Jack Antonoff came out to play "Getaway Car" in New Jersey. Maren Morris did a "You All Over Me" duet in Chicago. When their opening acts were canceled for weather, Gracie Abrams performed "I Miss You, I'm Sorry" and Sabrina Carpenter sang a dyad mashup of "White Horse" and "Coney Island."
Some of the surprise songs came with hidden messages. Fans speculated she sang "Bigger Than The Whole Sky" as an ode to a fan who died, "End Game" to Travis Kelce watching her show from the VIP tent and "Gold Rush" as a congratulations to Jason Kelce for retiring. She has performed "You're On Your Own Kid" five times, in Tampa, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Tokyo and Singapore.
And he never thinks of me, except when I'm on TV
To close out the first year of the Eras Tour, Swift released the third film version of her concert to streaming service Disney+. This version included "Cardigan" and four acoustic songs: "Maroon," "Death By A Thousand Cuts," "You Are In Love" and "I Can See You."
The second version came out on Swift's birthday, Dec. 13. Fans could rent it for 48 hours at a price of $19.89, and it included "The Archer," "Wildest Dreams" and "Long Live" cut from the original movie.
The original movie was released Oct. 13, in the middle of the Hollywood strikes. Swift did what studios and streaming services were unable to: make a deal with SAG-AFTRA. She worked with the unions and was able to market and show her movie how she saw fit. The film made more than $250 million globally and got her nominated for a Golden Globe award.
Would you be interested in one more song?
If you're still with me on this walk down Eras Tour Lane, it's important to make one final note before the tour resumes in Paris in May. Before her magnum opus took off higher than the "Bad Blood" flames, Swift chose "Mirrorball" and "Tim McGraw" to be her very first surprise songs. She ended year one with the same two songs, but flipped the instruments she played them on in a full-circle moment.
Her new album will come out April 19 and the full Eras Tour is streaming on Disney+, which begs the question: What her show will look like come Paris? She has a two-month break before 69 shows scheduled for Europe and North America. She also has two rerecords left to release: "Reputation (Taylor's Version)" and her self-titled debut album.
If there's one thing any Swiftie knows, it's Taylor Swift's ability to make news and create lasting memories through her record-shattering tour. What a first year; on to year two!
Follow Bryan West, the USA TODAY Network's Taylor Swift reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: A year of the Eras Tour: A look back at Taylor Swift's unprecedented show
