This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 Life Without Limits issue of Showstopper Magazine.
She’s in her Eras era! Taylor Swift returned to touring in 2023 after a five-year gap since her Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018. During that gap, Taylor released six albums including the multi-record-breaker concept album Midnights. What else is there to do with a discography that big (10 albums!) but perform it all?
Taylor put the advent of this massive project best at one of her August 2023 shows in Los Angeles, California. “People would come up to me and be like, ‘So you’ve put up like five albums that you haven’t done tours for…What are you going to do? Are you just gonna do a show with all the albums in it and it’s gonna be like a three-and-a-half-hour long show?’ And I was like… ‘yeah, it’s gonna be called The Eras Tour. See you there!'”
The Eras Tour has broken world and venue records, inspired costumes, sent fans swarming to theaters, and changed the ways that people interact with music and how fans interact with Taylor. For most concerts, the enjoyment is in being in the room with their favorite singer, but for Swifties, every concert night is a big one as they race to find TikTok live streams to hear the surprise songs being played at venues far away from them and track what versions of her various eras costumes she wears throughout the night. It doesn’t matter if you’re in SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles with Taylor flexing her music industry muscles or on your couch at home, screaming along to your favorite songs with your dog.
From the first night of the tour, Taylor has been the loudest woman each town has ever seen, even taking over local governments renaming major cities—Glendale, AZ (Swift City), Minneapolis, MN (Swiftie-apolis), and Santa Clara, CA (Swiftie Clara)—and becoming the honorary mayor of Tampa, Florida. In Glendale, Taylor broke the record for the Most-Attended Concert by a Female Artist in U.S. History with 69,000 fans in attendance. She has since seen 72,459 Swifties on average per show, according to QuestionPro data.
No one tours like Taylor who has even been breaking her own records. The Reputation Stadium Tour held the record for the Highest Grossing Tour in History which is now held by The Eras Tour. Since the 27-date tour announcement in November 2022, the tour has been extended more than 10 times and is set to round out at 151 stops in 17 different countries!
Some things can’t be broken down into numbers though. While on tour, Taylor has announced two of her re-recording project releases (Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version)) and inspired so much excitement from her fans in the form of elaborate costumes referencing music videos, song lyrics, and Taylor’s previous eras. Oh, and many many friendship bracelets. Even celebrity attendees like Selena Gomez and Flavor Flav have been excited to make and share bracelets with fans from the VIP tent.
The power of The Eras Tour is in Taylor’s connection with her fans who are in it for more than live music. Social media feeds fill with pictures and screengrabs of Taylor’s best and silliest moments (lovingly called “The Errors Tour”) alike. The Eras Tour is an expression of Taylor’s passion for her massive catalog as much as it is an ongoing love letter to her new and old fans who love decoding the tour visuals and Taylor’s commentary and, of course, cheering Taylor on.
