Photo Credit: Business Insider

By Cassia Biederman

Managing Editor

Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” spanned 21 months, 5 continents, 21 countries, 51 cities, 149 shows, and over 10 million fans. The tour kicked off on March 17, 2023 in Glendale, Arizona at State Farm stadium, and thanks to Swift’s level of fame and the sheer number of surprise elements she has incorporated to the tour every step of its journey, the tour has since made consistent appearances in headlines as it evolved. 

Beginning in the United States with 53 shows, Swift’s tour encompassed her then 10 studio albums and 18 years of music. Each set included a separate “era,” or album, highlighting anywhere from one to seven songs from the album. By the end of the night, Swift would have played 44 songs, lasting almost three hours, each “Era” like a mini concert on its own, including a special acoustic surprise song section with two new songs every night. 

Swift then went on to tour Latin America, Asia, and Europe with opener Sabrina Carpenter, and made several changes to the tour while international. On February 4th, 2024, the singer announced her 11th studio, The Tortured Poets Department, at the Grammys, and released the album two months later on April 17th, including a surprise double album, titled The Anthology. In total, the album held 31 brand new songs, seven of which Swift added to “The Eras Tour” set, surprising the crowd in Paris, France with new songs, outfits, and performances. She even shocked the final show of the international leg in Wembley Stadium with a surprise performance of her song “Florida!!!” featuring Florence Welch off of her new album.

The pop star wrapped up the tour with a return to North America, performing 12 more concerts in the United States, and nine shows in Canada. Her final performance took place on December 8th in Vancouver, Canada with over 60,000 fans in attendance, and thousands more tuning in online. 

Significant Events

Throughout the duration of the tour, Swift added surprises to the show that ranged from music video previews and new boyfriend debuts, to performing with special guests. One specific instance that has gone down as an iconic moment of the tour is the infamous interaction Swift had with a security guard during her hit single, Bad Blood. When Swift noticed the stadium worker aggressively moving a fan, Swift yelled “hey, stop” and “she wasn’t doing anything” between verses. Hammond Social Studies teacher, Ms. Lovaas, recalled her experience in Philadelphia of this interaction, and commented “everytime I listen to that song, I sing her part of it too.”

The singer also used her concerts as an opportunity to announce new music and videos to fans. On May 26th, 2023, Swift previewed her brand new music video for her song “Karma,” featuring Ice Spice, and sat on stage with her dancers as the crowd watched. She did something similar with the release of her video for “I Can See You,” even bringing out the actors in the video, Taylor Lautner, Joey King, and Presley Cash. Perhaps most memorable were announcements of new albums. Since leaving her previous record label, Swift has been rerecording her masters, and slowly releasing them as that particular album, “Taylor’s Version.” While on the tour, Swift announced both Speak Now and 1989 Taylors Version, surprising the audiences, and all others following along online.

Over the course of the tour, Swift brought out several surprise guests. These guests included artists such as Marcus Mumford, Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner, Phoebe Bridgers, Florence Welch, Ed Sheeran, HAIM, Ice Spice, Hayley Williams, and Maren Morris. Maybe the most notable guest was when Swift brought out her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, during her performance of “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” at Wembley Stadium. Junior Julia Abernethy believes that “all the people she brought on…and incorporated” made the show stand out against other pop concerts of the time.

Cultural and Economic Impact

As one of the largest and most attended tours in history, the impact that “The Eras Tour” made was one that had never been seen before. As the tour made its way around the world, the cities renamed street signs and decorated buildings in preparation for the upcoming concerts. As Hammond Social Studies teacher Ms. Paparazzo said, “there’s nothing that has had a bigger impact tour wise.” With each stop, Swift’s concert boosted the economy by millions of dollars, eventually generating a revenue of over four billion dollars.

Not only did the concert attract thousands of fans each night, but beyond the stadium were crowds of people listening from outside, or tuning in on a live stream. Most notably is pictured below from Swift’s stop in Munich where tons of fans without tickets watched the show from a hill outside the stadium, showing the sheer amount of people the tour attracted.

Photo Credit: The Indian Express

In addition to the millions of in-person attendees, millions of people watched the concert from their home on social media live streams, demonstrating the devotion of the fans even when Swift was performing hundreds of miles away.