There’s a moment during Taylor Swift’s three-hour Eras Tour show where, after performing “Champagne Problems” from the album Evermore, the singer steps out from behind the piano to accept the rapturous applause of the audience. It’s not an entirely organic response: it seems written into the tightly plotted runtime, Swift eking out the moment with bashful smiles and looks of surprise. But, having seen the show three times in person myself, I can say it’s still remarkable to hear tens of thousands of people scream and clap for minutes on end.
The longest of these standing ovations took place during one of Swift’s six shows at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, in August 2023. It lasted nearly eight minutes. “I’m going to spend several decades trying to figure out words for how that just made me feel,” Swift told the crowd. “I’ve completely lost control over my brain.”
She may be feeling the same on December 8 when, after nearly two years and 149 shows, the Eras Tour finally concludes in Vancouver, Canada. The tour is not only the biggest of Swift’s career, but has become the highest grossing concert tour in history: it was the first to gross over $1bn according to industry publication Pollstar, and is expected to bring in over $2bn in total.
The Eras Tour’s fiscal footprint has been so significant, in fact, that it has spawned its own term: “Swiftonomics”. According to estimates by Bloomberg Economics, during its US run, it contributed $4.3bn to America’s GDP. Over the summer, Swift’s 15 shows boosted the UK economy by nearly £1bn. And in Japan, where she played four shows, she contributed $228m (¥34.1bn, or £179m).
Swift has become a billionaire at least partly thanks to the Eras Tour’s outsized success. But its impact is more than merely financial. While Swift was arguably one of the biggest pop stars on the planet before she went out on the road in 2023, the sheer scale of interest in the Eras Tour has pushed her into a stratospheric realm of fame, making her music’s last truly monocultural figure.
The Eras Tour was designed to appeal to almost everyone. Given the drastic sonic pivots she’s taken throughout her career, Swift deliberately created a setlist that would cover all bases, rocketing through all the albums (or eras) of her discography (except her self-titled debut). Not a fan of the teenage country twang of Fearless? Don’t worry, you’ll hear the mega pop bangers from 1989 before too long. Prefer the storytelling of Folklore and Evermore? Wait until she finishes stomping to the thundering synths of Reputation and you’ll be rewarded. Want to hear songs from her latest record The Tortured Poets Department? Oh, she’s added them to the setlist, too.
This career-spanning approach guaranteed that even her most casual fans would leave the show pleased. For the more ardent Swifties, though, it reaffirmed two-decades of devotion, dragging you through not only your memories of the songs themselves, but of the person you were when you first realised you loved them. In doing so, Swift not only shored up her legacy but, cemented her position in each audience member’s personal history. On stage, referencing her and her fans’ shared memories of each era, she seemed to lean forward and speak directly to you, until all that remained was you and her. “These are songs that I have written about my life,” she told each crowd, “but after tonight, when you hear these songs out and about in the world, my dream is that you’re gonna think about tonight and the memories we made together at the Eras Tour”.
Those that missed out on tickets also found a way to consecrate their relationship with Swift. In the US and at some European shows, thousands gathered outside stadiums to listen to her distant vocals or catch glimpses of her performing on the stadium’s oversized screens. This practice, known as “Tay-gating”, was an act of communion for fans, as was the ritual exchanging of friendship bracelets – painstakingly crafted in the months leading up to shows only to be handed out like sweets on Halloween – both inside and outside the event. People inside the stadiums live-streamed the performances on social media to thousands of fans who logged on to witness minor variations in Swift’s onstage costumes and watch the “surprise” songs: tracks from her discography that Swift played acoustically, on guitar and piano, that varied each night. Swift, of course, capitalised on the action, releasing a concert film of the Eras Tour in cinemas (it became the highest grossing concert film of all time) and later making it available to rent online (for $19.89) before releasing it more widely on the streaming service Disney+.
This behaviour appears to have altered the concert-going experience more broadly. On social media, fans wait patiently for fan-broadcasts beamed from pop shows (I witnessed someone live-streaming a recent Zayn Malik concert on Instagram), while other artists like Madonna and the Jonas Brothers appear have recently favoured far-reaching setlists that cover their entire discography.
Then there’s the appetite in the media for the Eras Tour, which only bolstered its ubiquity: the press covered everything from that aforementioned eight-minute applause to various onstage mishaps and the famous faces in attendance at each show. It’s a trend in music journalism that has spread to other acts: recent reports include stories about onstage antics at Adele’s Las Vegas residency and Charli XCX’s Brat tour. Aware of this press attention, Swift used the tour as an opportunity to announce the release of the re-recordings of her albums Speak Now and 1989. This in turn kept fans in constant alert, treating each new concert as a potential major event in Taylor Swift history.
And despite the blockbuster popularity of this exceptionally long-running tour, Swift has escaped the overexposure-induced backlash that plagued her following the original release of 1989 in 2014. In the wake of the Eras Tour, Swift feels infallible, her stardom set in stone.
On Sunday night, when the confetti settles and the crowd head home, Swift will have concluded what seems likely to be a career-defining high. One hopes she’ll take a break. But after that? It’s difficult to imagine any subsequent ventures reaching the magnitude of the Eras Tour, even if there’s little doubt that she’ll continue to sell out stadiums. Whether she wants to continue playing them is another matter. When you’ve scaled an unparalelled peak in pop, do you risk attempting to surpass yourself? Or can you resist temptation, take a step to the side and travel a different path? Either way, while it may this might be the end of the Eras, the applause for Swift will go on, and on.
[See also: Charli XCX’s victory lap]
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