Once in an “Era”

Once+in+an+Era

Nina Filippi, Managing Editor

“Swifties” across America are ecstatic for music star Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour”. This is the first concert tour she’s done in five years after her 2018 “Reputation Stadium Tour”. It officially kicked off on March 17th at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, and will come to an end on August 9th at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California, along with international dates to soon be announced. The tour has broken records in ticket sales, with 2.4 million being sold on the first presale date. That broke Robbie William’s “Close Encounters Tour” ticket sales. Prices ranged anywhere from $50 to over $1,000 dollars! Fans were so eager to get tickets that it caused Ticketmaster to crash and cancel their public on-sale due to the “astronomical demand”. It is also projected to gross $591 million dollars and maybe more, beating Madonna’s “Sticky & Sweet Tour” in 2008.  

Taylor said on her Instagram that the tour is “a journey through the musical eras of my career (past and present!)”. The setlist features forty-four songs from all her ten albums: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation, Lover, Folklore, Evermore, and Midnights. Some of the selections are considered her greatest hits, and songs from her four most recent albums will be performed live for the first time since their release. She’ll also surprise crowds by performing two different songs each night. Special guests include Paramore, Girl in Red, MUNA, Gracie Abrams, Beadadobee, Gayle, and Owenn, all of them alternating between two opening acts each night of the show. Some of the major cities the tour will be at include Nashville, Houston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and more.  

Critics have already started raving about the tour’s success. From Variety to Rolling Stone, they all agree that Taylor Swift is extremely passionate about the tour and that she’s outdone herself. She has also broken the record for the highest-attended concert for a female artist in the U.S. “Threaded together across three hours and 15 minutes, they create a separate but parallel narrative to her discography”, says TeenVouge. “The albums aren’t ordered by time, but rather by a larger vision. Call it a culmination of Taylor on her own terms”. Billboard applauds how she “has used this live run to reflect on the various iterations of her career to date and the achievement is often staggering, with costume changes, set-piece upheaval, vulnerable moments in a crowd of thousands and sing-alongs that will rival the scope of any tour this year”.