The sets, the costumes, the music, the dancing and one special key moment: Taylor’s Eras Tour has surpassed all expectations – and raised the bar for her fellow artists

Anyone who was lucky enough to bag a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert here in the UK will know that the American songstress usually surprises her audience with a local guest or two – like Ed Sheeran or Florence Welch. So one can only imagine what the night of 8 December will be like for the audience in Vancouver, Canada, as Taylor finally brings to a close her epic 22-month world tour, having played 149 dates in total.

Her tour has taken her all around the world, to five different continents, and to cities as diverse as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Lyon in France and Tokyo in Japan. She’s performed to her largest sell-out crowd – of 96,000 – at the Melbourne Cricket Club in Australia.

She’s boosted her own coffers – according to Time magazine, The Eras Tour is estimated to gross over £1.5bn by the time it comes to an end – and everywhere she plays experiences the “Taylor Swift effect” too, with local economies booming whenever she’s in town.

Fan Cathy Pearson, who took her daughter Fran to Taylor’s Munich concert, summed it up, “My daughter and I both cried happy tears when she played her 10-minute version of All Too Well, because it’s the first song my daughter ever made me listen to. We’ll always remember that special moment – and it felt like we were witnessing history, too. She’s a star of a generation. I felt like she was singing to me, dancing to me: she’s every woman, but she’s The Woman. She’s a consummate performer, but one who feels authentic and genuine.”

Taylor herself has said, “[The Eras Tour is] the most exhausting, all encompassing, but most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life.” Music and showbiz expert Sacha Taylor-Cox explained its impact, saying, “What The Eras Tour has showcased is how well Taylor has prepared, how she’s got her finger on the pulse, and how she lives an incredibly healthy life in order to do this. It’s just a huge production and a huge show.”

The Eras Tour started as a 52-date tour of the US, and kicked off on St Patrick’s Day 2023 in Glendale in Arizona. With a minimum of 44 songs on the set list, and lasting over three and a half hours, with at least 16 costume changes, the tour pays homage to each of Taylor’s “eras” – or studio albums – from her stellar career. So whether you were a die-hard Swiftie who’s followed the singer from the early days in 2006, or a late convert to her music, there was something for you on the setlist, from country, to folk, to pop.

Fans often complain when artists ditch their most popular tracks for their “new stuff” – but in Taylor’s case, the change of her setlist from the Paris show on 9 May in France onwards, to include new tracks from The Tortured Poets Department, only increased the hype surrounding the tour. The opener – Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince – remained the same, but the singer ditched six tracks including The Archer and The Last Great American Dynasty to add But Daddy I Love Him and The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, among others.

Taylor also reordered the eras, starting with Lover, moving on to Fearless, Red, Speak Now and Reputation, before combining Folklore and Evermore. Then 1989 followed, before the new inclusion of The Tortured Poets Department, the surprise song section and finally closing on Midnights. For someone like pop culture expert and journalist Kelsey Barnes, it’s helped keep the tour fresh.

She’s been seven times, and tells us, “I went to the first and second night in Arizona, which was crazy, because every single song was a surprise song at that point. We didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been twice in Detroit, once in Edinburgh and twice in London, on 17 and 20 August.”

Kelsey also explains that by re-recording albums [after losing a battle for the master rights to her first six albums, Taylor recorded new versions], new generations have been introduced to her older work, which has also added to the success of The Eras Tour.

She says, “The message is even if you weren’t there back then, you’re still welcome now, you can come listen to the new versions of these albums. Regardless of whether you started to be a fan back in 2009 like I was, or you started to become a fan in 2019 and you didn’t get a chance to go to the Fearless Tour, The Eras Tour encapsulates her entire career, and that’s why people have been so desperate to get tickets for it.”

Repeat customers have also been part of the ticket-selling success story. In June 2023, when the songstress announced the UK and Europe leg, American fans realised they could get another bite of the cherry. One US fan, Lex Williams, left her shores for the first time, writing in Business Insider, “I’d follow Swift to the ends of the earth. For now, I’m just headed to London.”

Wherever you saw the show, the experience was universally brilliant (despite a few early bloopers, which led to it being branded The Errors Tour!). Over the course of the three-and-a-half-hour show, the indefatigable artist changes costume around 16 times and performs routines with 15 back-up dancers, who have also built their own fan base. Taylor says, “Learning choreography is not my strong suit. I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones. I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.”

Taylor’s seamstresses – and a number of top fashion houses including Atelier Versace, Roberto Cavalli, Zuhair Murad and Oscar de la Renta – worked for months on the designs. “Everything must be eye-catching” was the brief at Cavalli – and the devil is in the detail, with crystals, as well as micro-beading, sequins and fringes adorning outfits. Her Zuhair Murad bodysuit has 10,400 beads.

Every dress, bodysuit and sparkly cowboy boot in the colour-themed production matches the style of her 10 different eras. Some were low-key, some were over the top, but all were impeccable – from her Red era “I Bet You Think About Me” and “Who’s Taylor Swift Anyway? Ew” T-shirts, to her black and red Reputation Cavalli snake bodysuit, to the fairytale Nicole + Felicia Couture pink sequinned gown she wore to sing Enchanted from the Speak Now era.

While some of Taylor’s most moving moments on stage come when it’s just her and her piano or acoustic guitar, you can’t fault the incredible, adrenalin-boosting set changes that come with almost every song. The backdrops conjure up memories from previous tours and music videos, and leave fans with plenty to pour over after the concert date has past. There is the sparkly Fearless era and the blood-red drama of the Reputation set design; folksy, enchanted woods for Folklore and Evermore, and the broody darkness of Midnights.

Her innovative staging – which typically sees her move around the main stage, to a diamond stage, to a catwalk, throughout the show – was boosted with the introduction of the nostalgic, burlesque-themed The Tortured Poets Department set and its giant “Roomba” device in May. Argos even had to warn Swifties not to try to recreate the scene by balancing their cats on Roomba vacuum cleaners.

In truth, the whole show is a series of highlights, but one standout set is the colourful Lover house, from the Lover era, which opens the show. It’s a classic Taylor Swift “Easter egg”, providing fans with hidden clues and messages. As Kelsey explains, “All of the eras that she goes through on this tour are represented on the different levels of the Lover house, and they all have different meanings, because each room is attributed to an album.”

Finally, the most unmissable moment sees Taylor dive into the middle of the stage and “swim” back on the main stage – via a special roller-coaster-style pulley which is constructed underneath the stage – just after the surprise song section. As Kelsey says, “It’s larger than life. Because it goes through all her different eras, and because her eras are distinct and unique, being able to see them juxtaposed is really beautiful and moving. When she first popped up on stage the first night, I just started crying. She’s such a commanding force on stage, and everything is planned to a T.”