“It’s been a long time coming.” These aren’t only the first words on Taylor Swift’s lips as she rises onto the stage of her Eras Tour — but a message to her fans.
Swift’s expansive 17-year-long music career has sent her barreling through adolescence and adulthood — her deepest heartbreaks, betrayals and romances scattered across the front page of every magazine. Yet, through it all, Swift maintains a remarkably loyal fanbase whose simultaneous attachment to her and her music is almost hypnotic. Swift is at her peak and the inaccessibility of The Eras Tour due to high ticket prices, if anything, is proof. Disgruntled and ticketless, fans wanted more and for less. Swift looked to AMC and Sam Wrench, and thus, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” (2023) was born.
It has been five years since the pandemic forced Swift to cancel her highly anticipated Lover Fest World Tour. Since then, three more chart-topping albums have entered Swift’s discography: “folklore,” “evermore” and “Midnights.” After four un-toured albums, Swift’s next tour — however she did it — would have to be huge.
Lack of inventory, bots and an overall failure to anticipate the swarm of traffic a Taylor Swift tour would bring to their site, Ticketmaster crashed in Nov. 2022. Tickets were in the hands of bots and scalpers; prices soared to the tens of thousands and fans had no choice but to sit at home while Swift played their cities. In light of Ticketmaster’s blunder, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” necessarily combines the allure of the tour with a more financially accessible experience.
The heart of The Eras Tour is not just Swift’s performance, but the sister-like bond she extends to her audiences. Through both her music and interactions with the crowd, Swift narrates her own unfiltered diary of growth through love, anger and pain. Within the electric energy of a crowded arena, audiences feel connected to Swift; Director Sam Wrench is tasked with transmitting that energy through the screen to make those who could not attend the tour feel Taylor’s affection equally.
While on tour, Swift takes the stage for over three hours each night. Wrench trims the set down to two hours 49 minutes, eliminating long transitions, costume changes and several songs. The scale of The Eras Tour is massive; each moment is carefully timed and choreographed for seamless transitions between songs, costumes and eras.
Comprehensively, the missing transitions (e.g., guitar solos, visual interludes) are insignificant when compared to the non-stop stimulation of Swift’s music, dancers and elaborate set design. No sooner does Swift disappear in her bedazzled “Lover” bodysuit then she emerges with her rhinestone “Fearless” guitar and gold fringe dress. The theater, however, does not pause to wonder — they go wild.
Swift has released concert films before; both The 1989 World Tour and reputation Stadium Tour were released via streaming platforms. Watching a concert from the comfort of your own home is one thing, but what are the rules in a public theater? No one seemed sure. On their website, AMC confirmed that they “encourage dancing and singing throughout this concert film event[…].” Even so, a general sense of social impropriety seemed to shroud the theater in timidness throughout the first three eras of the film.
Swift’s most rebellious era to date — “reputation” — broke the spell. By the second song in the set, “Delicate,” groups of young girls were congregating in the aisles on either side of the theater, calling out to each other, friend or stranger. Something in their unspoken understanding of each other as they smiled, laughed or cried singing, “you must like me for me” proved devastating and sweet. Swift, it would appear, acts as a common ground for the emotional experience of girlhood.
Apart from the 44 songs on The Eras Tour setlist, Swift selects two “surprise songs” from her catalog to play in an intimate ‘acoustic set’ at each show. Wrench filmed the first three of Swift’s six sold-out shows at SoFi Stadium in California. Together, the two would need to determine which songs would make the final cut for the film.
It is no coincidence that the chosen “surprise songs” span the entire 17 years of Swift’s career. As she introduces “Our Song,” smiling and strumming an acoustic guitar, she recalls writing it for her ninth grade talent show. The last track off her 2006 self-titled debut album, “Our Song” is an ode to her roots, the people and places from which she came before she embarked on her wonderfully tumultuous journey through fame. She quietly moves to the piano, giving no introduction as she begins “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” off her most recent studio album, “Midnights.”
These two songs plot the trajectory of Swift’s journey as an artist, a journey her fans have devotedly taken alongside her. For the fans who could not attend The Eras Tour in person, this selection reinforces and emboldens the meaningful intimacy that Swift creates in an arena. From close up shots of Swift’s face, earnest eyes swimming with emotion, to the inclusion of personal anecdotes about her past — “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is a testament to where Swift started and where she’s landed. As she sings, her words are entwined with each person who has landed with her: “You’re on your own kid, yeah you can face this.”
