Taylor Swift hasn’t been on tour in five years, during which time she’s released four albums, including the Grammy Award-winning Folklore.
Her live absence was clearly a source of frustration, because her first show back was a three-hour, fifteen-minute extravaganza featuring 44 songs from her career.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve missed you,” Swift said as she took the stage for the first night of her Eras tour.
The star had promised the show would be “a journey through all of my musical eras,” and demand for tickets was so high that Ticketmaster’s systems crashed.
Despite this, the tour sold 2.4 million concert tickets in a single day, breaking the record for the most concert tickets sold by an artist in a single day.
Approximately 80,000 of those fans attended Swift’s first show at Arizona’s State Farm Stadium, where they were treated to a romp through her vast back catalogue.
The set was divided into sections, one for each of her ten albums, and traced her progression from country ingénue to chart-topping pop star to lockdown-era folk singer (albeit with a mixed-up chronology).
She began with Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince, a fan favorite from 2019’s Lover album, before transitioning into Cruel Summer’s dreamy pop.
“I don’t know how to process all of this and how it’s making me feel right now,” she said, dressed in a diamond-encrusted leotard and surrounded by dancers with elaborate peacock tails.
“[But] let me start by saying you’re making me feel fantastic”.
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With 16 dancers, multiple set and costume changes, and a long, illuminated catwalk leading to a second stage, the show is a massive production.
She appeared to dive into the stage and swim to the center of the stadium at one point, before emerging on a rising platform to perform her most recent single, Lavender Haze.
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Look What You Made Me Do featured dancers riding blue neon bikes straight out of Tron, while Blank Space featured dancers riding blue neon bikes straight out of Tron.
Swift appeared inside a moss-covered country shack for the more pastoral songs on Folklore, which was first seen in her 2021 Grammy Awards performance. She later performed a Fosse-inspired chair routine on the cutthroat revenge fantasy Vigilante.
The full 10-minute version of All Too Well, which she allegedly wrote about actor and ex-boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal and performed in a flowing red overcoat as snowflakes fell across the stage, was the highlight for many.