To what in pop music history may Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour be compared? If you’re perplexed by that question, you’re not alone. Countless journalists and pundits have attempted and failed to discover acceptable comparisons. “I guarantee you’ll never find another like me,” Swift sung a few years ago, and although she intended it as a sing-along rather than a declaration of intent, truer words were never uttered.
Everyone can agree that it is unprecedented on a corporate level. According to Pollstar, the Eras Tour will be the first tour to gross a billion dollars (Elton John’s multi-year farewell tour currently holds the record, with $939 million), and that this $1B milestone will most likely be reached in March, when she is in Asia. But, if this prediction comes true, she’ll have finished the tour seven months before it concludes in Toronto in November 2024, if the Canadian visit indeed represents the conclusion of her journey. No one has to ponder if anybody has ever equaled her commercial appeal. When was the last time an artist sold out six nights in a Los Angeles stadium, with such a high demand for resale tickets that she could easily have scheduled six more without saturating demand? The world hasn’t seen that, and it won’t in the near future.
Cutural effect is more difficult to make explicit superlative claims for. Even if they don’t intend it, many who are still resistive to Swift’s charms would want to consider her touring success as part of a never-ending cycle of cyclical phenomena. Most pop history scholars can name a few significant tours that served as watershed moments: The Jacksons’ “Victory” tour, based on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” triumph. After “Born in the USA,” Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band brought a New Jersey sensibility to worldwide arenas with “Born in the USA.” Madonna’s brief but powerful “Blonde Ambition” tour in North American arenas and foreign stadiums at the height of her iconography. U2’s controversial “Zoo TV” extravaganza from “Achtung Baby.”
Having seen all of those tours at least once, and now having seen the Eras Tour four times, I can attest that, although previous events in touring history earned their reputations, there are few clear parallels with the once-in-a-lifetime phenomena we’re seeing now. The only thing that comes to mind is a Beatles tour.
But not a Beatles tour that really took place. Of course, the Fabs toured, but those concerts were notable almost completely for the yelling, rather than for any kind of real creativity or genuine connection between performer and audience. The Beatles made one of the most boss moves in entertainment history by retiring from live performance before they made most of their best or most significant music, so that they could focus on making great records rather than flogging their under-equipped amps to no good purpose in the deafening maelstrom of a Shea Stadium. You might argue it all worked out for the best when we received masterpieces like “Sgt. Pepper,” “White Album,” and “Abbey Road” as a consequence of their refusal to waste time on what amounted to public farce. But something was irrevocably lost when the band disbanded in 1970, having never toured during their most prolific era. Imagine what it would have been like if the band had been able to remain together long enough to put on its own version of an Eras Tour, something that would have permitted an eruption of the pent-up energy that any fans has in wanting to hear great music as part of a communal, public experience. They were the pioneers of bedroom pop, the stuff that changed your life through a pair of headphones, but there’s an experience of rock ‘n’ roll that never fully manifests until it’s shared with an electrically charged audience that feels the same way you do about what you’ve all been identifying with and devouring in the privacy of your own homes.
Not that John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have had the vision to put on a concert where they went through their songbook album by album, delivering mini-setlists inside a massive setlist in this hypothetical scenario where they continued and carried on live. Because, other from Swift, who else has thought to do it in the previous 60 years? But what other performers have a catalogue that exhibits the kind of ongoing progression and changes that would sustain and make that intriguing, where each period of a couple of years has its own dominating feeling as well as aesthetic? The Eras Tour has an element of experiencing a life flash before your eyes — hers, and yours — even though Swift was smart enough to present in non-sequential order if you’re under a certain age (and maybe just a smidgeon less powerfully for those of us who are over it). That shared coming-of-age sense was present throughout the relatively short journey from “She Loves You” to “Helter Skelter,” and it is equally present during the lickety-split, generation-defining voyage from “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” to “Vigilante Shit.”
At the risk of infuriating some of my own generational peers, I’d want to offer another significant parallel between Swift and the Beatles. Her mix of rich, exuberant, prolific innovation with complete global control is… well, to use Don Henley in an unlikely setting, “We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.” To put it another way, this seems like the first time since the Beatles when there’s a star controlling the landscape above all others who also happens to be music’s sharpest contemporary talent. Seeing the two meet in a stadium environment will be what I remember most about the Eras Tour for eras to come, long after I’ve lost the “Reputation” friendship bracelet someone gave me on SoFi Stadium’s final night.
Every time I argue that Swift has proven herself a songwriting talent worthy of mentioning in the same breath as the heroes so many of us share, from Lennon and McCartney to Irving Berlin to Carole King to Pete Townshend to Stevie Wonder to the Gershwins, I get concerned looks from friends outside Swift’s key demographics. But no one has done more in this century to restore the supremacy of songs — as opposed to “tracks” or “toplines” — and our hunger to discover meaning and melody in the greatest of them. And she’s still at her prime. Part of the reason the setlist ends with a swatch of songs from “Midnights” is that, while it’s not her best album (a tie between “Folklore” and “Evermore”), it’s one in which you feel her grasp of her craft just getting better and better, with tunes that have a constant sense of literate wit, whether they’re as serious and confessional as “Mastermind” or as comically ridiculous as “Karma.”
But, even if she isn’t always given credit for the developing genius of her songwriting, part of what makes Swift so endearing is how little she appears to care about gaining that regard. To clarify, I don’t believe she’d refuse a Grammy for “Midnights.” But nothing about her presentation screams “serious artiste,” and it doesn’t need to. Boomers and Gen-Xers who would normally give her credit can’t get beyond the fact that she dresses in leggy attire reminiscent of Vegas showgirls. Indie rockers are undoubtedly turned off by how often she and her dancers smile – the ladies who follow her on stage each night, some of whom have done it for years, simply can’t stop smiling. Then there’s the music, where the believable acoustic signifiers of her twin 2020 farewell LPs turn out to be merely a “era.” The New York Times recently re-released their review of “Folklore,” with the ominous headline: “Taylor Swift: A Pop Star Done With Pop.” Is there anybody more uninterested in pop than the man behind the Eras Tour? She dived into the realm of indie-leaning music — the snobbish person she depicted in “We Are Never Getting Back Together” would have approved — and conquered it, returning with the spritziest extravaganza in the history of spritzy spectacles.
Just listing the surface delights in this three-and-a-half-hour concert would certainly take at least two hours. If you’re fortunate or thrifty enough to see the Eras Tour more than once, various minor moments may stand out: Her real rise to the top of the corporate ladder in “The Man,” the one time she stretches it upward rather than outward throughout the play. The white smoke towers that erupt from the stage to match the thunderous chords of “I Knew You Were Trouble.” Swift and her dancers hesitate for a second before sliding down into their seats in “Vigilante Shit,” the show’s only truly sexy moment. How she carries a neon golf club throughout “Blank Space,” but never uses it for any aggressive shtick. The ridiculousness of “Tron” bikes riding around the stage. The usage of a large dinner table inspired by “Citizen Kane” to enhance the home drama in “Tolerate It.”The way the widescreen cinematography above the stage depicts her and her dancers marching towards the camera, as if they were a female version of the Jets in “West Side Story.” You might swap a hundred other things for any of those anecdotal instances. It’s all arranged as a carousel of Broadway production numbers, but nothing of it is so high-concept that you stop thinking about Swift’s casual yet enormous energy, or what the songs have meant to you in happy times.
In the end, hundreds of consecutive bursts of delight override all other considerations, even whatever seriousness she may have had to acquire in order to ultimately win over the older, straighter, or childless guys who weren’t exactly overpopulating these gatherings. (Imagine the Ticketmaster waiting list for next year’s gigs in New Orleans and Miami if that sector eventually got on board wholesale, too.)
There was a lot of conjecture leading up to Wednesday night’s U.S. leg-closing event at SoFi regarding who she could bring in as a special guest. Perhaps Lana Del Rey for a long-awaited live rendition of “Snow at the Beach”? But, based on the tour’s overall attitude, it was evident there wouldn’t be one. Unlike her previous tour, which included a featured celebrity cameo practically every night, the Eras Tour was remarkable for its lack of celebrities; Marcus Mumford’s entrance to sing on “Cowboy Like Me” one night was the closest, and it was then a handful of Aaron Dessner guest shots from there. It wasn’t the arrogance of refusing to share the limelight with stars who shine as brilliantly as she does — she hasn’t been bashful about it before. Perhaps it was intended to make a statement about not needing them, much as composing “Speak Now” by herself made a statement about not requiring any assistance. Finally, it seemed like an acknowledgment of an undertone running through the tour: the audience is the co-star, and a procession of superstars would make it feel less tribal.
In a summer that also saw “Barbie” become a blockbuster, it’s difficult to miss a message here: two entertainments that just happened to both include mentions of the word “patriarchy” as an ironic joke, while being utterly friendly and welcoming of men as much as anyone else, became the stuff of billion dollar headlines. Here’s to $1 billion franchises that we can feel good about and enjoy as cathartic, even therapeutic experiences, as well as just for joyous enjoyment – something that doesn’t happen every decade. It’s about as unusual as finding a music artist who can be considered a couple of generations’ Beatles, but who still has a lifetime of decades ahead of her.
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