We attended night three of The Eras Tour in Los Angeles
Taylor Swift is the biggest music superstar in the world! That statement is solidified by Taylor performing to a sold out crowd night after night with multiple shows in every city on her The Eras Tour. More than 420 thousand Swifties are expected to have visited the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood to see the global superstar perform six sold out shows at SoFi Stadium, roughly accommodating 70 thousand people per night, through August 9th.
We are honored to have attended the Saturday (Aug 5th) show which was nothing less than spectacular! Swifties, dressed in their favorite album-era outfits, sang loudly to each song all night, dancing and swaying to the music while sporting the light up wristbands that were placed on each seat upon arrival. Everyone seemed to be in the moment and had a blast, myself included!
Some of the song highlights include “You Belong To Me,” “No Body, No Crime” with openers and LA natives Haim, “Look What You Made Me Do,” We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” “Bejeweld,” and others. Many hits, such as “Mean” and “Dear John” were likely sacrificed to make way for newer material.
Her lengthiest set yet, Swift performs 45 songs per night in just under three and half hours with little downtime for outfit changes. True to the trek’s name, each album of her career — sans her 2006 self-titled debut — is divided into sections with Swift performing songs from Lover, Fearless, Evermore, Reputation, Speak Now, Red, Folklore, 1989 and her most recent studio album of all new material, Midnights. It’s unclear why songs from Taylor Swift aren’t included in the main set as an era, but sometimes they are featured in the penultimate portion of the show. More on that below.
Taylor is absolutely breathtaking! Her theatrics are incredible! I won’t reveal spoilers, although many have likely seen the footage on social media or through the unofficial livestreams. She incorporates a large 8K screen and many props and outfits from her music videos and albums to tell stories from each era.
The end stage setup extends into the audience, giving Swifties an up close and personal glimpse at their favorite singer. Deafening screams followed each song and after each time she addressed the crowd.
“This is the most extraordinary experience of my life,” she says about the tour. “Before the Eras Tour, I hadn’t been on tour in five years. I missed you so much… I really missed the connection you guys and I have.”
She told fans she released five albums since her last tour — The Reputation Tour — and made a promise to “make as many albums as humanly possible” when the pandemic shut the world down.
Swift earned the loudest and longest scream after performing “Champagne Problems.” The wristbands lit up the stadium in a sea of red — her favorite color — as the audience cheered for more than a minute.
The highly-anticipated “Surprise Songs” set leaves fans on the edge of their seats. Each night, Swift selects a couple of songs to perform solo with her guitar and piano that are not regularly performed on the tour. Night three in LA featured “Death By a Thousand Cuts” on guitar and “You’re On Your Own, Kid” performed on piano, much to the crowd’s delight.
The tour is massive with every concert selling out instantly. The trek is nearing the $1 billion mark in gross sales, which would make Taylor the highest-grossing female artist and The Eras Tour the largest-ever grossing tour in US history. It’s projected to gross more than $2 billion by the end of its international run.
A film crew is documenting the entire trek. It’s unclear how the footage will be used, but TMZ says behind-the-scenes footage is also being captured for likely a film.
The country-turned-pop star is so popular that the Philadelphia Federal Reserve credits her single-handedly for raising the United States economy with tourism. Hotel revenues have boosted for the first time since the pandemic as fans flock city to city to see Swift during the 53-date first leg that wraps next week.
Fans in North America have a second chance to catch the trek next fall when The Eras Tour returns for 14 shows for a second US and Canadian leg in 2024. Swift will perform three shows each in Miami, New Orleans and Indianapolis with six performances set for Toronto in October and November of next year. Gracie Abrams will support all dates.
Swift goes global later this month as she takes The Eras Tour to Mexico, South America, Latin America, Asia and Europe through summer 2024.
Every award show, including the Academy of Country Music (ACM) and Country Music Association (CMA), should recognize Taylor during their next awards cycle. Despite her very successful transition to pop nearly a decade ago, she has not abandoned her country roots. She’s in the midst of re-recording her first six albums as they were originally presented, calling them Taylor’s Version. She could have reinvented the country records to sound more pop, but chose to preserve their legacy, and rightfully so.
Each project she’s released in the past three years has broken a record previously set by one of her albums. Last month, she achieved “the biggest debut for an album this year” with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), her third re-recorded album, registering first-week sales of 716 thousand album equivalents in the US and over one million album equivalents worldwide, landing her at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. At the same time, the project made history by scoring “the biggest sales week for a re-recorded album ever,” besting even the one million first-week global consumption of Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021. Plus, it notched the “second biggest vinyl sales week in Nielsen history,” following Taylor Swift’s Midnights. In addition, Swift is the first living artist in nearly 60 years with four of the top ten on the Billboard 200 with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Midnights, Lover, and Folklore.
Taylor’s the ultimate entertainer of the year!
