“This is the land of your people.” “This is not the land, this is Glendale,” Kris Jenner and Kourtney Kardashian once said in a famous TikTok sound.
Well, not anymore. Glendale, Arizona, was the first stop on Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” Mayor Jerry P. Weiers was definitely ready for it because Glendale was officially renamed Swift City to honor the beginning of the tour. Who can say that the world doesn’t revolve around Taylor Swift now?
My “For You” page on TikTok is definitely centered around Swift. I love all the tour videos, live streams and jokes, but TikTok really needs to calm down with the sound I quoted at the very beginning of this article. It feels like every other person out of 70,000 people who attended the sold-out concerts in Swift City decided to use it.
Why do people make such a big deal out of this tour? Short answer – it’s been a long time coming. Because of the pandemic, Swift hasn’t toured in five years. During this time, she released four new albums and two re-recordings. So there was an extremely high demand to get tickets.
In fact, the demand was so high that Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket marketplace, crashed during the pre-sale, making people wait in online queues for the whole day. Even though Ticketmaster tried to control the number of people who had access to pre-sale, the company had to cancel the general sale that was supposed to happen later that week because the tickets were sold out. Resellers started to list some tickets online with prices that went as high as $30,000.
Ticketmaster’s dramatic crash and its consequences for Swifties, as fans of Taylor Swift call themselves, got so much attention that the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing about Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company, about the monopolization of the ticketing industry. The Senators used many puns based on Swift’s song that only added to the public’s anticipation of the Eras Tour.

A long and worthwhile concert

On opening night, I was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Scotland with friends. But little did they know – it was also a Taylor Swift day. Green was the color of everything around me when thousands of live streams on TikTok started. That day midnight became my afternoon because I stayed up all night watching the show. Every second of that concert was worth it.
Swift’s set for Eras is the longest in the history of her tours. With over 44 songs, it lasted for more than three hours. Swift tried to follow her fans’ requests and perform not only hits but also songs that are dear to Swifties’ hearts. She put 17 years worth of music in one show. The selected songs were divided into eras, hence the tour’s name, from each of the 10 albums, starting with “Lover.”
Surprisingly, the kick-off song for the tour is “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” which isn’t a single, but it has a very fitting line – “it’s been a long time coming,” which I think is the reason Swift chose it. For the whole show, there were different graphics on the massive background screen that represented each of the Eras. For “Lover” the major one was the so-called “Lover house” – a house with rooms that illustrate all of Swift’s albums. She dramatically burned it in gold sparkles later – weird, but beautiful.
Speaking of the stage and screens, the production of the Eras Tour is incredible. It’s a massive stadium tour with around 70,000 people in the audience every night, but there are no bad seats at these concerts. The stage itself goes very far into the “floor tickets” area, making many lucky ticket holders feel like they’re in a front row the whole time, and Swift is constantly moving, giving attention to each section. For people who got “nosebleeds,” there are fascinating visuals on the interactive stage, light-up bracelets that form shapes in the crowd from snakes to hearts to rainbows, and a big screen that shows close-ups of Swift and other visuals.
Every Era of the setlist came with a unique outfit change that represented an iconic look or color for each album. For the transition to the “Midnights” era, Swift literally dived into the stage and swam under it. For the “Red” era, she wore her iconic outfit from the “22” music video.

Sneaky Swiftie secrets

Swift is big on “Easter eggs” in everything, and the Eras Tour isn’t an exception. The highlighted letters on each t-shirt Swift wore for “22” performances resemble “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” a highly anticipated album. It quickly became the new theory Swifties have about which re-recording will be released next.
Swifties in general have theories for everything Taylor does or doesn’t do. That’s how a meme of Swift hating her album “evermore” was born – she didn’t wish it a happy birthday on Instagram. During the Eras Tour, Swift jokingly addressed this rumor, proving the fans wrong. She performed five songs from the album.
“Willow” really stood out to me. Even though it’s far from being my favorite song, the performance was remarkable. Swift created a witchy setting on stage, with both her and her dancers dressed in long cloaks as if they were performing a ritual in the woods. Under every person on stage, there was a flame that moved as they danced.
Swift definitely spies on her fanbase, confirmed. After the release of “Midnights,” a dance to “Bejeweled” went viral on TikTok. At this point, it’s an iconic strut. The crowd at the Eras Tour – and I on the live stream – went feral when Taylor recreated it on stage.
There are so many more things to be said about the production of this tour, the setlist, the team. I could write a whole book analyzing it, because the show is truly fascinating. For now, I’m going to stop with a word of encouragement: see at least one performance and pay attention to little details that make up the whole three-hour experience. You don’t need to be a Swiftie or even like Taylor’s music to understand the scale of this tour and see how high it sets the bar for other artists. The whole music industry is now in its ‘Eras’ era. Are you ready for it?