swifties
On Sunday night (Dec. 8), Taylor Swift played the last of 149 shows on The Eras Tour. As reported earlier Monday, the record-setting trek grossed more than $2 billion and sold over 10 million tickets: $2,077,618,725 and 10,168,008, respectively, to be exact.
The news was first reported by The New York Times.
Without qualification, The Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour of all time, by artists of any genre, and from any era in music history. If compared to data officially reported to Billboard Boxscore, it is the biggest tour ever by an unthinkable distance of more than $900 million, blasting past Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour (2022-ongoing) – the only other tour to gross more than $1 billion – by a margin of almost two-to-one.
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Even before The Eras Tour was announced, Swift was one of the most successful touring acts of her generation. Dating back to her first reported solo headline show at Sovereign Performing Arts Center in Reading, Pa. (April 6, 2007), she has grossed $3 billion across her career, when adding The Eras Tour’s sum to officially reported data for her prior tours to Billboard Boxscore.
Previously, her biggest tour – according to Billboard Boxscore – came when Swift brought in $345.7 million and sold 2.9 million tickets on 2018’s Reputation Stadium Tour, marking a 38% leap from the earnings on 2015’s The 1989 World Tour. The Eras Tour multiplies her prior best more than six times over.
The Eras Tour kicked off in Glendale, Ariz. on March 17, 2023. If the tour hadn’t already made a seismic impact just via its announcement, the actual performances sent Swift from superstardom to the stratosphere. The friendship bracelets, the surprise songs and all of Swift’s eras took over, sparking major economic booms in every city she visited and hysteria among Swifties around the world.
By August 9, 2023, Swift had released her re-recording of Speak Now (July 7), announced the re-recording for 1989 and wrapped the tour’s first U.S. leg. Quickly after, she played her first shows ever in Mexico with four nights at the capital’s Estadio GNP Seguros (then known as Foro Sol), followed by nine shows in South America.
In February 2024, Swift took her talents to Asia and Australia, but not before she won her record-setting fourth Grammy for album of the year for Midnights and announced her next new studio album during an acceptance speech. That one – The Tortured Poets Department, released April 19 – arrived while on break from tour, and once again, set a new career-peak with a debut week of 2.61 million equivalent album units earned in the U.S., according to Luminate, and the entire top 14 on the Hot 100. On the current, Dec. 14-dated edition of the Billboard 200, the set returns for a 16th week at No. 1 on the back of a physical release of the album’s deluxe Anthology version, sold exclusively at Target.
In May, Swift took on Europe, with 48 shows across the continent. While Tortured Poets spent most of the summer atop the Billboard 200, The Eras Tour continued its blistering pace, including eight nights at London’s Wembley Stadium.
Finally, Swift returned to North America for three shows each in Miami, New Orleans, and Indianapolis, plus six in Toronto and one last weekend in Vancouver.
Taylor Swift teamed up with The National on their new song “The Alcott” on Friday (April 28), and the collab immediately had Swifties buzzing over its lovelorn lyrics.
The downtempo cut off the band’s new album First Two Pages of Frankenstein finds the pop star’s voice melding perfectly with frontman Bryce Dessner’s as they wistfully intone, “And the last thing you wanted is the first thing I do/ I tell you my problems, you tell me the truth/ It’s the last thing you wanted, it’s the first thing I do/ I tell you that I think I’m falling back in love with you” on the chorus.
Swift’s ardent fandom flooded the Instagram comments of her official fan club’s posts announcing the track with reactions to the song, with one writing, “Taylor remember he’s dreamy, but you’re the sun in your universe!!! Thank you for allowing us to look directly in the sun when we see our lives reflected in your poetic music!”
Others were quick to compare the track to Folklore‘s “Exile” featuring Bon Iver and earlier The National collab “Coney Island” from Evermore. “It’s so exile im crying,” one commented; another opined, “This is literally Coney Island and exile’s love child and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.”
Recently, Swift brought out The National’s Aaron Dessner out during her Eras Tour stop in Tampa, Fla. to perform Midnights bonus track “The Great War” as one of the tour’s many surprise songs.
Stream Swift and The National’s “The Alcott” and check out Swifties’ reactions to the song on social media below.
When it comes to Taylor Swift, even Attorney General Merrick Garland is a bonafide fan. The head of the Department of Justice cleverly put his Swiftie status to the test when testifying before the Senate on Wednesday (March 1).
Speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding DOJ oversight, Garland told the committee that he’s “pretty familiar” with the superstar and her music, but according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer has almost all of Swift’s CDs on display in his office and even counts “Shake It Off” as his favorite song in her discography.
Apparently, Garland’s entry point into the Swiftian musical universe came courtesy of his two daughters, who would listen to 2006’s Taylor Swift and 2008’s Fearless on repeat as he drove them to school every morning. But even since then, he’s stayed on top of the singer’s discography. “My daughter sent me Midnights right away as a CD, which I appreciate is a little prehistoric at this point,” he quipped to the WSJ. “And then she told me the playlist order in which I should listen to the songs.”
During his testimony, the attorney general also couldn’t resist sneaking a lyrical reference into the proceedings. When pressed about Senator Amy Klobuchar — who counts Red single “I Knew You Were Trouble” as her favorite Taylor song — having anti-trust material regarding the 2010 merger between Ticketmaster and LiveNation in her possession, Garland cleverly responded, “I know that all too well.”
While the ticketing mess that prompted every politician and government figure to sneak her lyrics into the public record continues to play out in Congress, Swift herself is preparing to kick off The Eras Tour with back-to-back shows in Glendale, Ariz. on March 17 and 18.
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