The Eras Tour

It’s no secret that Taylor Swift is the queen of Easter eggs. Since the early days of her career, the superstar has regularly planted clues, hints and callbacks in her music videos, live appearances, interviews and even the liner notes in her albums.

“I love to communicate through Easter eggs,” Swift said in a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly to help kick off her Lover era. “I think the best messages are cryptic ones. … You know, when you plan something that far in advance, you’re kind of just flexing on planning. That’s what an Easter egg really does.”

So it should come as no surprise to Swifties that The Eras Tour is no exception to their queen’s masterminded penchant for hyper-specific planning and eye for gorgeous, perfectly plotted detail — all the way down to the colors painted on her nails during tour rehearsals.

As the U.S. leg of the wildly anticipated tour kicked off, fans at the first two shows in Glendale, Ariz. — and later across the internet, thanks to #SwiftTok — paid keen attention to each of the singer’s choices on stage. From her costumes to her choreography, and even the songs she included (or didn’t) on the setlist, nearly every detail elicited wild analysis and speculation for what it all could mean.

Below, Billboard rounds up an ongoing list of Easter eggs spotted by fans as The Eras Tour makes its way across America. Read on to discover what hidden messages and surprises many a Swiftie surmises the star could be sending from the stage.

The ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ T-Shirt

During the part of setlist where Taylor revisits her Red era, she dons a T-shirt similar to the one she wears in the music video for 2012’s “22.” In the visual, the shirt spells out “Not a lot going on at the moment,” which would go on to become a famously surefire sign to Swifties around the world that their queen was, indeed, working on a major surprise. (See: the one-two punch of 2020’s Folklore and Evermore.)

However, on the opening night of the tour (March 17), Tay’s shirt rewrote the phrase to read “A lot going on at the moment” in bold block letters, with “A lot” sticking out in bright red. The next night, the shirt changed to a spoken lyric from “22”: “Who’s Taylor Swift anyway? Ew.” This time, “Ew.” was highlighted in red.

Only time will tell if Swift continues to change up the phrasing on her shirt from show to show, but one particular fan on TikTok thinks the red words will eventually lead to an anagram spelling out “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” Either way, though, the superstar is clearly sending some sort of message.

Breaking ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ Out Of Its Box?

Footage of Swift performing Reputation lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” piqued fans’ curiosity as multiple backup singers seeming to represent her many album eras appeared on stage trapped in giant plastic boxes.

Given the rampant online fan speculation that Speak Now could be the next re-recording the star plans to drop, special attention was paid to the backup vocalist in the box wearing a purple halter dress remarkably similar to an outfit Swift wore on her Speak Now World Tour throughout 2011 and 2012. As Taylor approaches her box, the star pounds on the glass along to the beat as the singer inside tries to get out. At first glance, the moment looks innocuously like part of the choreography, but many Swifties surmised that it could represent the pending release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), which had been entangled in legal red tape over trademark and copyright issues until earlier this week.

Interestingly, most of the other singers-as-album eras are eventually freed from their boxes, but by song’s end, the Speak Now avatar and one other singer representing a mystery era remain stuck inside theirs.

Check out fan-captured video of the moment on TikTok.

A Manicure for Her ‘Eras Era’

One day ahead of the tour, Tay shared a sneak peek at the rehearsal process on social media, coyly writing, “In my Eras era” alongside a carousel of photos from the stage. The last snap in the slideshow, though, showed off the star’s delicate manicure featuring a different shade on each finger representing a separate album era — sparkling gold for Fearless (Taylor’s Version), shiny teal for 1989, matte black for Reputation, and so on.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp3QUrJuA0w

‘Speak Now’ or Later?

Call this one a reverse Easter egg. So far, her setlist is one for the ages — 44 songs from 10 albums over the course of three hours and fifteen minutes. But out all the fan favorites she performed at Arizona’s State Farm Arena during the first two shows, she included only a single song from 2010’s Speak Now in the form of album cut and originally planned title track “Enchanted.”

The absence of hits such as “Mine,” “Back to December,” “Dear John,” “Mean” and “The Story of Us” felt like a glaring omission, but as with everything Taylor does, the choice may have been entirely intentional. Plenty of fans theorized that the singer was purposely minimizing the attention of her third album because she could be on the precipice of releasing Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).

Taylor Swift isn’t just taking her show on the road for The Eras Tour, she’s also doing some major good along the way.

It was reported on Monday (March 20) that the superstar had made a sizable donation to the Arizona Food Bank Network ahead of taking the stage in Glendale, Ariz. — temporarily renamed Swift City in her honor — for the hotly anticipated start of The Eras Tour.

Swift herself didn’t publicize the donation. Instead, the food bank shared its reaction to the act of kindness with local media outlet AZ Central. “It’s not every day that you get a call from someone who works for Taylor Swift, so we were dubious at first, but happily, it turned out to be absolutely real,” vice president of external relations Terri Shoemaker told the publication.

The nonprofit exec added that she was told in the conversation that Swift planned to focus on leaving a “positive impact” on each stop along her U.S. tour route, and on Wednesday (March 22), Three Square — a food bank based in southern Nevada — revealed the singer had also made a massive donation there ahead of her back-to-back shows in Las Vegas on March 24 and 25..

“We don’t know about you, but we’re feeling grateful on this day, March 22!” the organization wrote on its official Instagram feed. “@TaylorSwift has made a generous gift to Three Square, allowing us to provide thousands of meals to families and individuals struggling with hunger. Thank you to Ms. Swift for supporting our mission and the local community.”

Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment.

The day she launched the cross-country trek, Swift also gave fans a surprise gift in the form of four new songs, including (Taylor’s Version) re-recordings of The Hunger Games tracks “Safe & Sound” with Joy Williams and John Paul White (formerly The Civil Wars) and “Eyes Open” as well as a new version of Speak Now bonus cut “If This Was a Movie” and previously unreleased Lover ditty “All of the Girls You Loved Before.”

Check out Three Square’s post about Swift’s generosity below.

Taylor Swift just made good on a promise to a fan, five years later.
One of thousands of fans in attendance at the opening Eras Tour shows in Glendale, Ariz., was Isabella McCune, a longtime fan who’d been waiting since 2018 to see the pop star live. In fact, the 13-year-old was there as a special guest of Swift’s, who gifted McCune four free tickets to night two of her State Farm Stadium dates.

The bittersweet night was years in the making, as McCune had hoped to see Swift’s Reputation Tour five years prior. Leading up to the 2018 show, she suffered a severe accident that left her hospitalized for nine months as she recovered from burns covering 65% of her body, according to ABC 15 in Arizona. During that time, she listened to the “Anti-Hero” singer’s music to help her get through the difficult time.

Swift eventually visited her young fan — then 8 years old — in the hospital after the accident, and left a sweet note reassuring McCune. “Isabella, I hope you feel better soon,” the superstar wrote in 2018. “I’m so honored you’ve been listening to my music. You’re so awesome and I can’t wait to have you at a show. Stay strong, gorgeous. Love, Taylor.”

No one could have predicted how long it would take for Swift to be able to deliver on her promise, though. Lover Fest, which was supposed to be her first tour after the Reputation trek, was initially scheduled for summer of 2020. Like most tours around that time, however, it was canceled due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Now that the 11-time Grammy winner is finally back on the road, though, McCune’s story has finally come full circle. With the help of Live 101.5 and the Valleywise Health Foundation, Swift’s team surprised her with Eras Tour tickets, which were given to her by a medical professional while she was sitting in a hospital bed like the one she spent months of her life in five years ago.

“Not only the fact that I’m able to go and I got these tickets gifted to me, they’re from Taylor Swift and her team and they remembered me, and thought of me to give me these tickets,” she told ABC15 of the surprise.

There’s stage diving, and then there’s literally diving headfirst into a stage floor. Taylor Swift has been adopting the latter approach during the first couple dates of her highly anticipated Eras Tour, performing a one-of-a-kind stunt during a key moment in her show that has been leaving fans speechless.

The move comes toward the end of Swift’s three-hour showcase and serves as a transition from the surprise song section of her concert to the finale, which is dedicated to her most recent album, Midnights. After the 33-year-old pop star sings two random acoustic numbers from her nearly two decades-long catalog on a B-stage, she puts her hands together above her head and plunges into a Taylor-sized hole in the stage floor.

Lighting effects then make it look as though Swift is swimming underneath the catwalk connecting the B-stage and her main stage. When she emerges on the main stage, she performs Midnights single “Lavender Haze” wearing a brand new costume.

The “Anti-Hero” singer officially kicked off the Eras Tour in Glendale, Ariz. — temporarily renamed “Swift City” in her honor — with a pair of State Farm Stadium shows Friday and Saturday night (March 17-18). There were many other stunning moments throughout the concert that left Swifties reeling, from Tay’s sexy “Vigilante Shit” dance routine to her calling out Evermore critics, but the unexpected dive was definitely one of the big standouts. Almost immediately, clips of the plunge started going viral on Twitter, sparking jokes, memes and all-around awe from fans.

Watch Taylor Swift “stage dive” during her Eras Tour show in Glendale below:

aside from being a 12-time grammy winner, a doctor, a director, one of the most acclaimed songwriter of the music industry, and having a record breaking career in the arts, taylor swift is now searching for that swimming olympic medal, look at that divepic.twitter.com/4m9OlFczg7— just like honey (@invisibleday) March 18, 2023