The Eras Tour

23 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift Is Donating to Food Banks on The Eras Tour Route

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.

22 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour Outfits: Then and Now

Taylor Swift is taking fans on a trip through each of her albums on The Eras Tour, which launched with back-to-back shows on March 17 and 18 in Glendale, Ariz., and her costumes are part of the journey.

As the superstar took the stage at State Farm Arena on the first night, her attention to detail was ever present, as each of her outfits harkened back to a previous tour or live appearance from her 17-year career in the spotlight.

Kicking off with 2019’s Lover, Swift opened the show using a light pink acoustic guitar reminiscent of the instrument she strummed while performing at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, where she delivered a medley of the title track and “You Need to Calm Down.” To run through early hits such as “Love Story” and “You Belong with Me” from 2008’s Fearless, she brought back her classic style from her sophomore era, donning a gold fringed dress and trading her pink guitar for a sparkly silver edition — the only thing missing was a nod to her famous mane of teenage curls.

When it came time to revisit Reputation, Tay resurrected the popular snake motif from the era (long live Karyn!), channeling her aesthetic from “Look What You Made Me Do” in a dark, asymmetrical body suit covered in glittering red serpents. And while only one song from 2010’s Speak Now was featured on the opening night’s setlist (an extended edition of deep cut “Enchanted”), the singer changed into a fairytale-like ball gown fit for a princess.

During the part of the setlist dedicated to 2012’s Red, Swift showed off a new version of the T-shirt she wore in the music video for “22” — this time emblazoned with her famously cryptic phrase “Not a lot going on at the moment.” And perhaps the most major set change during the show occurred as she welcomed the audience into the Folklorian woods of her surprise 2020 album by recreating a version of the moss-covered cabin she called home to perform a medley of “Cardigan,” “August” and Evermore lead single “Willow” at the 2021 Grammys with collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner.

The final fashion reference on the tour came when Swift went back to 1989 by changing into a crop top and short skirt, just like the many she wore back in the day with her squad.

Click through the gallery below to check out the looks from Taylor’s Eras Tour as well as their counterparts from earlier eras in her career.

21 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift Makes Good on Promise to 13-Year-Old Burn Survivor With Tour Tickets

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.

21 Mar 2023

Watch Taylor Swift Stage Dive at Her Eras Tour Concerts

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:

20 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift Ticketing Tiff Kept AEG From Signing Live Nation’s Anti-Scalping Pact

The country’s two leading concert companies, Live Nation and AEG, are at odds over how Congress should address the future of ticketing after a disagreement over Taylor Swift’s record-breaking The Eras Tour.

Long before the pop star’s Nov. 15 sale dominated the news cycle, where hundreds of thousands of Swift fans experienced service disruptions that kept them from buying the tickets they wanted, the two companies had signed an agreement that many thought might take AEG out of the ticketing business entirely. In 2021, when AEG announced that its facility management division ASM had struck a deal to make Ticketmaster its preferred ticketing partner, many assumed that meant the company was on the way to shutting down its own ticking platform, AXS Tickets.

Instead, ASM’s contract with the Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster would pave the way for an expansion of AEG’s AXS, thanks to a provision in Ticketmaster’s exclusive agreement that granted AEG the right to use AXS to sell tickets to AEG-promoted shows at ASM venues, sources tell Billboard. AEG tours like Kane Brown, Elton John and Luke Combs could opt out of using Ticketmaster when playing ASM-client venues such as Soldier Field in Chicago, U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis and Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., and use AXS instead. This marked the largest carve-out in Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contract to date, potentially allowing hundreds of arenas, stadiums and performing arts centers to use AXS for the first time, like the new Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas — the highest grossing stadium on Billboard’s 2022 year-end Boxscore chart.

The provision was a sort of double victory for AEG, Live Nation’s leading competitor: The company was able to leverage its control over 350 ASM venues to get those clients large payouts for re-signing with Ticketmaster without forsaking its own ticketing service. AEG officials had also hoped this might mark the beginning of a more open ticketing ecosystem away from the sorts of exclusive deals that have helped Ticketmaster gain such dominance in the space. But less than two years later, AEG and Live Nation find themselves at odds, divided over the handling of Swift’s The Eras Tour.

AEG is now refusing to join a coalition of music companies supporting Live Nation’s Fair Ticketing campaign, a piece of proposed anti-scalper legislation born out of the bot attack on Ticketmaster’s Nov. 15 presale for Swift’s tour. While Universal Music Group, Red Light Management, Irving and Jeffrey Azoff, and all four major talent agencies are backing the FAIR Ticketing reforms to ban scalping practices like “speculative” ticket selling and mandating all-in pricing across all ticketing marketplaces nationally, AEG has been taking a different approach to what they see as some of ticketing’s biggest problems. Sources tell Billboard that AEG executives have been quietly lobbying the Department of Justice to investigate Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts to lock up the ticket market as a possible violation of its consent decree governing its merger with Live Nation in 2010. AEG leadership is also lobbying politicians to include restrictions on such exclusive ticketing practices in new legislation that could be introduced as soon as this week.

Sources say Live Nation executives have been careful not to engage with AEG publicly about its exclusivity agreements. Privately, they have accused AEG of trying to have it both ways, accepting the money that comes with exclusive ticketing contracts, while trying to expand AXS ticketing beyond the ASM deal into all NFL stadiums ticketed by Ticketmaster.

“This is a bad look for them,” one source at Ticketmaster tells Billboard.

Since Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 and AEG launched its own ticketing platform in 2012, both companies have found they can earn more from the concerts they promote if they also control the ticketing, collecting more fees for themselves, while keeping data generated by the concert in house. The additional revenue for a promoter like AEG could be substantial, especially for an artist like Swift, who sold a total of 2.4 million tickets for The Eras Tour.

With Swift’s tour, sources say AXS was expecting to handle some of the ticketing under the ASM-Ticketmaster provision, since AEG was a co-promoter with partner Messina Touring Group. ASM managed five stadiums, representing 12 shows on the 52-date trek, and sources say AXS officials were hoping its ties to the tour could lead to it getting some, if not all of the tour. Except that Ticketmaster executives said their exclusive contracts with more than a dozen NFL teams (and the venues they own) superseded AXS’ claim. Under that reading of the deal, two of the 12 ASM dates — a pair of concerts at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. — would be ticketed by SeatGeek under its exclusive deal with the Arizona Cardinals. Making matters worse, two of ASM’s management clients decided to partner with Ticketmaster for the sale.

Down to just five shows at two stadiums, AEG dropped the matter. According to a source, AEG executives have since spoken with the Department of Justice, encouraging them to look at Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive contracts as anti-competitive.

Relations only worsened in the days following The Eras Tour presale. After the fiasco, Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei appeared on CNBC to defend Ticketmaster and cited the company’s arrangement with AEG in response to claims of monopolistic behavior. “AEG, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he said. “Even our competitors want to come on our platform.” AEG leadership was quick to respond with a statement, saying the promoter had no choice but to use Ticketmaster. “Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on The Eras Tour required us to ticket through their system,” an AEG spokesperson said. “We didn’t have a choice.”

AEG hopes its private lobbying of politicians and anti-trust officials will lead to regulatory change that could include abolishing exclusive ticketing contracts in the United States and ultimately move toward an industry more similar to Europe, where promoters generally don’t sign exclusive ticketing deals and work with multiple partners to sell tickets.

Despite the disagreement, the ASM-Ticketmaster deal remains in place, and AEG officials have had success convincing buildings like the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and the Quicken Home Arena in Cleveland to avoid exclusive ticketing agreements and remain open to multiple systems.

Live Nation and AEG declined to comment for this story.

20 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour: See All the Looks From Night One

Taylor Swift kicked off her much-awaited The Eras tour at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. on Friday night (March 17) and she did not disappoint. The pop superstar performed for a whopping 3 hours and 15 minutes, playing songs from all 10 of her studio albums for an incredible career retrospective.

“Tonight, we’re going to be going on an adventure, one era at a time!” Swift announced a few songs into the show, before showcasing a staggering 44-song setlist of major hits and deep cuts.

Of course, looking back on Swift’s nearly two decade-long career would not be possible without capturing her evolving looks throughout the years. The 32-year-old star channeled Fearless with a sequined, fringe-lined dress and Speak Now with long flowing gowns. She later opted for colorful crop tops for 1989 and a sexy black cut-out catsuit for Reputation. She brought her cottagecore fantasies to life for Evermore and Folklore, before celebrating her most recent release, Midnights, with blue sparkling dresses.

We’ve compiled all of Swift’s looks from night one of The Eras tour, which you can check out below.

16 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift Drops Four New Songs Ahead of ‘The Eras Tour’ Launch: Listen

As if Taylor Swift beginning her long-awaited The Eras Tour wasn’t exciting enough, the superstar added to the hype on Friday (March 17) by releasing four new tracks.

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“In celebration of The Eras Tour I’m releasing 4 previously unreleased songs tonight at midnight,” she revealed on her Instagram Stories a day prior. The four tracks include re-recordings of Swift’s dual contributions to the 2012 soundtrack to The Hunger Games — “Eyes Open” and “Safe & Sound” featuring Joy Williams and John Paul White — as well as “If This Was a Movie (Taylor’s Version)” and never-before-heard song “All of the Girls You Loved Before.”

The Eras Tour is set to begin on Friday (March 17) with back-to-back shows in Glendale, Ariz., which has temporarily been renamed Swift City in honor of Swift’s imminent arrival. Support on the tour will come via a rotating cast of opening acts including Paramore, beabadoobee, Phoebe Bridgers, girl in red, Muna, Haim, Gayle, Gracie Abrams and Owenn.

Since the Reputation tour wrapped in 2018, Swift has released four original studio albums — Lover, 2020’s Folklore and Evermore, and Midnights — as well as two re-recorded albums, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version), both in 2021.

Listen to the four new songs below.

16 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift Is in Her ‘Eras Era’ With New Tour Rehearsal Photos

Taylor Swift‘s much-buzzed-about The Eras Tour is set to begin on Friday (March 17) with back-to-back shows in Glendale, Ariz., and the superstar gave fans a little peek into her rehearsals.

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The “Anti-Hero” singer took to social media to share a series of photos of herself rehearsing her set onstage, dressed in olive-colored cargos, a black crop top and, of course, a red lip. “In my Eras era,” she captioned the post, which also included a photo of her multi-colored nails, which seems like each fingernail represents one of her 10 studio albums.

Swift also shared a sweet picture to her Instagram Stories of a hand-made “All Access” credential she made for her father. “D.O.H. Pass (Dad of Headliner),” the pass reads, as Swift jokingly wrote underneath, “We are a small family business.”

Her dad, wearing his new pass, then teamed up with Swift’s mom to put crystals on their famous daughter’s Fearless-inspired guitar “with super glue and a free afternoon.” Check out the multi-Grammy winner’s recap of her last rehearsal day on her Instagram Stories before they disappear here.

Earlier in the day, the “Blank Space” superstar surprised Swifties by announcing that she would be dropping four new songs ahead of her tour kickoff. “In celebration of The Eras Tour I’m releasing 4 previously unreleased songs tonight at midnight,” she revealed on her Instagram Stories. The four tracks include re-recordings of Swift’s dual contributions to the 2012 soundtrack to The Hunger Games — “Eyes Open” and “Safe & Sound” featuring Joy Williams and John Paul White — as well as “If This Was a Movie (Taylor’s Version)” and never-before-heard song “All of the Girls You Loved Before.”

15 Mar 2023

The 21 Special Guests We Hope to See on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour 

While many details surrounding Taylor Swift’s feverishly anticipated Eras Tour remain obscured just days before Friday’s monstrous kickoff in Arizona, there’s at least one aspect fans should count on: There will be special guests. 

Since the Speak Now Tour in 2011, Swift has established herself as the ultimate “sharing is caring” mega-headliner, welcoming a long list of artists — newcomers and icons alike — to her sprawling stages. The guest list from her 1989 tour alone was well over three dozen acts long.

But who’s most likely to appear over the next few months? As Swift has made new friends, forged new collaborations and released a heaping pile of music since the Reputation Tour in 2018 (her last roadshow), the possibilities for surprise guests are nearly endless.

We can still speculate, however! These are our best guesses for who’ll be waiting in the wings — and in which cities some may pop up — broken down into three categories: 

Should Happen: The duets that feel most likely and maintain some precedent or clear link, where Swift would be remiss to not make it happen. 

Could Happen: Educated guesses, but still slightly wishful thinking — based on recent trends, friendships, influences and past encounters, even if there isn’t exactly precedent. 

Break the Internet Moments: The once-in-a-lifetime sort of pairings with fellow icons, which would go instantly viral and help to define the Eras Tour as the unforgettable pop culture phenomenon it’s likely to become regardless.

NOTE: Our picks do not include any scheduled Eras Tour openers, as those features feel a bit too obvious. And we’ve only selected musicians here, though we wouldn’t mind seeing Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds trot out for a dance party.

27 Feb 2023

20 Taylor Swift Songs That Probably Won’t Make The Eras Tour Setlist (But Really Should)

All bets are off as Taylor Swift’s feverishly anticipated The Eras Tour — her first roadshow unbeholden to a particular album release — prepares to embark March 17 in Glendale, Arizona. 

It stands to reason that Swift would heavily showcase the heap of music she’s produced since her record-setting Reputation Stadium Tour wrapped in 2018 — those projects being Lover (2019), Folklore and Evermore (2020), Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) (2021), and Midnights (2022). 

But as the Eras Tour has been promoted by Swift as a “journey through all of my musical eras,” it’s understood that each of her 10 studio albums will be highlighted in some manner. Couple that with the fact that Swift has not publicly performed more than 70 new or previously unreleased songs since her last tour a whopping half-decade earlier, and Swifties’ imaginations have rightfully run wild. What on Earth will the setlist look like?

We’ve already put forth what her dream Eras setlist could resemble. But what about all that’s left on the cutting room floor? There are dozens upon dozens of songs that likely won’t be performed (at least with any regularity) on this tour, even if many would make for wondrously intimate moments or booming show-stoppers.  

So that’s what we have here: all the songs Swift probably won’t play this spring and summer, but should sincerely consider — at least for a night or two. We’ve chosen two cuts per album; let’s break it down as we all count the minutes to opening night.