The Eras Tour
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Thanks to one fearless weather reporter, Welsh Swifties got the best possible forecast ahead of Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour concert in Cardiff. BBC Wales’ Sabrina Lee captivated fans Monday (June 17) — one day ahead of the pop star’s concert at Principality Stadium — when she sprinkled dozens of Swift song titles into her broadcast. […]
Somewhere on Gracie Abrams’ camera roll is a video of Taylor Swift in the pop superstar’s kitchen in Tribeca, deliriously extinguishing a bonfire threatening to consume her center island.
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Behind the lens, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter cry-laughs as her childhood hero works fearlessly to save them from danger. They’d both distantly heard the candle fall over earlier that night, but Swift had assured Abrams it was probably one of her cats thumping around. It’s well past 6 a.m., after a night of dinner and drinks – heavy on that second thing — when the fire finally goes out.
“She was such a legend – I don’t know how at this hour or in our state she knew what to do,” Abrams raves to Billboard six months later over Zoom. “We both had an insane cough from the fire extinguisher fumes for weeks.”
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The pair had just finished co-writing “Us,” the crown jewel of the California native’s 13-track sophomore studio album The Secret of Us – due out this Friday (June 21) — when the fiasco occurred. Before that, they’d spent the night previewing songs from Abrams’ new record and the 34-year-old hitmaker’s The Tortured Poets Department for each other before either project had even been announced. Abrams recalls singing and dancing “like theater kids” to “But Daddy I Love Him” and lying on the floor in disbelief after hearing “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” after which they started listening to instrumentals made by their mutual collaborator and friend Aaron Dessner.
“Something caught our ear at the same time very hard and fast,” Abrams says. “So we ran to the piano and started writing this song … I used to fantasize about that kind of a thing as a kid.”
“Us” ended up being the ribbon that tied together the material Abrams had been dreaming up with Dessner at his famed Long Pond Studios last year, after spending the summer opening for Swift’s Eras Tour, a role she’ll reprise on select dates in North America later this fall. Shortly after their near-death experience, the two women headed upstate to record the duet with the 48-year-old National founder, who recalls: “It was just really fun to watch the chemistry of Gracie and Taylor bouncing off each other, Gracie in total wonder and awe watching how Taylor records and produces her vocal performances and builds the world.”
“Taylor’s brilliant at synthesizing a whole story,” Dessner continues over Zoom, the wooden panels of Long Pond’s interior making up his backdrop. “[That song] just brought everything [about Gracie’s album] into focus in a beautiful way.”
Even without Swift’s name on the credits, The Secret of Us is easily Abrams’ most mainstream-friendly project to date. Though still rife with acoustic guitars and Dessner’s signature woodsiness, the project is sharper, hookier and more extroverted than ever, with light synths and the occasional ghost of a dance beat injecting newfound adrenaline into its DNA. The sound is best exemplified by Abrams’ most-recent single “Close to You,” which dropped earlier this month and is already shaping up to be her splashiest hit yet.
Abrams hadn’t set out to write a new album so quickly after her debut record Good Riddance dropped February 2023, peaking at No. 52 on the Billboard 200 — much less one that sounds so distinctly different from her past work. But the songs just kept coming to her as intuitively as on that spontaneous night in New York, many of them about unrequited love so strong it “felt like a sickness,” she says.
“I didn’t even think we were making [an album], and neither did Gracie,” says Dessner. “The first song that we made is ‘Gave You I Gave You I.’ That immediately established a very different palette and sonic world, and it evolved from there.”
“We just had a good time realizing that we can make things that sound totally different,” Abrams adds. “It was permission, this album, to try whatever the f—k we want.”
This time around, the duo – who first teamed up on Abrams’ 2021 EP This Is What It Feels Like — also had a cowriter in the singer’s best friend since she was 10, Audrey Hobert. Abrams and Hobert have technically been working together since they were in middle school, writing and directing Video Star movies together, but the tracks on Secret of Us co-penned by Hobert mark her first foray into songwriting.
The friend duo’s closeness allowed Abrams to be more vulnerable than she ever could’ve been with any other collaborator, and Hobert even stars as a main character in the bittersweet lyrics to “Good Luck Charlie,” which the former says is about observing a relationship end between two friends and “having a lot of love for both people … half mourning it and half wishing well on everyone involved.” (The title, she clarifies, is totally unrelated to the Disney Channel show of the same name — “I wasn’t a Disney kid growing up … I feel like I missed out.”)
“I trust her with my life, and she knows me so well,” Abrams says of her friend. “There was no pretending.”
Plus, after hitting the road with Swift, Abrams realized she was ready to perform music that commanded a little more presence in the stadiums she was warming up, which she hopes to translate to her own headlining tour of theater-sized venues across the U.S. kicking off Sept. 5 in Portland. That’s why you’ll hear her properly belting for the first time in multiple places on The Secret of Us, as teased in lead single “Risk,” which dropped May 1.
“I think it’s just time,” she says of honing her vocal abilities. “I wasn’t a singer. I was a writer, and no one else would sing my songs when I was little. I was singing my songs to myself in my room, so it didn’t require much projection. I could stay very quiet and curled up into a ball. Being onstage, it’s a different game.”
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But as her star has risen with Eras exposure and residual Good Riddance hype – and as naysayers have finally moved on from poking at her “nepo baby” status, being the daughter of director J.J. Abrams — her singing chops have invited some criticism, even though her crackling alto is the thing many fans love most about her.
“There are vocalists that are worth calling out [for their skills], and that’s not me,” Abrams admits. “I love to sing so f—king much, because I love to sing things that I write. It’s an extension of the writing for me, so I’m always trying to improve upon that skill. But I wouldn’t lead with ‘I’m a singer.’ I’d say, ‘I’m a writer.’”
Abrams and Dessner are already working on the former’s next project — “We don’t know what it is yet,” she says, “but we’ve been making a bunch of new music that feels already wildly different from this album.” Still, she feels like the style and subject matter of Secret of Us is fully evocative of her current state of mind, as opposed to past works that felt like “revisiting old wounds” to perform live.
“It can feel like this funny ghost,” Abrams adds. “And with The Secret of Us, it feels very topical still. That’s so me.”
If there’s one exception, though, it’s “Close to You,” which Abrams first recorded seven years ago with producer Sam de Jong before scrapping it, feeling unready to embrace such a distinctly pop sound. That didn’t stop fans from obsessing over a seconds-long snippet of the track Abrams uploaded online last decade, and she’s been receiving almost daily requests – plus some gentle pushing from her team at Interscope – to release it ever since.
With Secret of Us being as pop-facing as it is, “Close to You” finally has a home that makes sense. It appears at the very end of the tracklist and serves as the second single, with Abrams officially dropping it to fans’ elation June 7. (For those wondering whether another years-old cast-off, the deeply Swiftian “In Between,” will get the same second-life treatment, Abrams teases it’s “looking like a deluxe situation.”)
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Her label’s patience was rewarded, with the track debuting at No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, her first-ever solo entry on the chart. It follows her appearance on the remix to “Everywhere, Everything,” Noah Kahan’s Stick Season anthem, reaching No. 79 in December.
“Gracie is truly one of those brick-by-brick artist development stories, building such a dedicated following one fan at a time and never wanting to skip steps,” Sam Riback, president of IGA and head of Pop/Rock A&R, tells Billboard over email. “It was her connection to her fanbase, built over a long period of time, that was truly unique and special to her arrival on the mainstream stage. It is that bond between Gracie and her fans that will propel her all the way to the top and keep her there.”
If Secret of Us makes as big a statement as Abrams and her team hope it does, then “the top” is definitely in reach. Since she first spoke to Billboard less than a year and a half ago, the star has nearly doubled her Spotify listener count (15 million+), picked up her first Grammy nomination and held her own on the biggest tour of all time.
On a more personal front, Abrams says she’s also more self-assured – as a person and artist – than she’s ever been before. “I just know that I trust myself solo,” she says. “This album has meant so much to me because it has supported me through a period of transitions. I’ve learned about how I like to spend my time, about what works for me or doesn’t in relationships, about how having friends is ultimately the priority for me. I don’t need to know who I want to wake up next to every day, but I know that I want to be there for every chapter of my friends’ lives.”
“I’m learning every five seconds,” Abrams adds. “We’ll have to find out what it all turns into, but that’s me today.”
Gracie Abrams
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Taylor Swift is celebrating a milestone in her Eras Tour.
On Sunday (June 16), the pop superstar shared a touching message on social media following the 100th concert of her record-breaking The Eras Tour, which launched March 17, 2023, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.
“We played our 100th show on The Eras Tour (which feels truly deranged to say because this show feels new to me every time we play it),” Swift captioned a photo gallery on Instagram from her three-night run in Liverpool, England.
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Swift confirmed her final Eras Tour show during her first concert at the city’s Anfield Stadium on June 13.
“You know, this is actually the 100th show of the tour,” the singer told the Liverpool crowd. “That blows my mind. That doesn’t feel like a real statistic to me, because this has definitely been the most exhausting, all-encompassing, but most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life, this tour, these moments with you.”
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She continued, “You know, a lot of you were like, ‘Well, how are you going to celebrate the 100th show? And for me, the celebration of the 100th show means this is the very first time I’ve ever acknowledged to myself and admitted that this tour is going to end in December. Like, that’s it.”
The final scheduled concert of the Eras Tour — which will be the 152nd show, if no new dates are added — is set for Dec. 8 at Vancouver, Canada’s BC Arena.
In her Instagram post on Sunday, the “Anti-Hero” singer went on to thank her road crew, stage performers, and backing band for committing “hundreds of hours to putting on this show and giving their all on and behind that stage.”
“I can’t believe the work ethic, creativity and dedication I get to be surrounded with every day,” she added.
See Swift’s post on Instagram here.
Taylor Swift might have been understating things when she called one of her surprise songs for night 2 in Liverpool, England, “a little bit unexpected.”
Making its Eras Tour debut on Friday night (June 14), Swift performed “This Is What You Came For” — the Billboard Hot 100 top five hit released by Calvin Harris and Rihanna in 2016, which Harris co-wrote with his then-girlfriend Swift — in a mash-up with Evermore‘s “gold rush” for the first of two surprise acoustic songs.
With a guitar slung over her cobalt-blue ombre maxi dress, Swift introduced the song by acknowledging that it might be an especially surprising surprise song. “Every single time that we have an acoustic set, I’m always trying to think of things that you might want to hear, maybe things that might be a little bit expected,” she told the Anfield Stadium crowd. “Let’s see how we did tonight.”
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While “This Is What You Came For” was making its Eras Tour debut, Swift has performed the song twice before: once in 2016 at her Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix concert in Austin, Texas, and once in 2017 at her Super Saturday Night concert in Houston, Texas, ahead of that year’s Super Bowl.
When the song was released in April 2016, it was credited as being co-written by Harris and an unknown songwriter named “Nils Sjöberg.” Following Harris and Swift’s breakup, TMZ reported in July of the same year that Sjöberg was actually a pen name for the pop singer/songwriter, and Harris confirmed her involvement on Twitter. In a 2020 Rolling Stone conversation with Paul McCartney, Swift explained her motivation for using the pen name.
“I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you,” Swift said at the time. “And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called ‘This Is What You Came For’ that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote ‘Manic Monday’ [for The Bangles], they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.”
For her second acoustic song on Friday night, Swift performed a Midnights mash-up of “The Great War” and “You’re Losing Me” on piano.
Watch Swift perform “This Is What You Came For” in Liverpool:
Taylor Swift is celebrating her 100th Eras Tour show by confirming her final Eras Tour show.
At the first concert of a three-night stint in Liverpool, England, on Thursday (June 13), Swift let the crowd in on a secret: The seemingly endless Eras Tour has an official end.
“You know, this is actually the 100th show of the tour,” Swift says to wild cheers in fan video of the moment. “That blows my mind. That doesn’t feel like a real statistic to me, because this has definitely been the most exhausting, all-encompassing, but most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life, this tour, these moments with you.
“You know, a lot of you were like, ‘Well, how are you going to celebrate the 100th show?’” Swift continued from the Anfield Stadium stage. “And for me, the celebration of the 100th show means this is the very first time I’ve ever acknowledged to myself and admitted that this tour is going to end in December. Like, that’s it.”
The Eras Tour kicked off at Glendale, Arizona’s State Farm Stadium on March 17, 2023, and the final scheduled concert — which will be the 152nd show, if no new dates are added — is set for Dec. 8 at Vancouver, Canada’s BC Arena.
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“That feels so far away from now, but then again, it feels like we just played our first show on this tour because you have made this so fun for us that we wanted to do 100 shows, 150-something shows that we have on the whole tour,” Swift said. “This tour has really become my entire life. It’s taken over everything. I think I once had hobbies, but I don’t know what they were anymore because all I do when I’m not onstage is sit at home and try to think of clever acoustic song mash-ups and think about what you might want to hear. So when I’m not on the stage, I’m dreaming of being back on the stage with you guys.”
Swift finished her speech by thanking fans for making the effort to be with her as The Eras Tour “reaches triple digits of shows.”
After two more nights in Liverpool, Swift will continue to Cardiff, Wales, for one show, before putting on the first three concerts of an eventual eight nights at London’s Wembley Stadium.
Watch Swift’s full speech below:
Taylor Swift is anything but down bad after three successful Eras Tour shows in Scotland, shortly after which she thanked fans for showing up in record-breaking numbers in a heartfelt post on Instagram Monday (June 10). Sharing a slew of photos from her performances at Murrayfield Stadium, the pop star excitedly wrote, “Edinburgh!!! You truly […]
The fruits of Taylor Swift‘s work ethic are pretty much inescapable, from the chart dominance of her music to the attention her billion-dollar Eras Tour trek commands nearly every week. And in a new BBC story exploring the pop star’s success published Friday (June 7), Lana Del Rey offered her thoughts on how her friend […]
Taylor Swift and tens of thousands of fans spent the second day of Pride Month singing and dancing at the Eras Tour concert in Lyon, France, and the pop star was sure to mark the occasion during a sweet moment on stage Sunday (June 2). The celebratory shout-out came toward the beginning of Swift’s three-hour-plus […]
Taylor Swift is screaming “long live” all the magic she made with her fans at her two Eras Tour shows in Madrid this week. One day after wrapping up her two-night stay at Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, the pop star gushed about the time she spent with her Spanish Swifties on Instagram Friday (May 31). “I […]
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, sitting in a tree … At Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour concert in Madrid Thursday (May 30), the famous couple shared an adorable moment while watching the show from a VIP section on the stadium’s floor, where fan cameras captured them K-I-S-S-I-N-G during one of the pop star’s most lovey-dovey tracks. […]