If the past two years of her record-grossing Eras tour has taught pop-watchers anything, it is that Taylor Swift doesn’t do things by halves. Her fond farewell to London on the eighth night of a record-breaking solo run at Wembley Stadium – besting Michael Jackson’s 1988 benchmark – is a triumph and a long, lingering goodbye. It’s also one last opportunity to take stock of Swift’s presence on European shores. As the caravan rolls out of town, what just happened?
To recap: the Eras Tour spans Swift’s 10 studio albums, comprising about 16 costume changes, a full band, 15 dancers, audacious hydraulics and the consistently cool stunt of Swift leaping into what looks like a pool of water (in reality, another trapdoor in the floor). The need-to-know tally at Wembley Night Eight runs thus: Eras gig number 131 offers the usual three hours-plus of music, including two live debuts. There’s So Long, London, from her latest album, The Tortured Poets’ Department (2024), mourning a relationship, and the harder-hitting TTPD track Florida!!!, a song performed with full choreography with Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine.
The screaming ovation that happens after Champagne Problems clocks in at more than five minutes, with Swift taking out her earpieces to receive wave after wave of validation. But the duet between Swift and Welch is even louder, the song’s walloping percussion and the stars’ twin-banshee vocals rebounding around the stadium like an electrical storm.
Later, another special guest, Jack Antonoff (Swift’s go-to producer), joins her for an acoustic medley of two older songs, Getaway Car and Death By a Thousand Cuts – a pally, two-guitar romp that contrasts with the more polished son-et-lumière either side. Even later than that, a new video for Swift’s TTPD anthem to the tour itself, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, featuring behind-the-scenes footage, debuts on the screens after the show.
It’s exhilarating and almost too much fun. Does Swift change the lyrics to So Long London from “You’ll find someone” to “I found someone”, a reference to her happiness with football player Travis Kelce after two hard breakups? The internet has opinions.
After a summer of it, Swiftmania can feel a little hegemonic, however; a cult of millions. Not only is Swift the entertainment – the noise around her is its own show as well. Those fans looking at the frames within the frames in her every move can often be just as interested in what doesn’t happen as what does. Despite fervid fan speculation, the singer does not announce a new album. Reputation, Swift’s 2017 album, is the next due a Taylor’s Version, the programme of re-recordings that regains Swift’s rights to her work. (It’s hard to imagine where even the famously workaholic Swift might have had time to work on “Rep TV”, given the demands of this tour.)
The real world, too, remains at bay for the duration of this marathon victory lap. There is no word from the stage about deepfakes circulated online by Donald Trump in the days prior to the gig, showing Swift, and Swifties, endorsing him in the forthcoming election. There’s also no acknowledgement of the tragedy in Southport in July or the foiled terror plot that cancelled Swift’s Vienna gigs. But in an Instagram post on Wednesday night, the singer discussed her reticence to comment publicly, writing of “grieving concerts, not lives”.
Behind the scenes, we now know that Swift met privately with some of those affected by the attack on young girls attending the Swift-themed dance class in Southport. It’s hard not to see the female-forward pleasure of Swift’s gigs in the wider context of male violence against women and girls. Activist Malala Yousafzai attended an earlier Eras night and posted about how she and her childhood friends used to sing Taylor Swift songs during a post-Taliban lull.
Contextualising such a landmark night by things that don’t happen may seem odd. But what doesn’t go on at the Eras tour can, paradoxically, feel as much a part of the whole as what does. The theories generated by Swift’s fandom, egged on by her propensity for hiding Easter eggs in her output, snowball, generating a kind of gravity field of their own. The noise outside Wembley can sometimes feel as seismic as the noise within.
Then there is Swift’s much-analysed influence on the non-musical sphere. Whether or not estimates of the Eras tour’s impact on the UK economy after a summer of gigs hold true, reports suggest that her tour’s effect on inflation may have influenced the Bank of England’s recent interest rate decision-making.
There are some discordant notes too. A backlash has emerged, at what appears to be Swift’s relentless pursuit of statistical dominance. Many minor variations on her latest album have been released with extra tracks, lapped up by the faithful – a strategy that has kept the album at the top of the charts in the US for many weeks. Arguably, this strategy has kept artists such as Billie Eilish and Charli XCX off the top chart spots in what can feel like a calculating way. (Most people are fine with Swift keeping a Ye – the new name for Kanye West – project down.)
Even the show itself – a bravura singathon packed with hits – can begin to feel like a sideshow in these conversations. In the Swiftverse, everything could be a symbol, a clue. When is a tour a tour, and when is it an opportunity to film a behind-the-scenes tour documentary?
Ultimately, though, as perpetual-motion pop juggernauts go, Swift’s remains not just the biggest, but among the very best. It is an autobiographical feat of stamina that traces how a gawky teenage country singer turned into the most successful act in the world.
Swift’s stature now is in inverse proportion to the assailed figure she was in 2016 – borderline-cancelled, in part because of a feud with West and Kim Kardashian. She then faced a sexual assaulter in court and, in 2017, won. Swift’s subsequent success has been, to some extent, an act of vengeful fortitude, fuelled by sadness. But it’s the sheer glee and mischievous joy of her Eras tour that lingers, after the stadium finally goes dark.
