Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Sydney: Unbridled Joy, an Epic Achievement and Friendship Bracelets

I may never be able to watch live music again. After going to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour night two in Sydney, my world has changed. Just to get it out of the way, this is the best concert I have ever seen and it lives up to all the hype. Seeing Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith and Kev Carmody may have been more emotionally impactful because those are my music heroes, Swift’s Eras tour is the best live show I have ever seen. Reviewing such a massive show is challenging, so I am going to break it up into sections. The first section is on some basics about the show and general thoughts, then I will go through personal highlights, then some surprises and end with the impact this may have on the music industry.

First of all, this is the largest and longest concert I have ever seen. There were over 82,000 people…which will be important to think about later…and she played for 3 1/2 hours. That’s right, 44 songs for 3 1/2 hours. In saying that, the pacing was amazing and it felt like a 90 minute show and the energy she had at the end was enough for her to go for another hour, which the crowd would not have turned down. During the concert she stated that she recorded so many albums during COVID, roughly 4, that she did not know how to pitch a tour. Swift, like many artists, tour their latest record and play a couple other hits in the show. However, how do you tour 4 records? She thought the best way to deal with this problem was to tour ALL of her records. Each record is an era with its own costume, set and choreographed dance scenes. This was all done flawlessly on a stage made of like 100 LED screens which raised, lowered and projected crystal clear images. The epic nature of the concert will never be duplicated and it spanned 18 years of Taylor Swift. This concert is a monumental achievement that will be talked about for decades and was easily the biggest concert in Australia in the past 20 – 25 years.

I still have to mention the fans. They have created these fan events like trading friendship bracelets with your favourite Swift lyric, song or album title on it. We walked around an hour before the doors opened and traded bracelets with countless Swift fans beaming to be be at the concert and talking about how they liked our purple Speak Now bracelet. What’s your favourite song? What album to do like? Wow, how did you make those cool bracelets? There was such a joy and shared experience before the concert that you found yourself floating on cloud nine headed into the show.

Ok. We know it’s epic, but what really stood out? Here are some standouts for me. The two eras that really stuck out to me were the Lover era and Folklore era. The concert started with the Lover era, which meant that she was not going to do the eras in chronological order, which was great for pacing. I mean, doing the Folklore and Evermore eras back to back would have killed the concert’s pacing. Kicking off with Cruel Summer, Lover, You Need to Calm Down, The Archer and The Man was a brilliant move. That record, especially Cruel Summer, has gotten a second life and the energy in the area went into the stratosphere and the crowd was 100% in. I have grown to love that record and it was great to start off with some pure pop joy and save the heavy hitters like 1989 for later.

I spoke with Coop when Folklore came out and said that it was my favourite Taylor record, but I had no idea how she could tour it. I thought it was such an intimate record with such low pop arrangements in exchange for more singer songwriter vibes that there was no way she would do it in an arena show. This is where Taylor Swift is a musical genius. She brought out a small cabin onto the stage and sung while laying on the roof and in the inside with one of the walls removed facing the crowd. The choice to sing in this cabin shrunk down this huge stage into a small intimate space. The highlights were The Last Great American Dynasty, which I never thought I would see live, Cardigan and My Tears Ricochet, which was an emotionally powerful rendition of that track. Being able to create an emotionally personal and intimate space within a crowd of over 80,000 is not easy to do, but Swift pulled it off and the Folklore era was emotionally enriching and well crafted.

Ok. You know I loved the other eras as well. The biggest surprises were the powerful rendition of Love Story, which had everyone screaming lyrics and sobbing and her jumping into Bad Blood with flames and red lasers. However, the biggest surprise is how my second favourite era was Reputation. That’s right, Reputation. Up to this point, Reputation was my least liked Swift record and I saw it as her spinning her wheels until she made Folklore. Earlier in the show Taylor stated that we all have memories connected with the songs she was going to do and some people may not like some of her records at all, but she hoped that we will replace that bad memory of the track with the joyous memory of all of us sharing that song together in the concert. That happened to me with Reputation. All Swifties know that Taylor wears a black leotard with a red snake on it for the Reputation era, so when cobras came out on the LED screens and pretended to bite the stage the crowd went insane. Swift then ripped into Ready For It, Delicate, Don’t Blame Me and Look What You Made Me Do, which gave us 25 minutes of raw unbridled feminist power. The crowd was screaming every lyric like their life depended on it and it was an incredible ride. With Swift really giving it and snakes dancing around the stage I couldn’t help but get swept up with Reputation and now have turned around on the record.

This concert was very generous to the fans and was an incredible experience. The sheer epic nature of tackling 10 records that span 18 years in one concert, and pull it off, is incredible. However, is this going to change concerts? Will we see Era-esque tours from other artists? Artists like Paul McCartney do retrospective concerts, but nothing at this scale. I could see Rihanna or Beyoncé having the discography deep enough and fan base rabid enough to pull it off and I hope they do. The Eras concert was not just a live show, but a historical event and the fact that she could play music spanning 18 years and my 14 year old daughter knows every word to every song speaks to Swift’s connection with her audience. It was an amazing show that I will think about for the rest of my life.