Two blonde female icons stimulated the US economy this (cruel) summer: Barbie and Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift’s nationwide “Eras Tour”, with its unprecedented ticket prices and sold-out stadiums, brought in over four billion dollars. While the Barbie movie left theaters on the August 19, Swift’s concert spectacle is just starting to light up the big screen.
With concerts in stadiums big enough to fit 100,000 people, one would think that every Swiftie had the chance to see their favorite singer live this summer–but that was not the case. Many fans got caught in the Ticketmaster frenzy last spring and could not secure tickets for the “Eras Tour”. By the time the concert came, “last minute” resold tickets cost, on average, $3,000. Distraught fans resorted to watching the tour on social media livestreams filmed from the nosebleeds with a blurry picture cutting in and out of audio, or simply listened to the setlist on a streaming app. On August 31, just a few weeks after Swift wrapped up the US leg of her tour in Los Angeles, her Instagram page announced that tickets were already on sale for a concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with ticket sales passing $100 million more than a week before the movie hit the theaters. With fans already calling the movie “the most electric experience” of their lives, it is safe to say that ticket sales will not slow anytime soon.
Unlike Swift’s previous tours, The Eras Tour isn’t a live performance for one newly released album. Instead it includes short setlists from nine of her albums, some of which never got a chance to tour because of the pandemic. During the Evermore Era of the movie, Taylor addressed this unicorn of a concert in the boldest way she could.
“People would come up to me and be like, ‘so you’ve put up like five albums that you haven’t done tours for… what are you going to do? Are you just gonna do a show with all the albums in it and it’s gonna be like a three-and-a-half hour long show?’” Fans in the theater and stadium alike cheered for what they knew was coming next. “And I was like… ‘yeah, it’s gonna be called the Eras Tour, see you there!’”
From the surprise songs of her debut to her latest album, “Midnights”, Taylor takes her audience on a journey through the Eras of her releases, and fans get to experience the songwriting and the music that shaped her into the talented artist they adore.
“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” runs just shy of three hours and includes an incredible setlist of 40 songs. The movie was filmed in Los Angeles, at Taylor’s SoFi Stadium performance, on the last day of her North American tour. It opened with the Lover Era, the first song on the setlist being “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”. Taylor performed some of her most masterful showstoppers, however, other popular songs did not make the cut. Fans were confused and upset when the biggest hit from the Folklore Era, “Cardigan”, was not featured in the movie, despite it being a widely influential piece of music that signified a genre switch for Swift. Other concert regulars including “The Archer”, “No Body, No Crime”, and “Long Live” were absent as well. Swifties may not have all been able to agree on which songs should have made the setlist, but one thing that they, and the average person alike, cannot dispute is Swift’s ability to win over her audience and create a positive environment surrounding her projects. Overall, the loss of a couple songs were made up for by a crystal clear image, a booming sound system, and up close camera angles intended to make you feel like you were right there on stage, dancing with Miss Americana herself.
The environment inside the theater was as close as it could get to the environment at one of Swift’s live shows. Throughout the beginning, the audience seemed tentative to let loose and truly sing along like they might at a concert, but by the Fearless era, groups of younger children in bejeweled dresses gathered, slowly coming closer towards the big screen. Voices got louder as Swift began to strum the first couple chords of her classic, “You Belong With Me”, and soon enough there was a small crowd at the front of the movie theater jumping and singing at the top of their lungs.
Taylor Swift can sing, dance, play piano and guitar for over three hours straight, one show after the other. You can love her or hate her, but we can all agree that she is one of pop culture’s greatest performers. People of all ages and all genders rushed to the theaters on October 13 for the mere thrill of seeing her movie. Swifties who attended both the live concert and the film shared their disappointment over some of Taylor’s best songs being cut from the movie, but at the end of the day, it’s Taylor Swift! No matter what she sings, she blows her audience away. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” gave thousands of people the opportunity to see the show they were not able to see live, and give ultra-Swifties the chance to see her again. Taylor has already made millions on the movie alone, and she’s far from done dominating the music industry. Who else could release 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and the highest-grossing film in North America, all while traveling around the world to perform, like The Man herself?
