Taylor Swift Red Tour Live

[Chanelle Kirksey]

Thereason was simple: As a British Swiftie, I hadn't had the chance to see the Eras Tour live yet. But that all changed last weekend, when Swift came to Edinburgh as she embarked on the UK leg of her tour. This was the first time I'd had a chance to see the show that's been dominating cultural discourse for the past year as Swift has traveled all over the US, Latin America, Australia and Singapore.

Until I experienced the Eras Tour for myself, I didn't want to watch the movie version. I wanted the first time I saw the show in full to be in person rather than through a screen. I'm far from alone in making this decision. Many Swifties across Europe with tickets for this summer's dates also chose to hang back from overindulging in tour content. One of my friends achieved the impossible and managed somehow to avoid almost all tour content on social media, and didn't know the set list. ("I can't believe there was only one song from Speak Now," she texted me after the show.)

I wasn't that strict with myself. I was familiar not only with the set list, but also the costumes and each beat of the opening number of the show. I'd examined diagrams that map Swift's movements around the stage so I could choose the best positions for the nights I had standing tickets -- and this turned out to be a wise decision; I had a great view. After every show, I let myself watch the surprise song performances in the acoustic section, as I knew I was unlikely to get to see these songs live. At times, the wait for the show to arrive in my region of the world was painful, and it was hard not to dip my toe into the copious amount of tour content available.

Now that I've seen the show in person and finally caught up on the movie version this week, I can say that I'm glad I waited, but I don't think ultimately it would have ruined anything for me. Both experiences feel like pure magic. Even though I'd seen Taylor from mere meters away just days before, I felt no less delighted to watch her on the screen. I teared up as she placed the 22 hat on the head of a young fan just as I did at the show. I could still feel the joy radiating from Taylor and her fellow performers. "Wow, you can tell she really loves this," said my mum, a non-Swiftie, who watched the movie with me.

I was also curious to see how the Eras Tour has changed since the movie was filmed at SoFi Stadium in LA last year. The show I saw was slightly different to the movie, as it included the welcome addition of the The Tortured Poets Department set, with its monochromatic color palette and direction inspired by classical Hollywood movie genres.

As a result, the Folklore and Evermore eras have been compressed into one, and some of my favorite songs, including Tolerate It, The One and, perhaps the biggest shame of all, Long Live, have been cut from the set list. As sad as I am to see these go, the theatricality of the TTPD era makes for some of the most dramatic and exciting moments of the concert. Ultimately, I feel lucky to be able to experience both versions of the show thanks to the existence of the Eras Tour movie.

After the Reputation Tour, the movie, which was available to stream until the end of 2023 on Netflix, became one of my most frequently rewatched pieces of content on the platform. It was almost permanently downloaded on my iPad so that I could turn to it while sleepless on overnight flights or delayed on British trains. My now-husband even put it on to distract me while he was preparing to propose.

I am already anticipating forming a similar relationship with the Eras Tour Movie. Now that I've experienced the show for myself, you'll catch me streaming it on repeat. It will function as a time capsule, containing the memory of the newest entry to the list of the top five nights of my life.

I also hope that the movie comes back to theaters at a later date for Swifties like me and my friends who had the willpower to hold back when it was first released. Reliving the Eras Tour on screens both big and small together is the perfect way to stave off post-concert depression, and help the night live on for us indefinitely.

Swift extended the set list by one track to land at 46 songs. But many changes were made along the way. She added a new era for "The Tortured Poets Department," cut a handful of songs and rearranged most of the eras including combining the sets for "Folklore" and "Evermore."

Delivering all the updates were Bryan West, the USA TODAY Network's full-time Taylor Swift reporter, from inside La Dfense Arena in Paris, with Swiftie and trending reporter Anthony Robledo assisting from his desk.

Swift cut "The Archer" from her "Lover" set before beginning her "Fearless" set in a silver and black minidress as opposed to her classic gold one. A graphic showed her "Lover" house with a new addition in the attic for "The Tortured Poets Department." Her "Fearless" set remained the same with "Fearless," "You Belong With Me" and "Love Story."

In her monologue before playing the song "Lover," Swift said the night would span 18 years of music. Previously, the concert covered 16 years. Get ready for a "The Tortured Poets Department" addition some time tonight.

Swift took the stage about 8 p.m. in Paris (2 p.m. ET) to relaunch her Eras Tour in Europe. She kicked it off with a countdown clock and the Lesley Gore song "You Don't Own Me" as usual. Then she began her "Lover" set with "Miss Americana."

The Eras Tour is one of the first tours that has been followed, globally, by thousands of fans on digital platforms. Fans dedicate part of their concert experience to livestreaming as Swift performs. Livestream Queen Tess Bohne has spearheaded the "Great War" to find fans going live on social media and broadcasting a custom show to tens of thousands of fans almost every night on her account @tessdear.

For the past 83 shows, Swift has had an acoustic set she customizes every stop with a guitar and piano performance. In 2024, the Eras Tour star added mash-ups of her songs for each stop. Here are the songs she has yet to perform:

The album was announced on September 21, 2011, via Swift's official website, along with the album cover. The DVD and Blu-ray releases feature all seventeen performances from the North American leg of the Speak Now World Tour, as well as bonus content. The CD has over seventy-five minutes of music as well as select live performances from the Speak Now album. The combo was released on November 21, 2011.[1][2] A Target exclusive of the live album contains the bonus performances of "Ours, "Nashville" and "Sweet Escape", as well as the behind the scene making of the music video for "Mean".[3] Many of the songs and performances were captured from various legs around the world of the tour.[4] The Brazilian release of the album contains a previously unreleased version of the song "Long Live" featuring new verses in Portuguese composed and sang by singer Paula Fernandes.[5]

The album debuted at number eleven on the US Billboard 200 chart with 77,000 sold. It also debuted at number two in Billboard Top Country Albums on the same week.[8] As of November 2017, the album has sold 366,000 copies in the US.[9] In Canada, the album entered at number 25.[10] The album also debuted in Australia at number thirty and later peaked at number sixteen. The album then fell off the chart completely the following week. The album also appeared in Mexico at number sixty seven.[11]

The pop megastar has released concert movies and filmed specials corresponding to almost all of her artistic periods during the course of her 17-year career, which culminates in "The Eras Tour" concert film, which is expected to shatter box office records for music docs when it hits theaters this weekend.

Each of the movies are a snapshot of a moment in time for the 33-year-old Swift, whose self-titled debut album was released in 2006. And they serve as a reminder that ever since her career took off, there's never been a moment when she's not been huge.

In anticipation of "The Eras Tour," here is a look back at Swift's seven concert movies and documentary projects to date, and a ranking of where they fall in order of importance to her career and overall achievement.

The document of Swift's 2015 tour, filmed in Sydney, Australia, captures her slickest pop production up to that point, but director Jonas kerlund's (Madonna's "Ray of Light" video) over-stylized visuals rely on quick cuts and slow-motion glam shots that continually take viewers out of the show's flow. There's also an over-emphasis on the tour's guest stars, showing how everyone from the Weeknd to Lisa Kudrow made cameos at specific shows. (Never forget Ford Field landing easily the tour's lowest wattage guest, Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons. Womp womp.) Of all of Swift's tour docs, this is one the one that deserves a "Taylor's Version" do-over the most.

Revealing factoid: In one of the interview clips that is spliced into the show footage, Swift says her stylistic makeover on "1989" came as a direct result of 2012's "Red" losing the Album of the Year Grammy to Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories."

This one-off Paris concert to celebrate the release of 2019's "Lover," filmed in front of a crowd of 2,000 fans, was significantly scaled down from Swift's previous outings and let her perform her new songs without all the bells and whistles of a stadium production. Songs such as "Death By a Thousand Cuts" and "The Man," the latter performed with just an acoustic guitar and a spotlight on stage, benefit from the small arrangements, and Swift seems comfortable with the downsizing. "City of Lover" remains a tiny document of an era cut short: the COVID-19 pandemic shelved live performance plans and Swift's scheduled series of Lover Fest dates, and most fans wouldn't get a chance to hear these songs live until the Eras Tour rolled around.

Are you ready for it? Swift's massive "Reputation" outing is documented in this bombastic Netflix special, taped during the final night of the tour's U.S. run in the home of the Dallas Cowboys. Snakes are the theme of the evening: There are giant inflatable snakes on stage, snakes wrapping her microphone, and at one point she flies over the crowd inside what looks like the ribcage of a king cobra. As a tour, it was Swift's crowning achievement up to this point in her career, with Swift playing the would-be villainess who is too sweet for her fangs to leave a permanent mark. Director Paul Dugdale captures the spectacle in all its glory, balancing the production's colossal scale with the way it touched individuals in the crowd.

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