I Went to the First and Last Show of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — Here’s How It Changed (And Got Even Better)

Of course, the major change between first and last Eras shows is the entire section that’s been added to accommodate The Tortured Poets Department, released this April in between legs of the tour. Aside from rearranging the Eras setlist (like Folklore and Evermore being squeezed into one segment, and certain songs being dropped from other eras) and showcasing some of the strongest material from Swift’s latest opus, the Poets section provides additional heft to the back half of the show, the drama heightened in between the chewable pop of 1989 and the intimate power of the surprise songs.

Much like The Tortured Poets Department iterated on Swift’s confessional songwriting style through examinations of arena-sized vulnerabilities, tracks like “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “Down Bad” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” offer lyrical tones and sonic aesthetics that didn’t exist in other eras of the show. Swift’s latest album has been embraced by fans and proved divisive among critics; wherever you stand on its standing in Swift’s catalog, its placement in the Eras show injected different, vital emotion on a nightly basis.

When the Eras tour kicked off in March 2023 with “Cruel Summer” as the first song to be played in full, the Lover standout was the no-brainer hit that never was, with the planned Lover Fests for 2020 scrapped due to the pandemic and Swift moving on to Folklore before the song received a full radio push. Today, “Cruel Summer” is one of the biggest chart hits of Swift’s career thanks to its 2023 revival, which pushed the single to the top of the Hot 100 and belatedly made the anthem ubiquitous.

In the year and nine months that the Eras tour has run, Swift’s discography has changed in large and small ways: the set-closer “Karma,” for instance, had not yet become a major hit from Midnights when the tour kicked off, but now elicits more full-throated sing-alongs as the performance comes to a close. Meanwhile, “August” was a fan favorite from Folklore that was already going viral every summer, but now the song is the most striking moment within that era of the show, a moment of melancholy that has grown in stature.

And the audience has latched onto the subtle shifts as well. Back at the tour kickoff, a handful of fans shouted “1, 2, 3, let’s go bitch!” when the beat kicked in on “Delicate.” Now? There may as well have been a teleprompter at BC Place Stadium — every Swiftie in attendance knew that countdown like the back of their friendship-bracelet-clutching hand.

When the tour launched, the first three eras of the show were Lover, Fearless and Evermore. With the addition of The Tortured Poets Department section, however, that order was rearranged so that Evermore was combined with the Folklore songs and bumped later into the show, and Red was moved up into the third spot.

Makes sense on paper, but when experienced live, the revamped show boasted smash after smash from the start, with “Cruel Summer,” “You Need To Calm Down,” “You Belong With Me,” “Love Story,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “All Too Well” all performed within the first hour or so. More major hits followed those first three eras of the show, naturally, but the breadth of that opening run of songs that even casual Swift fans know by heart added more gravity to the opening act, and made the Eras show feel even more unparalleled as a stadium spectacle.

Plenty of attendees dressed up for the opening show of the Eras tour, and friendship bracelets were swapped in Glendale in March 2023 — but the evolution of the fan experience from the first show of the tour to the last was undeniable. Sure, the outfits were beyond ubiquitous in Vancouver (if you didn’t dress up at all, with nary a sequin or stitch of glitter on you, you stuck out like a sore thumb), and outlandish even by the standards of the Internet galleries of best-dressed concertgoers (one fan was dressed up as a “F-ck The Patriarchy” keychain, and another embodied a full Christmas tree farm).

Yet the widespread feeling of togetherness was more palpable throughout the evening, from the photos snapped outside the stadium entrance before the show to the breathless conversations on the walk out of the stadium hours later. Anyone paying attention to the audience throughout the evening could not only spot bracelets getting traded to create full sleeves of beads, but compliments about outfit choices, discussions about favorite songs and eras, sing-alongs to pre-show tracks (Lady Gaga’s “Applause” was once again a big hit), kids and parents bonding over their merch selections.

Every aspect of the fan experience had sharpened over the course of the Eras run, but it was largely driven by the fans themselves. As Swift put it midway through the final show, “You’ve created such a space of joy and togetherness and love.”

Back in March 2023, Travis Kelce was simply a star tight end on the NFL team that had just won the Super Bowl. Now, more than a year after he and Swift started dating, he is the unwitting patron saint of the Eras Tour, based on the innumerable crowd members sporting Kansas City Chiefs garb to the final show.

Of course, Kelce gear became the go-to selection for dads in attendance, who wanted to dress up for the Eras Tour but would rather reach for a football jersey rather than a sparklier getup. And a few hours after the Chiefs defeated the Los Angeles Charger in Kansas City on Sunday night, Swift nodded to her beau on the set-closing “Karma,” singing “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs/ Coming straight home to me!”

Any stadium show is going to iron out a few details as it progresses, and the Eras Tour launched last year as a well-oiled behemoth that would naturally evolve in minor ways. Yet hundreds of shows and millions of satisfied customers later, the Eras show contained a deeper conviction from Swift and her dancers that manifested itself beyond set pieces being maximized and marks being hit more cleanly.

Compared to the beginning of the tour, Swift made room for small pockets of giddiness — performing a spirited twirl after the opening verse of “Fearless,” and skipping down the stage during the final chorus of “Delicate” — that signaled: she’s perfected this tour, gotten every moment of its 195-minute run time down pat, and now she can have a little more fun at its boundaries. Likewise, any nerves from her dancers had long since disappeared, and their routines had a looseness that made them more engaging for the audience.

At the first Eras show, Swift described herself as feeling “really overwhelmed, and trying to keep it together all night.” An understandable feeling at the top of a roller coaster — but the trust developed after this long run together undoubtedly made Swift and her team more comfortable with every passing night, and that shared assuredness ultimately leveled up the show.

At the beginning of the final Eras performance, Swift described the tour as “the most exciting, powerful, electrifying, intense, most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.” When the tour launched last year, no one, including Swift, knew exactly what it would signify within the arc of her career. Now, it stands as one of her greatest achievements, the type of epic live run that seems impossible to replicate and will be talked about for years to come.

Unlike the attendees at the opening night of the tour, many fans entering BC Place Stadium on Sunday night were aware of the overall setlist and order of eras, of the fan cues and when to plan a bathroom break so as to not miss the acoustic et. They also were aware of the towering legacy of the Eras tour, and what Swift has achieved over the past two years. That knowledge made the evening all the more impactful — but surely was not contained to the final Eras show.

As the tour progressed and its legend kept growing, attendees subtly understood its standing within Swift’s dominant run, what it meant to be in an audience, and how they would likely remember that experience for a long time. When the Eras tour started, Swifties didn’t know quite what to expect. When it ended, they knew they had seen history.