Taylor Swift Eras Tour

Baby, let the games begin. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour kicked off on Friday night in Glendale, Arizona during a three hour show that ran through hits from ...

Swift stood on a set decorated like the moss covered “Folklore” cabin seen in serveral of her music videos. [2020 album “Folklore”](https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/entertainment/taylor-swift-folklore-reaction-scli-intl/index.html) for the first time in a live concert. She later played an acoustic rendition of “Mirrorball” after informing her audience she’ll play a different acoustic song at every show throughout the tour. [Swift played ](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanschocket2/taylor-swift-eras-tour-best-moments)various songs from her [record-breaking 2022 album “Midnights,”](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/entertainment/taylor-swift-midnights/index.html) including “Anti-Hero,” “Lavender Haze,” “Mastermind” and “Bejeweled,” and closed out the show with the high energy hit “Karma.” [Swift’s set list covered more than 40 songs](https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/music/2023/03/17/taylor-swift-eras-tour-setlist/70022488007/), likely proving to her fans that an exhausting wait for their anti-hero Taylor Swift to return to the stage was well worth it. Full disclosure: This CNN writer is a Swiftie. [Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour](http://www.cnn.com/2022/10/21/entertainment/gallery/taylor-swift/index.html)” kicked off on Friday night in Glendale, Arizona during a three-hour show that ran through [hits from every era](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/entertainment/taylor-swift-unreleased-songs-eras-tour/index.html) of the Grammy-winner’s 17-year career.

At her epic opening show, the pop star played 44 songs and conjured actual magic. By Spencer Kornhaber. Taylor Swift posing with a microphone and ...

When she donned a glittering robe and began strumming that wounded ballad, it was the prestige of a magic show. Swift’s beloved 2010 album, Speak Now, emerged for only the keening “Enchanted,” sung by Swift in a ball gown amid a field of flowers. Giving fans the “Delicate” performance they’d agitated for on social media, Swift went comedic, delivering “You can make me a drink” as an impatient command, not a come-on. Then came the night’s first true gut punch, the ballads “Lover” and “The Archer.” For the latter, Swift stood alone, listing her vulnerabilities to a pulsing beat, until pyrotechnic sparks fell in a curtain behind her. “I see it—I see all of it.” The requisite giant snakes of Reputation, her 2017 [armored tank of an album](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/reputation-taylor-swift-first-review/545561/), hung amid stark, vertically imposing scaffolding. Breaking: Taylor Swift is not simply a voice in our ears or an abstract concept to argue over at parties, but a flesh-and-blood being with a taste for sparkling pajamas and the stamina of a ram. For the segment devoted to the Swift created the vibe of an ecstatic cram session, like an epic outing with a far-flung bestie visiting for one night only. Then came the hugely awaited live debut of the fan favorite “Cruel Summer,” a track emblematic of Lover’s careening, happy-go-lucky maximalism. “So, uh, is it just me or do we have a lot of things to catch up on?” Swift asked early on, sitting behind a piano whose mossy encrusting gave it the look of long-submerged treasure and helped underscore her point. All concerts are conjurings, turning the audience’s idea of a performer into a real thing, but last night’s kickoff of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in Glendale, Arizona, heightened the amazement with Houdini-escapes-handcuffs physicality.

All the old Taylors came to the phone Friday night at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. For the purposes Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, ...

Hearing the clubby thump of the latest single, “Lavender Haze,” kick in as the show enters its tenth and final stretch was a kick, in a pop world where most veteran performers put their new material in the middle of a show, rather than the climax. It’s redolent, actually, of how she ended the last tour with a similarly feisty and unexpected choice, “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.” “Karma” seemed like a throwaway to some when “Midnights” first came out, but it holds up as not just kind of a funny eff-you — and her funniest song, which is saying a lot in a catalog that includes “Blank Space” — but also a celebration of the good guys winning. Especially when that’s rumored as the next “Taylor’s Version” edition to be coming, that album made for a strange choice to be underrepresented. It’s really only a handful of the 44 songs that are represented as snippets, or passing parts of mashups, although the attentive will note nips and tucks here and there to smashes like “Style” that ultimately aren’t very consequential. As much delight as there is in hearing a hit as mammoth as “You Belong With Me” or an album track as dramatically indelible as “Don’t Blame Me” again, this tour’s greatest value may be in finally giving an airing to the “Folklore”/”Evermore” nexus of contemplative material, with or without the chimney smoke. I wanted to play one more song from that album, if you have an extra 10 minutes to spare.” And the song that once only showed up in sets in the wild-card spot now took its place as now and probably forever the centerpiece of her set, even if “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” did indeed take a slot that probably could have been filled with enough other mashups to take the song count closer to 50. When “Style” occurs late in the show, you get a backward-tracking shot of Swift and her eight-women-strong girl squad moving in a single line toward the camera, to the suitable-for-marching beat. The visualization of “Tolerate It,” a number about a woman’s feelings of long-term emotional neglect, was played out with Swift standing on top of and eventually crawling across a dining room table of “Citizen Kane”-style length to literally get in the face of a disinterested partner. The stage set is as wide and almost as tall as it was for the “Reputation” tour, but most of that heft is put to use with a giant curved screen now, versus the sense of a multi-story dystopian city you got in 2018. A certain type of fan might wish she would reinvent some of her catalog music for the purpose of touring, but the star who has rendered her “Taylor’s Version” renditions as exact soundalikes has never see arrangement-tweaking as much of a priority. Actually, somewhere in that sequence the tour’s overriding structure came into focus — that this would really be the “Albums Tour,” with a less clunky name. And not just “the new ones.” As Swift reminded a crowd that needed little reminding a ways into Friday night’s tour opening, “We added four new members to the family” since everyone last convened for the “Reputation” tour in 2018.

Taylor Swift performs onstage for the opening night of “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at State Farm Stadium on March 17, 2023 in Swift City, ERAzona (Glendale, ...

The Eras Tour” at State Farm Stadium on March 17, 2023 in Swift City, ERAzona (Glendale, Arizona). Swift is seen giving it her all as she performs songs from Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation, Lover, Folklore, Evermore and Midnights — debuting many tracks from her latest releases live on tour for the first time, in sparkling bodysuits and gowns that don’t disappoint. Taylor Swift performs onstage for the opening night of “Taylor Swift Swift described herself as “really overwhelmed, and trying to keep it together all night,” but pulled off a spectacular three-hour-and-15-minute concert — backed by her crew of talented touring musicians and dancers — in front of thousands of fans, seemingly with ease. “Tonight, we’re going to be going on an adventure, one era at a time!” Swift announced a few songs into the show. She treated fans to music from every one of her eras so far, from her self-titled debut through Midnights, and brought to life beautifully staged visuals to go along with songs from each of her 10 full-length studio albums.