Taylor Swift felt the burnout starting to set in towards the end of her 1989 tour. “I think I need to take a break,” the singer-songwriter told NME a few weeks before the 53-show international tour ended in December 2015. “I think people might need a break with me.” By the start of that tour in May, 1989 had been out for seven months. Swift had three number one singles that spent a total of 12 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. She was at her most popular ever, her pop songs were certainly great. Last year, Swift referred to the 1989 era as her “imperial phase” – which at the time seemed like an unattainable peak of success.
She spoke in a rare interview when she was named Time ‘s Person of the Year in 2023, nearly a year before the final show of the Eras Tour. Eras lasted nearly two years, with 149 shows attended by more than 10 million people worldwide. It wasn’t just Swift’s biggest live tour ever. It was Swift’s biggest live tour ever, grossing more than $2 billion in ticket sales. It wasn’t centered on a single album, but on Swift’s entire recorded catalog—which has expanded to include 80 original and re-recorded songs since the tour began in March 2023. It was her defining imperial phase. But the term seems insignificant after the Eras Tour. Can something so expansive even be described as a phase?
“Nothing is permanent,” Swift told Time . “So I’m very careful to be grateful for every moment of working at this level, because I’ve been deprived of it before.” The break she thought people might need from her after 1989 never fully materialized. Swift disappeared for a while, but not entirely on her own terms. She essentially hid behind a spat with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, manipulating public opinion and weaponizing fans on both sides. “I think that moment of backlash will define me in a negative way for the rest of my life,” Swift said. She later added: “Make no mistake — my career was taken away.”
After a year away from home in a rented home abroad, Swift returned in 2017, but it wasn’t a shy return. She set the tone with “Look What You Made Me Do,” the lead single from Reputation , which broke records on streaming services and YouTube within hours of its release. The album itself stayed at number one for four weeks. Nearly three million people attended the 53-date Reputation tour, which saw the artist sell out stadiums for the first time. That particular era, however, feels more restrained. In retrospect, framing the album as a bitter revenge record did it a disservice. The songs weren’t culturally popular, and Swift was particularly frustrated when Reputation was shut out of major Grammy categories. It seemed like it wasn’t until the Eras Tour that people started to come around. For example, the soulful track “Don’t Blame Me” never made the Hot 100 but now has more than a billion streams on Spotify — double the number it had at the start of the tour.
The refocusing of Swift’s catalog is perhaps the Eras Tour’s greatest triumph. Whatever casual fans Swift lost between 1989 and Reputation learned about the greatest hits tour to end all greatest hits tours and flocked right back. During the tour, Swift’s Instagram following grew by more than 30 million users. Now, there’s even more anticipation for the release of Reputation (Taylor’s Version), the fifth album in her re-recording series. It’s impossible to imagine the response to that record feeling as subdued as the original. Like her re-recordings, Eras took something that, in theory, would appeal primarily to people already familiar with her and turned it into something shiny new for a whole new audience.
Before Eras, Swift had other plans to reach listeners unfamiliar with her art or with complicated relationships with it because of the non-musical narrative that followed her. She redefined social boundaries by emphasizing her political standing in the 2020 documentary Miss Americana . A few months later, she was scheduled to embark on Lover Fest, a 16-date tour that was ultimately canceled due to the pandemic. The tour consisted almost entirely of performances at major festivals like Glastonbury and BST Hyde Park. Four of the shows were stadium headliners, her first since Reputation . Another dozen shows would put her in front of casual festivalgoers who might not otherwise see her perform live.
With the Eras Tour, Swift made them come to her. The pre-ticket demand alone made the live performance feel like the event of a lifetime. There were unsuspecting audiences who walked in knowing the hits and walked out with arms full of friendship and whatever unexpectedly profound song they heard on repeat. She released an accompanying feature-length concert film first in theaters and then on Disney+. Never before had Swift been so accessible based on her artistry alone. The scale of the tour largely overshadowed any criticism she faced along the way, including backlash from her own fans over her controversial connection to Matty Healy in 1975. None of it was loud enough to cut through the crowd noise.
This isn’t a level Swift has ever reached before. It’s a level of celebrity that feels permanent, one she can’t return to. Her place there crystallized when she released The Tortured Poets Department in the middle of her Eras tour and incorporated it into her setlist, including a prime spot for the unprecedented hit “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” It was the album’s longest-running song, spending 31 weeks on the Hot 100, including two weeks in the top 10. Now, for the first time in more than two years, Swift is off the charts. No song, single or otherwise, has been as universally beloved as her Midnights . Yet the entire 31-song collection has charted for at least a week, and the album itself has topped the Billboard 200 for 17 weeks. She no longer has to break out to become a dominant force in pop.
It parallels her transition from 1989 to Reputation, except this time she’s not running from anything, or anyone. When Swift previously resisted the idea that something like this could last forever, it was on the basis that she’d lost everything before—mostly the artificial and inherently conditioned accolades of public admiration. Her core fan base, however, never wavered. The stadiums were still packed, the albums still sold. But there was still a sense that she craved wider acclaim. With the Eras Tour, she tapped into that power within her own fan base. The level of their support was enough to justify all those who remained unconvinced.
Those on the outside who may be tired of Swift’s overwhelming presence, or completely indifferent to it, are not the ones who have the power to take anything away from her. That power is in the hands of Swifties, and they’re too beholden to her to even consider doing so. Music is too deeply woven into their very being. And frankly, there are too many of them right now—the OG Swifties sold the Eras experience too well, and new ones are proliferating at a record pace. “Everything that happens is a direct reflection of the passion you show,” she told her Toronto audience last month, shortly after she received six Grammy nominations . They have little to do with the voting habits of the Recording Academy, but there is power (and influence) among them.
Her victories have become theirs and the Eras Tour is their biggest tournament to date. For them, it is not a phase.
