Taylor Swift takes a bow while performing at the Eras Tour.
Emma McIntyre/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concluded on Sunday in Vancouver.The tour was an unprecedented financial success, becoming the first to gross over $2 billion.It was a spectacle of endurance and nostalgia that will be difficult for any artist to replicate, Swift included.
Twenty-one months, 149 shows, and about 484 hours of singing and dancing later, Taylor Swift took her final bow on the Eras Tour on Sunday.
“You guys have made this into something completely unrecognizable from anything I’ve ever done in my life,” Swift told the crowd in Vancouver. “With your traditions, with your passion, with the way you care about this tour — it’s unparalleled. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
The Eras Tour has been widely celebrated as a cultural phenomenon and money-making marvel. Swift’s tour boosted local economies across the globe, from the US to the UK to Singapore. Fans shelled out thousands to see their idol perform a marathon of hits from across her catalog (plus a few surprise deep cuts), a spectacle that stretched for over three hours every night. At the end of it all, the Eras Tour became the first tour in history to gross over $2 billion, Swift’s production company confirmed to The New York Times.
But while all that may be true, there’s reason to believe not even Swift’s commercial juggernaut has the power to forever alter the touring landscape. The Eras Tour will go down in history as a high watermark for the industry, one it will be difficult for any artist to reach again — Swift included.
Taylor Swift’s eighth album “Folklore” explores young love from alternating perspectives.
Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
As a literal billionaire, Swift’s Eras Tour set a standard that’s impossible for most artists to meet. In an industry where you have to spend money to make money, the majority of performers who aren’t global superstars don’t have that much money to spend. In fact, the costs of touring are so high that even major acts like Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, and The Black Keys are canceling dates or entire tours.
By contrast, Swift has devoted nearly two decades to building her loyal consumer base and billion-dollar fortune. She’s one of a the few stars who’s perfectly capable of traveling the world, employing a crew of hundreds, and bringing her elaborate stagecraft to life without worrying about the upfront costs.
Yet even those who do have the resources don’t necessarily have a desire to mount a tour as intensive as Swift’s. Billie Eilish, who broke Swift’s own record as the youngest artist in history to win album of the year at the Grammys in 2020, is now three albums deep and currently touring in support of “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” which also garnered critical acclaim.
In Swiftian terms, that puts Eilish in her “Speak Now” era, riding a similar wave toward success. Seven or eight albums down the road, would she be able to stage a three-and-a-half-hour retrospective of her career, a feat that requires months of intensive cardio and dance training? Probably. Would she want to? Probably not.
“I’m not doing a three-hour show, that’s literally psychotic,” Eilish told fans in May, per Billboard. “Nobody wants that. You guys don’t want that. I don’t want that. I don’t even want that as a fan. My favorite artist in the world, I’m not trying to hear them for three hours. That’s far too long.”
For many artists, it probably is. But Swift is a rare breed. Pulling off the Eras Tour demanded a special blend of ambition, financial freedom, physical endurance, fan worship, mass commercial appeal, and, let’s be honest, self-congratulatory bravado that, at least at this time in music history, is unique to Swift alone.
In “The Eras Tour” concert film, Swift admitted that people were initially skeptical about the concept — but she’s accomplished, wealthy, beloved, and stubborn enough that she could ignore her doubters.
Swift’s performance style relies on her connection with fans.
Gregor Fischer/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
The eras theme was also particularly smart positioning for Swift at this moment in her career. After Swift’s former label sold her catalog without her permission in 2019, she began rerecording and rereleasing her first six albums, a project that asked fans to rekindle their love for her old music — and their old selves.
Two of these rerecorded albums, “Fearless” and “Red”, were unveiled ahead of the Eras Tour, while two more, “Speak Now” and “1989,” were announced by Swift onstage. The two endeavors worked in conjunction to legitimize each other, infusing fresh tunes into the tour’s acoustic sets and giving Swifties the feeling that no matter how deep Swift was into the nearly two-year length of her tour when they saw her perform, she was still fresh off of a new release.
Swift signed a new label contract ahead of “Lover,” so she owns outright every album she’s released since then. Once she has released the final two installments of the “Taylor’s Version” series, (“Reputation” and “Taylor Swift”) the “Taylor’s Version” project will be over. Similarly, the specific conditions that allowed the Eras Tour to flourish will never recur.
Of course, Swifties still have plenty to look forward to. She is famously prolific, so another brand-new album in the coming years isn’t out of the question.
But even if Swift could release another 11 albums and, in another 18 years, launch the Eras Tour Part Two, would she want to? All signs point to no.
“I’ll never forget the call when I explained my idea of the concept for the Eras Tour to my team. At the time, I was working on the ‘Midnights’ album and if we were to do what I’ve always done, I would’ve embarked on planning the Midnights Tour,” Swift wrote in her new photo book.
“But there’s nothing I hate more than doing what I’ve always done.”
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