Taylor Swift "The Eras Tour" in Arlington (Night 2) at AT&T Stadium

April 1st, 2023

This one truly has been a long time coming. My mother, sisters, and I saw Taylor Swift on her 1989 World Tour in 2015. I was a few months into my freshman year of high school at that point in time, and I remember being so awestruck the entire duration of the night. All of the Payne girls cried (as we do) and I remember going back to school the next day to be notoriously known as "the Taylor Swift girl" at my new school, the same way I had been at my middle school and elementary school before.

As more and more information came out about the Eras Tour, the more excited I got. As I'm sure anybody with any kind of access to the internet is well aware of by now, getting tickets was a battle of its own, but we successfully scored five tickets together in the lower bowl by the stage for the second night of Arlington shows. (Everybody say thank you Addi Payne for making that happen). While I was very excited about Taylor Swift herself and her 44-song setlist, consisting of a few songs from (most of) her albums so far, I was very excited to know the openers for our show were going to be Gracie Abrams and Beabadoobee. I wrote my previous blog post about seeing Gracie the few times it has happened now, and April 1st was her first show joining Taylor Swift on tour. This meant I would be present for Gracie Abrams' first-ever stadium show, and I cried every time it was talked/thought about months in advance. She is one of my favorite small artists I have ever followed, and I have loved getting to watch her grow so much so fast on her own these past few years. Getting to be present for her stadium debut was incredible for me, even with her set being so short, and I am so lucky to have been even the tiniest part of that for her. I loved every minute of it!

I have also been a fan of Beabadoobee for a little while now, but I have not gotten the chance to see her live before the Eras tour. There were many options for Taylor Swift openers, with many different combinations of people that different cities would get the chance to see, but I do think seeing Gracie Abrams and Beabadoobee before Taylor Swift was one of the best options for me personally. I had an entire five-hour concert of music that felt personally catered to me and my Spotify stats, which made my experience so much more exciting and fun. I also loved how Taylor Swift intentionally chose only female and nonbinary individuals to open for her, I thought that was a great choice for her and the audience she was performing for, and I loved how she chose a bunch of Taylor Swift "super fans" to open as well. I know from following Gracie and Bea that they are both huge fans of Taylor and credit her for shaping large parts of their songwriting and early careers, so seeing them open for Taylor was super sweet and heartwarming, especially because both girls were so evidently grateful for the opportunity and they both put on such an amazing show.

For Taylor Swift herself, I will say 44 songs is a very long setlist. It was nearly 3 and a half hours of jumping and screaming and dancing and laughing and crying, and trust me when I say the Payne girls did it all for the entire time. I do think this was an incredible choice for her, though, because how many other artists currently in the industry have the ability to do something like that? She played 44 songs, most of which were chart-topping hits, and the crowd never settled down. She even skipped albums and played very few songs from certain eras, and people still missed out on hearing some of their favorites after 3 and a half hours of music. Regardless of what your personal opinion of Taylor Swift may be, I think everyone can acknowledge how big of an achievement that setlist and set time alone is.

I was also amazed by her stamina through it all. She puts so much thought, effort, and time into each and every performance of each and every song, and she sounds and looks amazing thorough it all. I have always been impressed with Taylor Swift's ability to come across as a very genuine person and to make all of her shows feel intimate despite performing for a crowd that size (she has outsold this year's Super Bowl most nights). Her dancers were amazing, her band was amazing, the set and the lights and the costumes were all amazing. Taylor Swift has always been good at working a stadium crowd, but this took her existing reputation (haha) to a whole new level. The entire thing was incredible.

At each of her shows so far, she has played two highly anticipated "surprise songs," one on the acoustic guitar and one on her piano. She has not yet repeated any of these surprise songs at any of her stops, which hypes up the audience quite a bit when it comes down to the moment she begins playing them. Luckily for us, Taylor Swift chose "Death by a Thousand Cuts" for her guitar song because the song's cowriter, Jack Antonoff, was in the audience. This is one of my sister Addi's favorite Taylor songs of all time, and it was Taylor Swift's second time ever playing the song live, so it was very exciting for us. I like to think that was Addi's personal reward for fighting in the Ticketmaster queue and winning us such good tickets. The piano surprise song was "Clean" because Gracie Abrams requested it and it was her first night opening on the tour. This was also incredibly exciting for us because it is one of my favorite Taylor songs, and I was very excited for Gracie herself because I know how big of a fan of Taylor Swift she is. The entire moment felt very intimate and sweet, which I loved, and I do still think that Arlington Night 2 has had the best surprise song combination of the entire tour so far. So thank you Jack Antonoff and Gracie Abrams for that.

Aside from the actual show, my favorite part of the concert is how everybody dresses up. The moment the tour was announced, my mom and my sisters decided we would all dress up as different Taylor Swift album eras, and we all spent months plotting and planning out what outfits we would wear for this. My favorite Taylor Swift album has always been Speak Now, so I instantly knew I wanted to wear the infamous "Speak Now Dress" that Taylor herself wore for her Speak Now World Tour. I remember following along with that tour when I was too young to have a phone or any kind of social media. I had a photo of her in the purple dress as the wallpaper on my very first iPod that had a screen, and I had a purple swimsuit with ruffles at the bottom purely because it reminded me of the dress. I found the perfect one, an exact replica, online, and that is what I wound up wearing. I borrowed Elli's purple converse (which are embarrassingly too big for my feet despite the fact that I am five years older than her) and I put a ribbon bow in my hair (which is Gracie Abrams' trademark) and I loved my outfit. It felt very full-circle for me, and I know my nine year old self would have been so happy to see that I owned the dress and I got to see Taylor perform a Speak Now song, even if it was only one.

My mother was dressed as the Taylor Swift album, Addi was Lover, Bryna was 1989, and Elli was Folklore. I think we all did a pretty good job of matching the vibes of our designated eras. Most of our outfits were inspired by actual Taylor Swift outfits from past tours, photoshoots, or red carpets, and I think that came through pretty strong as well. It was so fun to plan out and coordinate with my sisters!

Taylor Swift has truly soundtracked all "eras" of my own life, so this tour was amazing for me. I think it's amazing to see how she is still growing as an artist this far into her career, and she once again left us all awestruck for the entire set. This has been another tour that has been so fun to follow through livestreams and posts on the internet, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the tour as it plays out over these next few months.