Since Taylor Swift kicked off The Eras Tour on March 17, 2023, the global trek has dominated the touring industry and given fans endless moments of joy, from surprise guests (from openers like Gracie Abrams to a certain NFL star named Travis Kelce) to rerelease announcements — Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) — and so much more.
As Swift said of the tour’s impending end during a June stop in Liverpool, England: “[It] feels so far away from now, but then again, it feels like we just played our first show on this tour because you have made this so much fun for us.”
And yet, on Dec. 8, 2024, the outing did indeed come to a close, after 149 shows that spanned five continents. While the night included no major surprises, she did, of course, sprinkle some special moments for fans throughout the set, especially during the acoustic surprise song “era” of the show.
For her final surprise song of the tour, Swift performed a mashup of “Long Live” and “New Year’s Day” with an added bit of “The Manuscript,” singing: “I re-read the manuscript, but the story isn’t mine anymore.”
And yet, it was a lyric from “Long Live” that mustered up the most emotion, as Swift sang: “It was the end of an era, but the start of an age,” cleverly changing the words from the recording, on which she says “end of a decade.”
And while there really was no way to sum up such an experience into words, Swift tried her best, saying earlier in the show while she introduced “All Too Well”: “The lasting legacy of this tour is that you’ve created such a space of joy and togetherness and love…. You’re why this is so special, and you supporting me for as long as you have is why I get to take these lovely walks down memory lane every single night — because you’ve cared about every era of my entire life that I’ve been making music.”
