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“I can’t believe we won’t be able to go to the Eras Tour again.” The three of us are curled up on my friend’s couch watching the new Taylor Swift docuseries Disney PlusTaylor Swift: End of an Era. In a reverent tribute to the collective joy we experienced Tour of the agesViewing these first two episodes doesn’t seem like something we should be doing alone, in our separate homes.
Just like my friend, I often despair that the Eras Tour was such a fleeting phenomenon. It feels like it should be like Disneyland or Glastonbury – the kind of thing you can do once a year for your annual escapism and serotonin boost.
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But they are not the same thing. At Disneyland, Mickey can be played by a group of people dressed as a sweaty mouse. And part of the fun of Glastonbury is the ever-evolving headline roster. However, the Eras Tour experience relied on the constant presence of just one person: Taylor Swift.
Yes, it’s tempting to view Taylor Swift as a force combining personality, brand and culture. But – as Ed Sheeran pointed out in her dressing room at Wembley Stadium as she begins her second stint in London – she is a real human being. The Eras Tour is much bigger than Swift, but it’s a show that couldn’t go on without her. She relies on Swift to shake off any fatigue or sadness that may befall her, picking herself up off the couch and into an embroidered jumpsuit.
Swift shared the stage with Ed Sheeran during her fourth show in London.
Some days must have been harder than others, and this day – the day of Ed Sheeran’s surprise appearance, and the day we see prominently in this first episode – was perhaps the hardest of all.
Swift is crying and worried. She is reeling after a punch of violence and the threat of violence shreds the safety of the space she meticulously designed for her fans. First, an attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, in which a man murdered three young girls in Southport, England. This is followed by Swift’s shows being canceled in Vienna when law enforcement uncovers a terrorist plot. This would have led, in Swift’s words, to a “massacre.”
We see Swift reckon with her deep grief, then put it aside in her attempt to comfort the families of the victims of the Southport attack right before taking to the stage. “It’s my job to process all these emotions and then immediately start performing,” she says. “This is the way things should be.”
I have long admired Swift’s ability to be supportive of the people she encounters, to willingly absorb their pain and confessions, and to respond with kindness and compassion. This encounter, in which she was heartbroken for the victims, was no exception.
While the rest of us have Taylor to cry over, Swift has her mother, Andrea — an unwavering source of support for the star, who is now comforting her after her bravest performance yet. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but you helped them,” she tearfully told Swift, who was wearing her makeup and fully dressed, moments away from facing a crowd of 90,000 people.
I was on that show. As I waited in the stadium, I wondered if Swift was feeling a lot of trepidation about her first concert after Vienna. I felt nervous for her in a way I had never felt before, as well as impressed that she was back riding, but there was no need to worry.
That night was my eighth show of the Eras Tour, and the atmosphere that night seemed more charged than ever. Swift seemed more emotional than usual, and the audience seemed to meet her where she was. I felt a symbiotic excitement, unlike anything else I had experienced on tour.
In the documentary, we can now see what was happening behind the scenes.
“We’re back!” Swift shouted as she slid under the stage after her final bow, an ecstatic smile on her face. “That was the most fun I had, knowing how happy they all were. They were losing their minds.” She throws her arms around her manager, Robert Allen. “I’m very relieved,” she told him, before asking him if anything bad had happened that she didn’t know about. “Nothing,” he tells her. “And nothing will happen.”
To see what Swift was experiencing through the lens of the documentary — on the other side of the door, as it were — confirmed what I wasn’t expecting. It helped me see that night in a new way: As much as Swift was fulfilling her obligations to us, to her paying audience, she needed the escape and release that the show provided just as much as we did.
The insight we gather here offsets what feels like an inconsistent sense of narrative cohesion in the first episode of this documentary series. Some questionable decisions lead to a strange and jarring moment, thanks to director Don Argot. He doesn’t have a whole lot of titles to his name, but he’s also known for making – Checks – a documentary called Kelce.
The second of these first two episodes is perhaps the strongest, introducing us more substantively to the wide array of characters involved in the Eras Tour machine, and providing the kind of juicy logistical insight that fans like me eat with a spoon.
My friends and I are real fans of backing dancer Cam Saunders. When he came to our city, Saunders delighted the whole city of Edinburgh by being fitted for a kilt and then appearing in a kilt. We coo, misty-eyed, over scenes of Saunders and his mother as they reflect on his journey and its sacrifices together.
On the contrary, we are delighted to meet, for the first time, the choreographers of Eras Tour, Mandy and Amanda. For people who work largely in the shadows of production, they give off real star quality. Highlighting their work (and personalities) is exactly what this documentary series should be about.
Swift’s singers, dancers and band were star performers.
Hopefully there will be more like this in the upcoming episodes, which will drop two by one over the next couple of weeks. Swifties love details as much as Swift herself, and no detail is too small.
Tell us about the infrastructure, the laundry schedule and the real reason there’s a picture of Cardiff inside Swift’s cleaning van. Show us the storyboards, the mathematical formula used to calculate the outfit Swift wore to each show, and the offstage feasts. (The owner of the kebab shop in Kentish Town, where Swift filmed her End Game music video, told me she placed a huge order one evening.)
More of Swift’s three cats wouldn’t go amiss either — especially since she’s largely absent from the internet these days.
It’s always fun to see Swift off-duty and living her life, but the cultural colossus she created on Eras Tour deserves to be examined from all angles, including those that don’t feature her. This is something Swift herself acknowledges. She says she not only doesn’t mind her dancers drawing focus, but she hopes they do.
As they rehearse their choreography for a surprise appearance with Florence and the Machine, she watches them with the same awe we reserve for her. For a moment, I wonder who the real audience for these shows is – could it be the person who got the best vantage point at each Eras Tour show?
For us, Taylor Swift may be the actress, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Taylor Swift is the real person and gets her biggest kicks from being a bystander to the magic she conjures as well.