Whether you’ve been lucky enough to attend Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in person on its recent UK leg, or you’ve just been following the spectacle on social media, the chances are you’ve been asking the same question as us – how on earth do she and her team do it?
Between performing for more than three hours straight night after night, whizzing through numerous fast-paced costume changes and visiting a seemingly endless list of cities on the world jaunt, there’s no doubt the gargantuan tour is a real feat.
But, it’s also left us with endless questions about how the whole thing comes together. Allow us to help you out with some of the big ones.
The stages are set up days in advance
Even when Taylor Swift momentarily disappears during her seamless transitions, her interactive stage is a show in itself.
As the singer journeys through the Eras, the display changes with her – from the golden glow of Fearless to the lavender haze of Midnights.
So, how does she bring such a complex set-up all around the world with her?
Founder and CEO of market intelligence company FreightWaves Craig Fuller estimated that the Eras tour will cost more than $30 million (around £23 million) for transportation and logistics alone. And with tours of this magnitude (just like Beyoncé’s Renaissance shows) it’s not uncommon to have two or more sets on the go so that crew can begin assembling at the next location.
Dave Brooks, Billboard Senior Director of Live Music and Touring, outlined the process with The New York Post, sharing: “They have advance teams that can be prepping and pre-building.”
“It takes two to three weeks, in my understanding,” he added.
However, while one report suggested that an estimated 90 trucks will arrive at the venue to construct the stage, a source supposedly close to the tour told automotive publication Jalopnik that this figure is actually closer to around 50.
Fans on Reddit who have actually been to the tour have also recalled seeing the stage being deconstructed almost immediately once the concert finishes, so they really don’t waste a minute before hitting the road to do it all over again.
And Taylor is fully aware what a huge operation it is behind the scenes, even giving her drivers $100,000 (£79,000) bonuses.
In total, she handed out over $55 million (£43 million) in bonuses to the crew working on the tour, as a source told People. One trucker told Rolling Stone that the sum was “life-changing”.
Taylor did a lot of prep to be able to perform for that long
How, when our lower back was aching and feet were screaming just as an Eras tour audience member, can Taylor do what she does for over three hours night after night?
Well, first of all, she started boosting her endurance well before the tour started. In her recent cover profile with Time magazine, the singer shared: “I knew this tour was harder than anything I’d ever done before by a long shot.”
Joking that she has been “like a frat guy” on past tours, this time around, she began training a whole six months before the shows started.
“Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.”
Her gym even created a personalised programme for her, focusing on strength, conditioning and weights work.
“Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,” she added. “I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.”
Taylor also completely cut out alcohol to make sure she was on top form at all times
“Doing that show with a hangover,” she said, “I don’t want to know that world.”
There are also other strict measures in place to ensure the singer doesn’t get sick
Just imagine the disappointment of hearing your night at the Eras tour was cancelled because poor Taylor had caught a cold. Apparently her team does everything in its collective power to keep her fighting fit on the road.
A music industry source told Yahoo Lifestyle that Taylor wasn’t planning to take in the sights or meet fans while in Australia, just in case she got ill.
“When Taylor is on tour, strict measures are put into place to stop her interacting with anyone outside of her ‘bubble’. They can not risk her getting sick under any circumstances,” they said.
“Even those in her bubble, including her dancers and managers, are restricted [in] what they can do and where they can go during their downtime.
“Going on a world tour may sound exciting, but the reality of it is each day just consists of going from a hotel room to the venue and repeat.”
However, we, of course, know that Taylor will sometimes make an exception when there’s a window of downtime, whether it’s grabbing dinner with her famous friends or cheering on boyfriend Travis Kelce in the Super Bowl.
She also told Time that being sick isn’t enough for her to cancel a show.
“I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed,” she said. “That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.”
And she doesn’t play around when it comes to recovery
It turns out that Taylor recovers from a show exactly as you would imagine.
“I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there,” she told Time.
“It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels.”
How did Taylor Swift choose songs for the Eras tour setlist?
By now, we know that the Eras tour is a journey through all the various albums of Taylor’s career.
That means we get all the hits – both old and new – along with the odd deep cut, as well as different surprise songs at every show in her dedicated acoustic segment.
It can’t have been easy choosing the setlist from such a huge back catalogue of songs, and so far Taylor hasn’t really opened up about how exactly she does it.
However, we do know that she loves to keep fans on their toes and switches things up occasionally.
“You think you can just go online, you think you can just scroll and know the setlist?’” the pop star joked during a show in Arlington, Texas earlier this year.
“You think you can just come prepared with your little flashcards in your pocket,” she added. “Let it be said about the Eras tour, we’re tricksy. That’s what we are. We enjoy a good, healthy setlist hijinks.”
That night, she swapped her Folklore song Invisible String to The 1.
And what about picking the surprise song each night?
Each night during the acoustic portion of the Eras show, Taylor will perform two songs. These could quite literally be anything from across her lengthy career, and sometimes they even come in the form of a mash-up.
For a while, Taylor refrained from performing any repeat songs throughout the whole tour. But in February this year, she did away with that rule.
“I’ve been thinking, I want to be as creative as possible with the acoustic set moving forward,” she told a crowd in Melbourne.
“I want to be able to play songs more than once if I feel like it, and I wanna be able to make changes to songs.”
As for how she actually picks them, it’s still a mystery, despite fans’ best efforts to work out her methods.
How did Taylor Swift incorporate The Tortured Poets Department portion of the Eras tour?
Europe may have waited longer than anyone to finally experience the Eras tour, but our patience was rewarded in the form of The Tortured Poets Department segment – a newly-added run of songs featuring bespoke set-pieces, costumes and even a one-off surprise appearance from Taylor’s boyfriend Travs Kelce.
It’s even more impressive that Taylor somehow managed to create a whole extra part of the tour after the already-lengthy show was up and running.
During her second night in Paris this year, the singer revealed to fans that planning started months before The Tortured Poets Department ever made it to the stage.
“We started planning this surprise for you about eight or nine months ago and then when we got ‘two months off’ of the Eras Tour, we really didn’t take any time off at all,” she said in a video shared by Variety.
“We just went directly back into rehearsals. So I’d like to give it up for my crew, my dancers, and my band.”
However, some setlist sacrifices did have to be made in order to make room for Taylor’s newest era, with songs like The Archer, The Last Great American Dynasty and ’Tis the Damn Season not making the cut for the second leg of the tour.
Taylor previously disclosed that work on her latest release began “right after I turned in Midnights”, with work continuing throughout the US leg of her world jaunt last year.
Those costume changes happen like clockwork
There are 16 costume changes throughout the Eras tour, most of which only last two minutes or so.
There’s no official behind-the-scenes confirmation of how it all works just yet, but our best guess (along with those of some experienced theatre performers) is that there’s some quick-change magic going on. Taylor will also have a team of people helping her backstage, who will be around for hair and makeup touch-ups as well as costume changes.
Dan George, a tour manager who has worked for Shakira and Britney Spears in the past, told the New York Post: “All costumes are typically modified in some way that’s going to make it really easy to get in and out of.
“A dress that would typically have buttons, maybe they add a zipper on it instead. Or the performer might need to have a pouch for a battery pack in a costume. You know, little customizations that make things easier.”
One TikTok user also captured a pretty good angle of a costume change during Midnight Rain.
While performing in locations where it gets darker earlier, Taylor was even filmed doing some outfit adjustments and taking a quick water break on the stage.
And, as anyone who’s seen the show before will know, some of those costume changes even take place on stage as part of the show – which is how Travis wound up making his cameo in London.
Taylor’s parents adorned her bejewelled Fearless guitar by hand
Even a globe-trotting pop star needs a little help from mum and dad every now and again.
Taylor’s crystal encrusted guitar, which she plays during the Fearless portion of the night (matching the one she used on her 2009 tour), was hand-finished by her parents, who stuck the shimmering stones on by hand using “super glue and a free afternoon.”
Who decides which audience member gets Taylor Swift’s 22 hat?
Each night during the Red portion of the set, Taylor gifts her signed bowler hat to a very lucky fan while singing 22.
While neither Taylor nor her team has ever said anything about how the fan in question is chosen, there are plenty of theories out there.
One of them is that Taylor’s mum, Andrea, will scope out the crowd to look for fans. During her closing night Wembley show in July, Taylor confirmed that her parents will, indeed, take a look at the crowd before the show and report back how the energy is looking that night.
Previous recipients have reported being approached by Taylor’s team during the concert. Nine-year-old Milana Bruno was chosen at Taylor’s first Melbourne, and thought she was “getting told off” for dancing on her chair at first, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The mother of another fan at the Cardiff show, seven-year-old Evie Frith, recalled being chosen totally unexpectedly.
“At the end of Love Story, someone grabbed Evie and me and said ‘quick, run’,” mum Kayleigh told the BBC. “They took us to the ground floor bit – I have no idea how they spotted Evie. I really believe it was meant to be.”
But other times it seems she’s the Mastermind behind it all…
Kobe Bryant’s daughter Bianka was gifted the hat at one of Taylor’s Los Angeles Show, and when New Zealand TikToker Oliver Mills received the hat in Melbourne, Taylor was filmed telling him: “I love your videos, you’re so funny”.
In an interview with The Project, Oliver teased that while he wasn’t one to “share secrets”, he said he was in the “right place at the right time” (though later admitted in a TikTok that he’s been “lying” to the media to keep the secret.
Taylor’s method of getting backstage is hilariously unglamorous
If you’re deep on Swift-tok, you’ll have seen plenty of theories that Taylor makes her way backstage via…a cleaning cart.
One video actually appeared to prove that this is how Taylor secretly gets into position, which you can watch below. Also, absolutely 10/10 touch with three conveniently placed mops.
How does Taylor Swift pull off that Eras tour dive every night?
You know the one, where she dives head first (fearless!) into a gap in the stage like she’s entering a body of water.
Attendees who have been at just the right angle spotted that Taylor takes her cue to dive from an LED light. When the floor opens up it’s red, and when it’s time to go the light will turn green.
As for how she zooms to the other end of the stage, back in 2018 Taylor gave fans a little behind the scenes video of the “rocket sled” that takes her from one end of to the other, so we suspect it’s something similar helping pull off the illusion that she’s actually swimming underneath walkway.
Taylor’s choreographer has also worked on some HUGE movies
If you’re a big Swiftie you might have taught yourself some of the Eras dance moves by now (we can’t get enough of the Karma steps, personally), and it turns out Taylor had some help from a choreographer who’s a pretty huge deal in the movie industry.
Mandy Moore not only choreographed Taylor’s steps, but she’s the dance expert behind those amazing La La Land dance scenes. She’s also got credits for Babylon starring Margot Robbie and has worked on Dancing With The Stars since 2015.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight about working with Taylor, she shared: “I love that she is a hard worker, she cares so much about what she’s doing, she wants the fans to have the best show possible, and she stops at nothing to get that done.
“And I appreciate it because I like to work hard too, and we are really alike. We had a really good working relationship; it was awesome.”
The show has (sort of) caused mini earthquakes
When Taylor was performing in Seattle, the city generated seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake, according to a seismologist who spoke to CNN.
Then she did it again in Edinburgh, with the British Geological Survey reporting that earthquake readings were detected up to 6 km away from the venue.
The Eras tour is raking in even more cash than you’d expect
With stadiums ranging from 50,000 to 90,000 capacity and an expected 152 Eras shows performed by the end of 2024, it’s pretty mind-boggling to try and fathom how much cash that is raking in.
As of 2023, it was the first tour in history to gross $1 billion (£791.5 million) – and Taylor is estimated to make an additional billion in ticket sales in 2024 alone.
Taylor Swift donates to the food banks of every city she stops in
If Taylor Swift is coming to town, you can be sure that the whole city is going to know about it. And in a generous gesture to mark her visit to each location, she donates big sums of money to food banks.
The Cardiff Foodbank said Taylor’s donation was the largest the charity has ever received, which it said has now given them “breathing space” to try new things.
St Andrew’s Community Network in Liverpool, added that her donation there was the “most incredible gift”.