By Megha Lakha
“I don’t know how it gets better than this,” Taylor Swift sings in her song “Fearless.” And it proved to be true when the Eras Tour made its three-day stop at the Mercedes-Benz stadium. And almost everyone who went to the concert agreed. Caroline Liu said the best part was “all of it, it was so amazing.”
The Eras Tour was a long-awaited concert that followed Taylor’s greatest hits and different albums over the years. I went to her 1989 Tour in 2015, and her Reputation Tour in 2018. So I’m a loyal fan. But Eras was the best concert of hers I’ve seen.
Since Swift never toured for her “Lover,” “evermore,” or “folklore” albums (due to Covid-19), she decided to have the Eras Tour, which featured her latest album, Midnights. When Swift announced the tour, the Eras Tour was declared the biggest concert of the year. Getting tickets was a nightmare for many, fans sat near their laptops for hours, and tickets sold out almost instantly.
My friend, Ava, got tickets for me and a few of my friends, which I’m eternally grateful for. We planned our outfits for months and pretty much talked about nothing else in the days leading up to the concert. When Friday finally came, it honestly felt so unreal.
And I now know that post-concert depression is real.
My friends and I arrived at the Stadium a few hours before the actual concert. We parked, scanned our tickets, and immediately went on a hunt for merch. We were nervous that the merch lines would be crazy long, but we were able to find a relatively short line.
Others had a different experience. Freshman Cassie Bell said that the “merch line was long and the crowd was really loud.” Sophomore Caroline Liu solved the problem by ordering online.
My friends and I rushed to our seats to see the opening acts, Gracie Abrams and Beabadoobee. After the opening acts were over, a countdown clock popped up on the screen and the whole stadium went quiet. When the clock hit zero, echoes of Taylor’s voice filled the stadium. She opened with songs from “Lover” and then moved on to “Fearless,” her second album. “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story” are well-loved classics.
She went through the rest of her setlist, and people seemed to calm themselves for “evermore” and “folklore,” which are more chill albums. After doing a few songs from 1989, she was ready for her surprise songs.
The Eras Tour has become extra popular for its surprise songs. Taylor announced that every night, she will perform two surprise songs that aren’t already on the setlist. My friend whispered to me during 1989 that the surprise songs would probably be slower. She said if Taylor comes on stage wearing a green outfit for 1989, then that’s a sign the surprise songs will be more lowkey. And if she comes onto the stage wearing a magenta outfit for 1989, then the surprise songs will probably be pop songs.
The surprise songs for Night 1 were “The Other Side of the Door” from Fearless, and “coney island” from “evermore.” The whole stadium lit up when she sang “The Other Side of the Door”, and Taylor seemed surprised when she realized that the audience knew the song well.
On Night 2, Taylor sang “Gorgeous” from “reputation” and “High Infidelity” from her latest album, “Midnights.” Everyone expected her to sing “High Infidelity” because there is a lyric that says “Do you really want to know where I was April 29th?”, so fans were able to predict that she would sing it because the concert fell on April 29th.
Freshman Ella Anne Williams said she didn’t like the surprise songs on Saturday, but she also went to the concert on Sunday. “I mean ‘High Infidelity’ was obvious. Sundays were the best.” Caroline Liu said she knows most of Taylor’s “discography well” and would have been happy to hear any song live. On Sunday, the last night in Atlanta, Taylor sang “I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version)” and “How You Get the Girl”, which was Cassie’s favorite song.
When we left the stadium, we were in awe. And even as I’m writing this, I wish I could re-live it. On the car ride home, we shared our videos with each other. We were surprisingly chill, perhaps because we’d just spent the previous three hours screaming and jumping at our seats.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Taylor sang in her opening song. It was true for her return to live performances, but also for every single person in that stadium. I’ve thought a lot about my long journey with Taylor, which started when I was in second grade. I would never have imagined I’d be a teenager, singing with my friends at the Eras tour.
Cassie Bell summed it up best when I asked her what her favorite part of the concert was: “Taylor.”
