Taylor Swift shares insight into the highs and lows of the ‘Eras ​​Tour’

A week earlier, Taylor Swift was supposed to perform in Vienna, but the three concerts were canceled due to a planned terrorist attack. Swift tells her friend and colleague that she found out about it on the plane and that she never arrived in Vienna. “I just have to create this show, remember the joy of it,” she says.

Then she wanted to disappear somewhere where no one could find her. “I don’t want to be persecuted like an animal,” she says. “I’ve been feeling very hunted lately.” Ed Sheeran nods at her: “People forget that you’re a human being in the face of all this.”

149 concerts in front of over ten million fans

“All that,” Ed Sheeran is talking about, is the most successful tour in pop history. 21 months, 149 concerts on five continents, over ten million spectators. A phenomenon at best comparable to Beatlemania or Michael Jackson’s era of absolute cultural dominance.

Fans have been waiting a long time for a look behind the scenes of the “Eras Tour”, and now the first two episodes of a six-part documentary series have been released on Disney Plus.

It’s surprising that the first episode of “The End of an Era” is about the planned terrorist attacks in Vienna, as Taylor Swift had to take a lot of criticism for not publicly commenting on it for a long time in the summer of 2024 and not directly addressing her Austrian fans. This communication strategy is not questioned in the documentary, but it shows how Swift dealt with this emotional low point.

Knife attack with three victims

“There was a series of very violent, scary things that happened on tour,” Taylor Swift says in her London hotel room. “We narrowly escaped a massacre. I’m completely off track.” She begins to talk about the attack in Southport and bursts into tears.

Shortly before the canceled Vienna concerts, a 17-year-old stabbed three little girls and injured ten other children who were taking part in a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. “It’s hard for me to explain,” Swift says.

She will later meet the relatives and survivors of the Southport stabbings, as she does before each of the five London shows. But she won’t cry, she’ll smile, she says. And then lock her feelings away for three and a half hours. “They don’t have to worry about you,” Swift says.

“It’s like you’re a pilot flying a plane.” If the pilot is unsafe, everyone on the plane would be afraid. That’s why you have to stay cool and level-headed: “There will be turbulence, but nothing we haven’t seen before. Just stay strapped in and welcome to the Eras Tour!”

Monologues like this provide a glimpse into the psyche of a pop star who seems to have an almost supernatural ability to function at a moment’s notice, no matter what’s going on around her. “I can do it with a broken heart,” Taylor Swift once sang, and this docuseries is a testament to that.

It was directed by documentary filmmaker and musician Don Argott along with Sheena M. Joyce, but it’s safe to assume that Swift checked what’s on display very closely. The tone of the documentary is mostly jubilant: band members, dancers and background singers talk about what a great boss she is.

We see her handing out bonuses, complete with handwritten letters and homemade wax seals, the size of which causes her crew members to burst into tears. And how her fans cry, dance and celebrate being girls together every night.

Normal person and savior

Florence Welch speaks out and compares her guest appearance on the “Eras Tour” to landing on Mars. Suddenly she found herself right in the middle of this pop culture phenomenon that she had previously only followed from the outside. “Taylor is my friend, and I know her as this warm, cuddly person, and when I got on stage I was like, Oh my God, this is it fucking Taylor Swift!” says the singer.

You probably have to combine both to withstand fame on this level: the normal people with shaking hands and fucking Taylor Swift, the savior for millions. One can exhibit to be the other.

The cameras are not present at the meetings with the survivors of the Southport attack, but they do show Taylor Swift returning from one of these meetings with her mother, in her colorful, sparkly stage outfit, slumped on a couch, sobbing.

Her voice can be heard in the voiceover. “I live in a reality that often feels very unreal,” she says. “But it’s my job to be able to deal with all these feelings and then pick myself up again to perform. That’s just how it has to be.” Shortly afterwards she is carted towards the stage. Over 90,000 fans are waiting for them there.