End of an Era: How Taylor Swift's record-shattering tour put fun, freedom centerstage
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – When Taylor Swift sings definitively and defiantly “Try and come for my job” at the end of “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart,” it’s more than a closing shot. Invincibility is her mantra.
Who in entertainment could match Swift’s achievements on the “most fun, joyful, exciting, intense, powerful tour” she’s ever done, as she referred to her billion-dollar-earning exhaust-a-thon Eras stadium tour during its final trio of shows in Vancouver?
Not even Michael Jackson or Madonna in their prime circled five continents throughout 21 months, playing 149 shows stocked with 45 songs, including special acoustic “surprises” at every gig. Her epic concerts gift-wrapped fans nearly 3½-hours of heartfelt music, clever lyrics, sparkly costumes, glistening production and, most importantly, unpretentious charm.
Swift has set records in the touring, film and book industries with the highest-grossing tour of all time, highest-grossing concert film ever and fastest-selling book of 2024.
Taylor Swift's ambition is limitless
Sunday’s finale at BC Place in Vancouver was a dichotomous bookend: Swift launched the sprawling Eras Tour in March 2023 in the blazing Arizona desert and brought this chapter to its conclusion during damp, chilly winter in Canada.
During the tour’s tenure, she engaged with as many weather elements as she did eras. She performed in soaked costumes in a Nashville downpour, made a joke about her frizzy hair on a humid Singapore night and braved the frigid cold in Edinburgh, Scotland.
While romping through the type of grueling shows that would level mere mortals after nearly two years, Swift, who turns 35 on Friday, earned a trio of Grammys (including a record-breaking fourth album of the year nod with “Midnights”); became a billionaire; landed on the cover of Time with one of her beloved cats, Benjamin Button, as the magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year; and in her spare time, dropped a 30-song album in April, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which is nominated for album of the year at the 2025 Grammys.
Swift is so prolific that she couldn’t even get through a tour without having to add another era.
She also unwittingly sparked a fringe market for fan-crafted outfits that painstakingly replicate the pastel-speckled leotard she wears during the “Lover” era, her regal and sparkly red coat donned for “All Too Well” and her white Vivienne Westwood dress decorated with song lyrics that is spotlighted during “The Tortured Poets Department” segment, which she added in May.
Friendship bracelets and the art of devotion
Her zealous fans earned their own spotlight in this Eras gallop around the world when they started a grassroots trend by making and swapping friendship bracelets. The braided and beaded trinkets are woven with messages of kindness, song lyrics or inside jokes among her devotees, who cluster in venue aisles and interminable merchandise lines at concerts to trade as part of their own secret society.
Even Swift marveled at the movement, saying at Saturday’s concert, “I have one line in one song (“You’re On Your Own, Kid”) about a friendship bracelet and you made that idea synonymous with The Eras Tour.”
It’s but one symbol of the unusual intimacy cultivated among her fans, which span generations and cultures.
Kaitlyn Mark, 26, and her mom, Casey, 55, from Blaine, Washington, caught The Eras Tour twice in 2023 and decided to dole out $2,400 for a pair of resale tickets in the 400-level for Saturday’s Vancouver show just to share the experience one final time.
“We saw the second set of dates in Las Vegas in 2023, so I feel like it’s cool for us to share this (at the end of the tour),” Casey said.
Kaitlyn, who teaches third grade, is already spreading her love of Swift to her young charges.
“I have a quote on the classroom wall that says ‘You make the whole class shimmer,'” she said, citing a modified lyric from Swift’s song “Bejeweled.” “I’m, like, the Taylor Swift teacher.”
When it comes to dedication to Swift, there is seemingly no limit on the amount of money or time her fans will invest.
Molly Menounos, a 5th grade teacher in the Boston area, flew standby Friday after her Thursday flight into Vancouver was canceled.
She and three friends initially bought $68 presale tickets in November 2023 for Friday’s show. But after the travel snafu, they sold their tickets on StubHub and purchased resale tickets for Saturday in a similar section for $1,300 each. The Swift supporters also split a hotel room within walking distance of the stadium for $4,000 per night.
“She cares so much, and that’s why we have to get there, because we care so much,” Menounos, 24, said of Swift, while on her flight to Vancouver. “Yeah, I’m losing money and I’m only going to be there for a little more than 24 hours, but it’s still worth it.”
Menounos, who had seen Swift on her tours behind the “Red,” “1989” and “Reputation” albums but not yet the Eras spectacle, recalled listening to Swift since she was in eighth grade. Her love of Swift helped forge enduring friendships in high school and among her college roommates and stretches to her family, including her Swiftie dad, who urged her to make the trip after an anxiety-riddled day of travel uncertainty.
Though she was eager to finally witness the Eras marathon, Menounos expected warring emotions when it’s over.
“I know I’m going to cry,” she said. “But I think it will be a catharsis.”
Taylor Swift is generating enough money 'to be a small country'
The money spent by Menounos and her friends is one of literally millions of examples of the Swift effect on the 51 cities she’s played on tour.
Between boosts to the airline industry – Southwest Airlines used signature numbers in her music to add flights with designations including #1989 and #22 for her fall U.S. dates – and the tourism dollars generated at restaurants and hotels, a Swift weekend of shows produces nearly as much money for a city as a Super Bowl.
A Bank of America study earlier this year compared spending during the Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, and a weekend of Swift shows in Pittsburgh and found similar increases. Fans spent $96 more in restaurants and $74 more in bars for Super Bowl weekend compared to $77 and $56 more, respectively, during an Eras weekend.
It's an unparalleled phenomenon in the music industry.
“If you look at the global impact of her concerts outside of ticket sales, she’s generating enough money to be a small country at this point,” said Adam Gustafson, associate teaching professor of music at Penn State’s School of Humanities who has given several presentations about Swift. “It’s not even just a regional thing. People have traveled across the world to see her, and multiple times.”
Gustafson attributes that devotion and willingness to spend money, whether on concert tickets, T-shirts, coffee table books or movie screenings, to Swift’s genuine rapport with fans.
“There seems to be a real sense of younger people that if the person on the other end is authentic, they’re more than happy to support them. If they feel it’s inauthentic or overly corporate, they’ll get leery. But Taylor’s whole life is out there and there is no way for her to be inauthentic,” Gustafson said.
Perfect gift for your favorite Swiftie: 'This Swift Beat.'
Taylor Swift's generosity also deserves admiration
Swift’s altruism is frequently tagged as a reason for respect and admiration, even from those with a cursory interest in her.
Gustafson notes the $100,000 bonus checks Swift presented to her trucking staff in 2023 as not only an indicator of her generosity, but how it reminds people – as she often does – that this level of success in a fluid live production cannot be achieved alone.
“It draws attention to the dancers in the background, the musicians playing with her, the production crew, all of it, and how she’s often showing people that this is a team effort,” he said.
Swift’s humanity is the reason T’Lene Hayes became a fan – and enough of one to spend $735 each on the obscenely marked-up $13.99 behind-the-stage tickets, which offer fans a view of the screens beside the stage but not the stage itself, Swift released last week.
“Once I saw the positive impact she was having on cities (where she performed) I began to respect her more as a human and then became a fan of her music,” Hayes, 36, said. The Seattle-based nurse and her boyfriend, Adam Carver, 29, bought their tickets to Saturday’s show on the resale market that morning and promptly drove the three hours to Vancouver, listening, of course, to a Spotify playlist of Swift songs.
While Hayes now also appreciates Swift’s music – especially “Folklore” and “Evermore” – she’s still most impressed with Swift’s benevolence.
“The donations she made to food banks (on every stop of The Eras Tour) and the bonuses she gave her staff, it just warmed my heart that the people pulling off probably the biggest tour ever were being appreciated,” Hayes said. “She saw those people as humans.”
Carver added that he’s most impressed by Swift’s business savvy.
“She’s such a powerful woman. It’s like witnessing an historical figure, like Alexander the Great or something, in action,” he said.
How Taylor Swift became her own brand
Indeed, even with her 14 Grammy Awards, billions of streams and millions of albums sold, Swift has rocketed her career from admired singer-songwriter to an inescapable brand like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. Only she doesn’t need flashy logos or cutesy names as marketing tools because she is the brand.
Alyse Lancaster, vice dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Miami School of Communication started teaching “The Mastermind of the Taylor Swift Brand” this semester, an idea influenced by her 17-year-old Swift fan daughter.
For 16 weeks, 189 students pile into an auditorium to discuss and debate Swift’s ascension to billionaire status and how she “created her own economy,” as Lancaster put it.
“It’s not just becoming a billionaire, but how that branding gives back,” Lancaster said. “The way she treats her employees, the handwritten notes, she always puts a personal touch on everything she does and that’s what differentiates her from other celebrities. She never forgets that the fans are the ones who continue to put her where she is.”
Swift’s effect on the NFL, an inadvertent byproduct of her giddily public relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce – whose already-high profile has escalated to ubiquity – is indisputable.
Menounos said the kids in her class are always asking about the Chiefs, while Lancaster remarked her daughter, who “didn’t even know what a touchdown was before (Swift and Kelce),” has a Chiefs sweatshirt on her holiday gift list.
“Think about the number of advertisers if Kansas City goes back to the Super Bowl, all of the female-centered products like makeup companies that might consider advertising,” Lancaster said. “Taylor has changed the entire marketing strategy even for an event like that.”
Lancaster plans to teach her course again in the fall, especially after fully understanding the Swiftian vibe when she caught The Eras Tour with her daughter in October in Miami. Though she had an inkling of what to expect from seeing clips of the show online, she was engulfed by the nearly tangible feeling of togetherness at Hard Rock Stadium.
“Her shows are a beautiful place to be and create that kind of space for women,” Lancaster said. “But for men, too. You see dads who have little girls putting sparkles on their heads and they’re fine with that. My daughter, who is very shy, was walking up to strangers asking if they wanted to trade friendship bracelets. Taylor has created an environment that feels loving and safe.”