I Said, Remember This Era
Thanks, Taylor ❤️
An expectant hush falls over the stadium. It’s the only moment of quiet from the 80,000 strong crowd in 3 hours. We’re all holding our breath, waiting to see what she does next. It’s just her and us, a guitar and a piano. This is Taylor Swift writing songs on her bedroom floor, except the acoustics are probably a bit better and oh yeah, did I mention the tens of thousands of us watching?
This is Taylor’s superpower. Intimacy in the universal. Making every single person from the nosebleeds to the floor feel as though it’s just her and them, singing their hearts out with each other. And yet, at the same time the community is impossible to ignore. From the breathless updates on Twitter and Tumblr to the inside jokes built into the show and the friendship bracelets stacked up and down both arms. It’s always been us. Taylor and the fans. On nights at the Eras Tour, we write love letters to our past selves and celebrate every version of who we’ve been, who we are and who we want to be.
The two nights I spent at the Eras Tour this summer, were some of the best of my year. And I know I’m not alone in that. Every city graced by glitter and confetti, feather boas and cowboy boots came alive with the kind of wild joy many had predicted lost to the pandemic, that nebulous shadow which coincidentally meant more humans on Planet Earth than ever before, turned to Taylor and her tunes. We escaped into mossy cabins, teenage love triangles, failed proposals and enduring odes to our grandparents. And then as the world shifted, we shimmered out of hibernation into self-deprecation, hazy lavender clouds and devil may care karmic turns.
In just a few short hours, the Eras Tour will take its final bows, wrapping up an almost two year run around the world as a singular and conversation defining force, the likes of which we may never see again. The Eras Tour is the kind of moment that will slide into the history books alongside Woodstock and Live Aid, pop culture touchstones that emanate energy, long after the lights have come up. Decades from now, we’ll be the ones blowing the dust off photographs to prove to wide-eyed kids who’ve just discovered Taylor Swift for the first time that yes, we were there. And it really was just as magical as it seems.
I often wonder if the people living inside history are aware of that, as it’s unfolding because I felt it from that very first night in Glendale. The one where we all realised just how committed Taylor was to giving us the kind of show normally only expected from rock legends like Bruce Springsteen. Except, she was doing it in heels with costume changes and choreography. And when that got too easy, she added a whole new era that she’d experienced and written in real time while on tour not to mention recasting the stories of her entire catalogue in acoustic mashups that to me show a mastery of 3D chess when a lot of the industry is still playing checkers.
When I think about the transformation of Taylor Swift that we’ve seen over the course of the Eras Tour, I get a little choked up. Maybe that’s just because I’ve been a fan for a long time, experiencing all but her debut era as they actually happened. Maybe it’s because I was eight or nine then, and I’m twenty five now, the age she was when she became truly inescapable for the first time. Flush with the currency of cool when we all knew it wasn’t that long ago world wanted us to feel embarrassed for liking her music and then they didn’t. Maybe it’s because I’m something of a public figure myself now, on the tiniest of microscales when compared to her but still enough that I get recognised in public sometimes and feel the weight of strangers looking up to me. Maybe it’s because of how much my own life has changed in that time, which we’ll get to in a minute.
In March 2023, we didn’t know it but Taylor had been making herself small for a while. A long time actually, based on when she wrote “You’re Losing Me.” Cutting away at taylor the star because that had to be separate to taylor the person. She wasn’t allowed to admit that part of her lived for the applause. Not if she wanted to keep what was meant to be forever. But then she stepped onto that stage in Arizona and remembered who she was. We cheered and she glowed, getting brighter with every lyric sung back to her and reaffirmation that artists deserve to own the art they make, seen no louder and prouder than the 10 minutes spent screaming about the rare love affair remembered all too well.
I was living away from home for the first time, on the steep learning curve of my first film wondering how the heck I ended up here. After long shoot days in the searing sweat of the Gold Coast, I was coming home and writing like a woman possessed. The first draft of my book was due. Childhood dreams hung in the balance. The tick of being a businesswoman was also loud and constant.
Then Taylor was brave and did it with a broken heart, never faltering or falling. It was noticed by no one except those of us who’d seen seasons of these emotions before, in retrospect and hindsight, right before the snakes struck all those years ago. A mutual manic phase, a tortured poet clawing herself out of a hole, stumbling into more. Then waking up and coming alive. Shaking off the dust like what the hell was I doing? Bringing Speak Now & 1989 back home where they belonged. Just in time for an emotionally intelligent man with a friendship bracelet, waiting to build a life.
I was in New York City then, hoping my little sister would secure the goods and get us tickets half a world away. I was there, on a business trip, for my media company Missing Perspectives, head spinning as I peeked into Reese Witherspoon’s office at Hello Sunshine and fielded emails from the Obama Foundation. Walking past Taylor’s apartment and wondering, where would she go next? How had she pulled herself back together so spectacularly? With grit, discipline and trust that the art which had always caught her would do it again.
A few weeks later, the question became; after all her bigger dreams, did the universe really want her to circle back to dating the guy on the football team?
The answer: a resounding yes.
With him, she can exist wholly. Enough exactly as herself. Both star and person. Just Taylor. Celebrated so completely Travis Kelce bounded onto the stage at Wembley Stadium in a top hat as though it was the easiest thing in the world. It turns out it was. With it has come a freedom, a clear head, a more open heart than ever. A renewed zest for life and a feeling that whenever what’s coming next arrives, it’ll probably be her best yet. That’s how locked in she is.
Fast forward to December 2024 and that movie I was working on has been and gone in the cinemas. I’m nominated for the Australian equivalent of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for my role in it and have just wrapped another job. My book’s been out for over a year, the most surreal moment in its journey also at the Eras Tour when a girl I was trading friendship bracelets told me she’d just started reading it and loved it. There are whispers of a novel on my laptop. I shattered into a million pieces and have started gluing them back together, realising my worth in the process. I broke my own heart when I walked away from my media company but now I can breathe. 2025 is wide open with possibility, but also the allure of rest, just as I imagine it is for Taylor. I think after all of that, a rest is deserved, don’t you?
Whether it was sitting in the stadium or singing along in my bedroom to a grainy livestream, the Eras Tour has been a celebration of womanhood I’ve been so proud to tap into week after week. It’s been an anchor, a safe space, a place where witnesssing a transformation has made me brave enough to make my own. Together, we’ve seen the finding of a voice. A stepping into of a blazing power, wielded with ease, grace, care, precision and whimsey all at the same time. A person remembering that she’s allowed to be in the world and doesn’t have to hide from it.
Every friendship bracelet, costume, Easter egg, inside joke and memory made forever was built because a teenage girl and then a woman worked hard and told her story. She steers the ship and makes it seem effortless on the surface but isn’t afraid to say she works hard. This was training and rehearsal. Planning and execution. Three years of her life to make sure that when every facet of the universe that lived inside her brain and with us came to life, it did so in full bloom. She might be on her own kid, but Taylor you were never really alone and neither are we. That’s a real fucking legacy to leave. Long live the Eras Tour.
Remember this moment, we won’t see anyone else like Taylor Swift in our lifetime.