Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is uniting her fans with surprising feelings of nostalgia

Sparkling outfits, breathtaking visuals, and cities repackaged as Taylor Swift-themed destinations – this is only the beginning of the acclaimed Eras Tour. In a joyous celebration of her career hits, Swift has brought to life a nostalgic experience that whisks audiences back in time and pulls them right back to the present again, all in a matter of hours.

We now know that Swift will be bringing the show to London in June and August 2024. But the Eras Tour has already proved to be bigger than any run-of-the-mill stadium live show – it’s a curated experience that pays homage to Swiftie fandom. From Swift singing surprise songs to performing swallow dives into the stage, Eras continues to generate headlines and social media buzz, as the artist brings her 17-year-long career to life. She glides from album to album, checking off chart-topping tunes, songs about former breakups, and debuting Midnights, her most recent album, while she’s at it.

Feelings of fan solidarity have only been heightened by the announcement Swift made on the first night of three sold-out shows in Nashville’s Nissan Stadium. In front of more than 60,000 fans, the artist set a date for the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), which will be released on Friday.

And as the singer powers ahead, she brings the fans and new artists and old friends with her. Fellow Nashville alumni Paramore opened Swift’s first dates, while Gen Z stars – dubbed Swift’s adopted children online – Girl in Red, Beabadoobee, Gracie Abrams and GAYLE have all been given gifted opening slots.

Whether it has you screaming your heart out to hits from her early discography or enjoying pandemic masterpieces folklore and evermore for the first time, the spirit of the Eras Tour has a glimmering appeal for all fans. The mega live shows – an incredible 44 songs long – are kitted out with easter eggs, viral dances, generous friendship bracelet swapping and, of course, buckets of nostalgia as crowds eagerly soak up this epic showcase.

Dedicated fan Danielle Millar, 32, has seen Swift live 23 times, including the opening weekend of the Eras Tour in Glendale, Arizona this March. For Millar, attending a Taylor Swift headline show is not a matter of if but how. On each tour, she takes on a logistical puzzle of tickets, transportation, and organisation. From receiving gifted tickets from Swift to being hugged during shows, the Canadian fan treasures the “special moments” she has experienced as a die-hard Swiftie. Millar has a proven track record of being the ultimate Swiftie having attended shows across the globe and she has been rooting for the star since the very beginning of her career.

In the end, Millar’s support paid off after she was invited into the singer’s Rep Room (an invite-only backstage meet-and-greet hangout) during Swift’s 2018 Reputation Tour. “A lot of people say that they feel like they grew up with Taylor Swift, I feel like I grew up alongside Taylor Swift,” she says.

We all remember what Fearless taught us about girlhood and growing up. Whether it was the lessons of friendship in “Fifteen” or the romance from Red, the Eras Tour has allowed fans and followers to look back on the formative moments they shared with Swift, whether at shows or simply from their bedrooms. Growing up with Swift’s music forged an indelible connection with it for Millar.

“I was going through similar relationship, friendship and life situations that she went through the year prior,” she explains. Swift’s work became the soundtrack to her most memorable, coming-of-age moments. Early albums Fearless and Speak Now became the bedrock of Millar’s younger experiences and, now, with a “Taylor’s Version” of the latter, first released in 2010, on the way, it won’t be long until the album speaks to her again. “It’s been amazing to re-experience these [songs] in a newer, more mature way,” she says. “It’s a feeling that is exclusive to those of us who have been around since the very beginning and have those very special memories.”

Millar’s feelings of nostalgia for Swift’s earlier music are shared by many online. Savannah Rainwater, 26, attended Swift’s Tampa tour date. Shortly after the arena show, the Philadelphia fan shared a snippet of Swift performing “Speak Now” online. The video pulled in more than 200,000 views. The caption read: “This is the first album you ever bought and 13 years later you’re watching her sing it and get to sing it back.” Rainwater, who was 10 when Swift released her debut, has found comfort and community in the musician’s work. “Taylor is someone who unapologetically writes from the female perspective, and I feel like everyone kind of grew up with her, so all of our experiences felt connected,” she tells me. “She made it feel ok to be a girl – and now a woman – with emotions.”

Dr Michael Bonshor, who teaches music psychology at the University of Sheffield, notes that “recent studies have suggested that younger people do experience nostalgia” and that “Gen Z’s engagement with Taylor Swift’s music suggests that this is true”. This emotional relationship to Swift’s music has been intensified by visual cues. Throughout her tour, Swift has lined up specific outfits that align with her album eras. From a shimmering Roberto Cavalli gold dress that mirrors her signature gleaming dress from her early era country days to bringing back her classic Fearless heart hand gestures to recreating her Ashish-designed “22” Red T-shirt, which famously took off when the star released the single “22” in 2012, there are plenty of Swiftisms to pull you in.

Bonshor also notes that “patterns of nostalgia” can emerge as a result of shared culture and common experiences of historical events within formative years. He suggests that Swift’s audience may feel particular nostalgia for the artist’s country pop era: “They would have heard ‘Love Story’ (2008) and ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ (2012), which were particularly appealing to teenagers, as they were growing up.”

Fans of Swift rallied around the Nashville singer when she announced plans to re-record all her early studio albums in 2019. Since Swift revealed that the original master recordings of her earlier songs had been sold without her knowledge, the artist has taken a principled stand to reclaim her work and her legacy, one era at a time, by re-recording each of her first six albums in turn. The re-recording of Speak Now, the singer-songwriter’s 2010 album is the third in a series of releases. Since 2019, Swift has released five full-length albums, two of which are embossed with “Taylor’s Version”. Fans old and new have committed to ditching the earlier versions of Swift’s albums and, instead, moved to streaming music that the singer directly owns. As the announcement was made in Nashville, the stadium was set alight with a deep purple haze as fans erupted into excited screams. The news, unsurprisingly, broke the internet and became Swift’s most liked re-recording announcement.

Sana Noor Haq, 24, first saw Swift live at her Wembley Reputation show in 2018. A long-time Swiftie, Haq felt “seen” by the artist’s emotionality – Swift openly sings about loss, friendship and falling in love. “I find her journey of re-recording her work incredibly empowering. I also admire the way she is honouring her younger self in that process,” Haq says. A self-proclaimed fan of Red (Taylor’s Version), Haq labels Swift’s 2021 do-over a “second coming-of-age experience”. The updated and lengthened album allows Haq to retreat into the childhood memories and moments that she first clicked with Swift as a younger fan.

The link between the music we listen to as teens and adults is labelled a “reminiscence bump” by psychologists. Professor Alexandra Lamont, a music psychologist at Keele University, explains that “fans of Swift’s early work who were teenagers at that time will have a large dose of nostalgia going on through revisiting those earlier tracks”.

Londoner Briana Bywater, who is 33 and has seen Swift live six times, calls growing up with her music a “privilege”. At her wedding last year, Bywater walked down the aisle to Swift’s swelling pop ballad “Wildest Dreams”. It was the peak moment of many in her life to be soundtracked by Swift. Listening to the re-recordings now, Bywater says, is like “falling in love with [Swift] all over again”. While the tour is yet to hit the UK, Bywater views the performances as an endless “celebration and a thank you to the fans”.

Amid the spectacle, the tour has spotlighted Swift’s superstrength – closeness. Few other artists are able to pull off a series of sold-out global stadium dates while making it all feel intimate, built around fandom and in-jokes. The Eras Tour is Swift’s greatest undertaking yet, but it’s one that the pop star is making appear effortless. And with newly announced dates across the UK, Europe, Australia, and more, the singer is bringing her music to more people than ever. In doing so, she’s opening up her “community” to everyone.