long live
As Taylor Swift’s recorded voice sang, “it’s been a long time coming,” I watched my sisters’ faces.
Having watched more TikToks of the Eras Tour than they had before our own show in Cincinnati in July 2023, I knew when and where Taylor Swift was going to appear on the stage—and I wanted to see the joy on their faces when they first saw her.
I wasn’t disappointed. Their smiles could light up this whole town.
Tonight is the last night of The Eras Tour, after nearly two years of breaking records, boosting economies, trading friendship bracelets and creating best days for everyone who attended. So I’m reminiscing—I go back to July all the time.
I loved singing along to “Love Story,” a longtime favorite that Ashtyn, Cayden and I sang in the talent show in matching pink dresses in 2009. Cayden and I would go on to sing two more Taylor Swift songs in talent shows, yet the Eras Tour was our very first Taylor Swift concert. Singing live with Taylor Swift had been a long time coming, indeed.
One of the surprise songs that night was “Call It What You Want,” a beautiful love song from reputation that includes the lyric “I want to wear his initial on a chain ‘round my neck.” We all pointed at the D pendant that Ashtyn was wearing and the M pendant that Cayden was wearing.
I was wearing my own initial—my B typewriter necklace. I wasn’t even dating Loui yet (that’s how long the Eras tour has lasted!) but I would eventually marry him while wearing an L typewriter key. Not because he owns me, but ‘cause he really knows me.
My favorite performance of the show was “the last great american dynasty” because it’s my favorite Taylor Swift song. (It’s hard to even say favorites definitively, but I’ll stand by that.) The dresses and dancing were gorgeous, and it was one of the most theatrical parts of the show.
I was waiting for one line in particular: “and then it was bought by me!”
I had loved that line since the first time I listened to the song, shortly after midnight on the night that folklorewas released. I was enjoying the narrative, about a woman named Rebekah, a divorcee who partied her husband to death and scandalized the small town in which she lived, in the mansion she named the Holiday House.
The song was fiction, I assumed, and Rebekah a creation of Taylor Swift’s—until she revealed that Rebekah Harkness was the real-life former owner of the Rhode Island house that now belongs to Taylor Swift.
In three minutes and fifty-one seconds, Swift gave us a full portrait of this woman—and drew parallels between Rebekah’s life and her own. Rebekah was “the maddest woman this town has ever seen,” but Taylor Swift is “the loudest woman”—a fan-favorite part of the Eras Tour because she sings it in a delightful way, different from the studio version.
In the song (and with the period dresses during the Eras Tour performance), Taylor Swift gave us a history lesson, filtered through her own connection to this woman.
That style of writing may sound familiar to anyone who knows about the Alice Dunnigan book I’ve been writing for six years. I’m telling Alice Dunnigan’s story, but I’m part of the story, too.
In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Taylor Swift talked about that style of narrative storytelling: “I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who’s even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, ‘Surprise! It was me.’ You bring it personal for the last verse.”
If this newsletter started reading like analysis halfway through, it’s because I’m adapting parts of this from an essay that was published on a now-defunct website about the craft of writing creative nonfiction. But don’t worry—I’m bringing it back to the Eras Tour!
What Taylor Swift did masterfully throughout this tour was bring it personal. She played in front of 70,000 people at a time, yet every person there felt like she was singing just to them.
She writes songs that are personal to her, but they become personal to each of her listeners, too.
She strengthened bonds between sisters and friends but also formed new connections among strangers who shared a love for sparkles and screaming lyrics. It was an experience unlike any other.
Long live the magic that Taylor Swift made.