“It was the end of an era, but the start of an age.”
Taylor Swift sang these words as the final performance of her globe-spanning, blockbuster-selling Eras tour came to a close on Sunday night (Dec. 8) at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, tucking some fan service into a piano rendition of “Long Live” during her acoustic set. Astute listeners noticed the lyrical discrepancy — the correct line is “end of a decade” — and cheered on the edit, a small but meaningful acknowledgment of the moment’s magnitude.
The Eras tour has featured major announcements, surprise performers and significant set list changes during different shows over its nearly two-year life span, but none of those shocks occurred on Sunday night as the stadium trek came to an end. Instead, Swift positioned the tour closer as a chance to commemorate everything the Eras run had accomplished, both as one of the most jaw-dropping pop shows ever constructed and as a space for millions of Swifties to gather, bond, shout along and feel seen. “I couldn’t be more proud of you,” Swift told her audience midway through the performance. And so she gave them the Eras show that she and her crew had so meticulously crafted, and that the world had embraced to record-breaking effect.
Of course, the very last Eras show required some special details nestled within the set list, so the Vancouver crowd was given a doozy of an acoustic set, multiple wholehearted speeches from Swift, and an outpouring of emotion following the final song. Sunday night’s performance felt noteworthy for those who had seen the show before, but functioned as the same long-running, three-hour-plus thrill ride for those who hadn’t. The end of Eras marks the conclusion of one of the defining tours of the modern music industry — but in Vancouver on Sunday night, the show was the same wondrous fan experience that it’s always been.
Here are the 10 best moments of the final Eras tour, in chronological order.
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Gracie Abrams’ tearful farewell.
One song into her opening set, Abrams unfolded a sheet of paper that served as a heartfelt thank-you speech for her experience as part of the Eras tour. “I’m not ready for it to be over,” the ascendant pop star told the stadium crowd, “and I’m not saying that because I had the privilege of being one of her lucky openers. I’m saying it because, like all of you, I’ve grown up with Taylor’s songs magically meeting a moment in my life that I didn’t think anyone else could understand or know, or ached or yearned or loved or lost, and yet, she did.” Later, Abrams wiped a tear before the final song of her opening set, then smeared away some more as she and her band exited the stage to cheers.
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The first pause to soak in the applause.
Although she received her expected standing ovation during the Folkmore set — along with a group of fans serenading her with “Happy Birthday” — the first prolonged cheers came immediately after the first full song of the show, “Cruel Summer,” and Swift appeared especially moved by the fan reaction. The final Eras show was officially underway, and BC Place Stadium was boisterously letting the superstar know that they were ready to support, sing along and party. “Tonight, we get to play one last show … and we’re gonna make it count,” Swift told the audience.
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The final “22” hat giveaway.
A staple of the Eras show, the “22” hat was bestowed to a young girl in the audience who was wearing a pink sequined dress and looked positively awestruck to be high-fiving and hugging her idol. The look of sheer wonder on her face, and the way Swift embraced her, elevated a moment that tugs on the heartstrings at each Eras stop.
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The pre-“All Too Well” speech.
Before launching into the 10-minute version of her Red epic, Swift took a moment to speak to the audience, summarize her intent with the Eras tour, and explain why the experience has grown far bigger than a traveling stadium spectacle.
“The lasting legacy of this tour is that you’ve created such a space of joy and togetherness and love,” Swift said, nodding to the phenomenon of friendship bracelets, and how a communal act was born out of one of her stray lyrics. “You’re why this is so special, and you supporting me for as long as you have is why I get to take these lovely walks down memory every single night — because you’ve cared about every era of my entire life that I’ve been making music.” The words genuinely reflected how the fans have become intrinsic to the Eras experience, and allowed Swift to see her career-spanning vision through.
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The “Delicate” intro.
Any seasoned Swiftie knows that audience members have taken to shouting “1! 2! 3! Let’s go bitch!” before the beat drops in “Delicate,” a viral fan moment from 2018 that’s crossed over to become a nightly staple. That impromptu chant has grown louder as the tour has progressed, and on the final night, seemingly every audience member was prepared to shout it — while Swift herself counted upwards along with them at center stage. “Delicate” now contains new lore, and Swift is all for it.
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The Tortured Poets passion.
Whether it’s recency bias or simply the strength of the new material, The Tortured Poets Department era stood out as the most spirited, and wide-ranging, showcase of the evening, with Swift displaying dazzling sarcasm (“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”), rage set to a death march (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”), atmospheric depression (“Down Bad”) and wild-eyed confrontation (“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”), among other unbridled emotions. The six-song era moved smoothly, contained zero skippable moments and featured some of Swift’s most memorable facial expressions of the evening, whether commiserating with friends on the “So High School” bleachers or reaching out for lost love on “Fortnight.”
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The splendid first acoustic song…
Before launching into her surprise songs of the final Eras show, Swift explained that the nightly acoustic performance was her way of “trying to play a guessing game every single night, and think about what you might want to hear.” With the final show of the tour upon her, Swift thought about “what songs really encapsulate how I feel about tonight — and so I decided to go back to the beginning.”
Thus began a lovely guitar mash-up of “A Place in This World,” one of the more affecting songs on her 2006 self-titled debut, and “New Romantics,” a fiercely beloved ode to finding hope amidst dashed dreams. The songs were plucked from different moments of Swift’s artistry but were blended together with panache, coming across as a message of embracing your roots and letting them guide you through change.
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…And the emotional wallop of the second acoustic song.
Swift placed her guitar down, sat down at her piano and stunned the stadium with the final surprise song of the tour: a mash-up of “Long Live” and “New Year’s Day,” a lump-in-throat combination that paired the epic scope of the former with the hushed wistfulness of the latter. Swift then added “The Manuscript” as a coda to the mash-up, with her intentions of honoring her fans and appreciating the community that they’ve created crystal-clear. “I re-read the manuscript, but the story isn’t mine anymore,” she sang, offering the trio of songs as a token of gratitude before taking two separate bows to thunderous applause.
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Kam Saunders shines one last time.
The entire dance crew supporting Swift on the Eras tour has done tremendous work for months on end, but Saunders established himself as a fan favorite, and received one final night to receive the audience’s appreciation. During “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Swift passed him the mic at the end of the bridge, and Saunders bellowed in response to them ever getting back together, “For the last time, noooo!” And during “Bejeweled,” Swift paused her routine to give Saunders a hug, a quick embrace that communicated how much she appreciated sharing the stage with him all this time.
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The group hug.
Speaking of embraces, the Eras tour ended with a moment both universal and intimate: thousands of fans cheered for Swift as confetti rained down upon BC Place Stadium at the conclusion of the performance, and the superstar turned to her dancers, gripped them all in a group hug, and didn’t let go, as everyone became visibly emotional while onstage one last time together.
Swift then hugged each individual member of her crew, and joined them as they slowly exited the stage, still receiving deafening cheers from the crowd but very much within their own world as a touring family. Swift thanked her band and crew and gave a final bow to the audience, but the group hug defined the finale, an image of closeness that marked the final Eras performance as unforgettable.
