Taylor Swift‘s “Cassandra” was the only song from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology that had never been performed live, until Friday night (Nov. 22) in Toronto, where it stole the show in a three-song piano medley brimming with rage.
“Cassandra,” “Mad Woman” and “I Did Something Bad” suddenly existed together in a fine fury, ascending above the concept of ordering the tour’s main setlist by “eras.” (Tortured Poets, Folklore and Reputation were represented here, in one performance.)
Watch a fan-filmed video of Swift’s full performance of the mashup here.
The live premiere of “Cassandra,” a song titled after the Cassandra of Greek mythology who received the gift of prophecy along with the curse to never be believed, came during the the acoustic section of Swift’s Friday show, the fifth of six dates total in Toronto this month. The Eras Tour acoustic set is known as the part of the concert where what she performs each night is meant to be a surprise to the audience.
“When the first stone’s thrown, there’s screaming/ In the streets, there’s a raging riot/ When it’s ‘burn the b—-,’ they’re shrieking/ When the truth comes out, it’s quiet,” Swift sang from “Cassandra” at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, sitting at her piano painted with flowers.
She continued on with the ballad’s chorus, singing, “So they killed Cassandra first ’cause she feared the worst/ And tried to tell the town/ So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say/ Do you believe me now? Do you believe me now?”
Swift surprised everyone further with a sudden shift to “Mad Woman”: “What did you think I’d say to that?/ Does a scorpion sting when fighting back?/ They strike to kill and you know I will/ You know I will.”
In the chorus of “Mad Woman,” she sings, “Every time you call me crazy/ I get more crazy/ What about that?/ And when you say I seem angry/ I get more angry/ And there’s nothin’ like a mad woman/ What a shame she went mad/ No one likes a mad woman/ You made her like that.”
While it feels melodramatic to type this out, the moment that Swift took a sharp turn to Reputation — with “I Did Something Bad” — actually elicited gasps heard round the stadium and the internet, where fans who weren’t at the concert searched for streams of Swift’s set.
“What a shame she went mad,” Swift sang from “Mad Woman,” casually calling back to Reputation with “They say I did something bad.”
Toward the end of the performance, that couplet became “Do you believe me now? What a shame she went mad/ Do you believe me now? They say I did something bad” in a clever rewrite that linked “Cassandra” with both “Mad Woman” and “I Did Something Bad” in the same chorus.
The mad mashup went on for a solid seven minutes, as captured on video by concertgoers.
It followed a lighter performance from Swift on acoustic guitar, “Ours” (Speak Now) mixed with “The Last Great American Dynasty” (Folklore).
Swift plays in Toronto once more Saturday night (Nov. 23). The Eras Tour, which launched in March 2023, has a break for the U.S.’s Thanksgiving week before taking its final bow in Vancouver from Dec. 6-8, 2024.
