Taylor Swift’s setlist: All the hits you can expect on Aussie tour
Along with three hours of performance and a massive stage, diehard Aussie Swifties can look forward to more than 30 of the pop superstar’s biggest hits.
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Costume changes timed to the milliseconds, lighting cues and big screen videos, instrument switches and dance choreography – every aspect planned in detail.
Welcome to a Taylor Swift concert.
Like all stadium tours, the Eras show runs to a tight schedule.
Taking up much of her non-singing time are 16 costume changes, with the majority timed by fans at two minutes each.
Moving the piano to its position is faster than you might imagine. Like most tour pianos, it’s believed to be a shell housing a digital keyboard so much lighter than a real baby grand or upright.
Swift doesn’t have a history of changing things up much for her Australian shows. Recent tours didn’t feature special guests as her concerts in America and Europe had done.
Aussie fans are now pushing for her to play one of the news tracks from her newly-announced The Tortured Poets Department album during the Australian shows.
“You think you can just scroll and know the setlist? Let it be said about the Eras Tour, we’re tricksy. We have got healthy setlist hijinks,” Swift declared when she hit Texas in the opening weeks of the tour last April.
Ahead of the long-awaited shows in Melbourne and Sydney next week, fans here are hoping she injects some Aussie flavour into the Eras setlist.
That moment could come during her the acoustic “surprise songs” mini-set she performs in the final third of the three hours plus show.
With the songs selected from each of her eras locked into the setlist, some as shortened versions so she can fit 44 tracks into the career-spanning retrospective, fans have focused their Swifty sense on the surprise songs, advocating for their favourites or speculating on their idol’s possible choices.
Before she announced her new record The Tortured Poets Department from the Grammys winner’s podium on Monday, fans were speculating she would play a surprise song from her 2017 record Reputation.
Fans had been expecting confirmation of the release of Reputation (Taylor’s Version), the next instalment in her campaign to re-record her first six albums, at the Grammys. Or at least during the shows in Japan or Australia.
Aussie Swifties had convinced themselves she would slot in I Did Something Bad to announce Reputation TV in Melbourne. Getaway Car was spruiked among fans as another contender, as it was a single in Australia and New Zealand back in 2018.
But with a new record on the way in April instead, it’s now unlikely Swift will drop the re-record of her 2017 album Reputation until later this year.
The other “surprise song” possibility is an Australian centric track. Many fans are predicting she may add The Lucky One, which she wrote during an Australian visit, from her Red album.
Those followers who are more album than singles driven are pushing for deep cuts including more recent songs Hits Different and You’re Losing Me.
Lovelorn Swifties want her to take the heartbreak route, pushing for tracks from her Folklore and Evermore eras like Long Story Short and Peace.
But if her tight end footballer beau Travis Kelce makes the trip down under, Swift may not be in the misery zone.
The American pop star hasn’t even booked an Australian support act for her last two tours here; the last Aussie to open for her was Vance Joy on the 1989 world tour in 2015.
Former Disney child star and now pop princess Sabrina Carpenter is opening the Melbourne and Sydney concerts this month.
If Swift’s reading the room, the Karma chart star would be wise to play to the Aussie crowd’s parochialism by inviting recent Hottest 100 hero G Flip to join her on Cruel Summer.
G’s mum Lisa Kempton even launched an online petition after the award-winning drummer, singer and songwriter nailed their cover of Cruel Summer for Triple J’s Like A Version, which has now had more than four million streams and views.
Swift did “like” the cover on a social media post, and there’s a gap in G Flip’s tour schedule, so ball is in the Shake It Off singer’s court.
Another potential guest whipping Swifties into a speculation frenzy is her producer and co-writer Aaron Dessner, who made semi-regular cameos during her surprise song sets during the American tour.
Dessner kicks off an Australasian tour with his band The National in New Zealand on February 24 and could head down under a week earlier to catch an Eras shows or two.
Another potential guest on the fans’ wishlist is Troye Sivan, who could be on the way back home to Melbourne after his Grammys week-long celebrations.
The pair performed Sivan’s My My My during the Reputation tour in California.
And there’s her good mate Keith Urban who appears to have a break in his tour schedule this month.
TAYLOR SWIFT SETLIST, TOKYO DOME, FEBRUARY 7
Lover
Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince
Cruel Summer
The Man
You Need to Calm Down
Lover
The Archer
Fearless
Fearless
You Belong With Me
Love Story
Evermore
‘Tis The Damn Season
Willow
Marjorie
Champagne Problems
Tolerate It
Reputation
… Ready for It?
Delicate
Don’t Blame Me
Look What You Made Me Do
Speak Now
Enchanted
Long Live
Red
22
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
I Knew You Were Trouble
All Too Well (10-Minute Version)
Folklore
The 1
Betty
The Last Great American Dynasty
August
Illicit Affairs
My Tears Ricochet
Cardigan
1989
Style
Blank Space
Shake It Off
Wildest Dreams
Bad Blood
Surprise Songs
Dear Reader
Holy Ground
Midnights
Lavender Haze
Anti‐Hero
Midnight Rain
Vigilante Sh*t
Bejewelled
Mastermind
Karma
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