Taylor Swift dazzles in the first of six SoFi Stadium shows on Thursday
At the end of Taylor Swift‘s mini-set of songs from the album “Red,” after a trio of fan favorites that included “We Are Never Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” the singer-songwriter told the sold-out SoFi Stadium crowd on Thursday that she had one more from that 2012 record to play for them.
“If you have about 10 minutes to spare,” Swift added to a roar of screams and cheers.
The fans knew, of course, what was coming: “All Too Well,” in its extended shape from the 2021 remake, “Red (Taylor’s Version),” one of the standout tracks in all of Swift’s discography, an epic built of her rawest memories and emotions, and quite simply, one of the greatest breakup songs of all-time.
It’s the centerpiece of The Eras Tour, Swift’s massive stadium show that spreads 45 songs from nine of her 10 albums across three-and-a-half hours each night on, and for good reason, too.
“All Too Well,” especially in this 10-minute version, places Swift atop an elevated platform at the center of a long ramp across the floor, playing acoustic guitar as she bares heart and soul to reach not just the fans who have made this the biggest tour of the year, but millions upon millions more who wish they could be there to see it, feel it, live it.
Who, with a heart, hasn’t felt the hurt explicit in a couplet such as “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise / So casually cruel in the name of being honest.”
Who, who ever loved and lost, can’t recall a memento of the past such as the scarf, never returned after the breakup, that features so prominently in this lyric?
Like so much else in Thursday’s show in Inglewood, the first of an unprecedented six sold-out nights at SoFi, “All Too Well” delivered all that a fan might want, and then a little more.
In a night full of highlights, here are five more moments that stood out. The Eras Tour continues at SoFi Stadium Aug. 4-5 and 7-9.
All the albums, almost
Most musicians tour after every new album. For Swift, the pandemic scuttled that idea. Her 2020 shows behind 2019’s “Lover” album would have opened the then-new SoFi Stadium until COVID ended that.
Isolated, Swift entered a period of remarkable productivity, releasing three new albums – “Folklore,” “Evermore,” and “Midnights” – and new versions of a two of older albums – “Fearless” and “Red” – before she was able to tour again. (A new version of “Speak Now” arrived midway through this year’s touring).
“I’ve been playing shows sort of as a coping process since I was 12,” Swift said before singing “Champagne Problems” from “Folklore.” “I write a something about something I experienced. I show it to you and I ask you if you like it.”
Unable to play live, “I decided I was going to make and release as many albums as humanly possible,” she said, and then introduced fans to the four new members of the family, naming her three pandemic releases plus “Lover,” which arrived in August 2019.
The Eras Tour developed as a way to structure a show that included songs from all but her self-titled debut album. The show opens each night with “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” and “Cruel Summer,” the first songs in a mini-set from “Lover.” Similar from the other albums follow, old ones and new ones, before the night wraps up with songs from “Midnights,” her most recent.
It’s a smart structure, one that gives fans a chance to scream themselves silly for their favorite albums’ songs in a generously overstuffed show that few pop stars would attempt.
So many hits!
When there are 45 songs in the set, you better have a bunch of bangers, which the show Thursday absolutely did.
Highlights early in the show ranged from “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” from the early country pop of 2008’s “Fearless” album to the electropop blast of “…Ready For It” and ominous harder rock of “Look What You Made Me Do” from 2017’s “Reputation.”
The lushly romantic “Enchanted” from “Speak Now” saw her in fairy tale mode wearing a gorgeous princess-worthy gown. Earlier albums such as “Red” and “1989” delivered some of the biggest hits in her catalog – “22,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble” from the former, “Blank Space,” “Shake It Off,” and “Bad Blood” from the latter.
Any of those, with maybe the exception of “Enchanted,” have the kind of energetic passion that an artist typically saves for the end of the show. Here, given the structure of the tour, and Swift’s plethora of hits, they fell much earlier in the timeline, with big dance pop numbers such as “Lavender Haze” and “Karma” from the 2022 album “Midnights” left to wrap up the show.
A touching reminder
Each night on tour Swift opens the mini-set for “Red” with 22, often wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “A Lot Going On at the Moment,” sequined black shorts, and a black fedora. At the end of the song she gives the hat to a special fan in the crowd.
On Thursday, Swift knelt at the end of the stage’s long ramp and placed the hat on Bianka Bryant, giving the 6-year-old daughter of Vanessa Bryant and the late Kobe Bryant a big hug, too.
It was a significant moment for both Swift and the Bryant family. On the first of five nights in 2015 at the then-Staples Center in Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant walked out midway through the show to present Swift with a banner in honor of her record 16 sold-out shows at the venue, which hangs alongside the Lakers championship banners inside the arena.
Bianka Bryant was born a year later, Kobe and his daughter Gianna died with seven others in a 2019 helicopter crash. On Thursday, that circle was closed in a sweetly touching way by Swift.
Famous friends
Swift is famous, of course, for writing songs believed to be inspired by some of the well-known men she’s dated. “All Too Well” was supposedly inspired by the alleged scarf-stealer actor Jake Gyllenhall. “Style” is about pop star Harry Styles – Swift snuck in a Harry Styles-like dance shimmy during that one on Thursday.
The three Haim sisters in the Los Angeles band Haim have long been Swift friends, and they, along with Gracie Abrams, opened the show on Thursday with a strong set of their poppish rock and roll. They returned to perform with her on “No Body, No Crime,” a moody gothic revenge tale, which along with “Champagne Problems,” a song Swift sang solo while playing a moss-covered grand piano, was one of the highlights of the “Evermore” album set.
But the crowd was sprinkled with famous faces, too. Our section had the minor celebrities of reality TV, star couple Heidi and Spencer Pratt of “The Hills.” (Though we did also get a fun Haim sisters moment when they skipped up our aisle, exchanging high fives and hellos with fans later in Swift’s set).
Elsewhere in the definitely not cheap seats were plenty more celebrities including Mindy Kaling, Molly Shannon, Jessie Tyler Ferguson, Sarah Paulson and Brie Larson.
Surprise, surprise
While almost all of the set follows the same structure every night – choreography, costume changes and the elaborate production make that mandatory – each show features a pair of solo acoustic surprise songs that (almost) never are repeated in other nights on the tour.
It’s a point late in the show of great anticipation for fans – OMG, what will she play?! – and the screams that greeted both songs Thursday make clear what a big deal this is to the Swifties in the stadium.
“I Can See You (Taylor’s Version)” came first, a song originally written for Swift’s 2010 “Speak Now” but not released until the new version of that record arrived earlier this year. It was, Swift announced before playing it on acoustic guitar, a song she had never before played live.
She moved to the piano for the second song, “Maroon,” which apparently has the distinction of being one of only two songs to have been played twice during the surprise songs segment of The Eras Tour. The track from her latest album “Midnights” first showed during a May concert at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
When: Thursday, Aug. 3
Where: SoFi Stadium, Inglewood