Taylor Swift is telling the story of us.
“The Official Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book” is out now, offering more than 500 photos and 256 pages worth of odes to Swifties, new performance photos, rehearsal and behind-the-scenes (and sometimes under-the-stage) photos and personal reflections written by the icon herself.
“I’ll never forget the call when I explained my idea of the concept for The Eras Tour to my team,” Swift reflects in the introduction of the book. “At the time, I was working on the Midnights album and if we were to do what I’ve always done, I would’ve embarked on planning The Midnights Tour. But there’s nothing I hate more than doing what I’ve always done.”
There are also glittering images of all of her costume variations lined up together (including a white bathrobe with “ERAS” written on the back in sparkly silver letters) and original designer sketches of the costume concepts.
Swift is credited as the sole person in charge of “book creative direction,” while art direction, design and illustration was by the Nashville-based ST8MNT Brand Agency, which has been designing graphics and merch for Swift since the original Speak Now era.
Here are the 13 (because, obviously) biggest things we learned from the official Eras Tour book.
1. How that surprise song set stage dive works
Where were you the first time you saw Swift dive headfirst into the dark underbelly of the Eras Tour stage? It’s a stunning moment that happens every show — perhaps she was stupid to jump, but of course she got away with it (even if it’s a false god).
“At the end of the second song, the stage becomes an ocean and I ‘dive’ into it, which involves a lot of blind faith and a big airbag under the stage,” she writes. “It’s the coolest illusion of the night and I’ll never forget the sound of the crowd the first time they saw it, somewhere between shock, horror and elation. Mission accomplished.”
2. Swift responds to cleaning cart-gate
Before every show, eagle-eyed Swifties have noticed that a crew member pushes a suspiciously human-sized cart labeled “CLEANING CART” with a mop sticking out of the top from backstage to the stage. It’s long been theorized that it’s actually Swift inside, and though we got a small glimpse of it in the “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” music video, the Eras Tour book confirms once and for all that it’s true.
A few photos show the exterior of the cart in question, and another shot of the singer inside, sitting on an upholstered bench with all-black walls adorned with LED light strips and a few cat-related pieces of decor, including one that reads “ANIMAL OF THE DAY: MEREDITH.”
3. Swift’s favorite moment of the show
“Vigilante Shit” from Midnights arrives during the last era of the show, which Swift reveals is her “favorite moment of the night.”
“It’s just the most fun I’ve ever had, that one,” she writes. “The chair choreography! The catty, vengeful, mischievous personas we get to try on and play with.”
4. The fan project that moved her ‘endlessly’
Reflecting on the evermore era of the show, Swift shares why a moment during “marjorie” was particularly emotional for her.
“Every night, the crowd would hold their phone flashlights up during ‘marjorie,’ a spontaneous act that turned into a nightly tradition,” she writes. “It moves me endlessly that this happens during a song I wrote about my late grandmother, an opera singer who always dreamed of singing in stadiums herself.”
5. Andrea, Scott and Austin Swift had a hand in creating for the show
Swift looks back on the “nostalgic magic” of writing Fearless when she was a teenager, and the behind-the-scenes of that era hits similarly close to home.
The bedazzled “13” acoustic guitar that she uses during that set was “bedazzled by my parents and brother,” she writes. Talk about having “the best day.”
6. It takes how long to set up the stage?
The key-shaped Eras Tour stage is enormous — and it takes four days to set the whole thing up, the book reveals through a series of photos.
The first day begins with an empty stadium at 5 a.m., then the bare bones of the back of the stage alongside more than a dozen trucks by 6 p.m. the next day. By noon on day three, the trucks are gone, the video screen set up and a whole bunch of stage parts are strewn across the stadium floor. But by 8 p.m. the next day, it’s all ready for showtime.
7. Swift’s favorite entrance of the show
The reputation era begins with “sounds of mysterious footsteps timing up perfectly with the ominous synth beats of ‘…ready for it?’” It’s Swift’s “favorite entrance of the night” — and we’re willing to bet the first night she stepped out in a gold bodysuit instead of the long-reigning red one was particularly fun.
The “one, two, three, let’s go, bitch” chant is another crowd tradition she says she always looks forward to.
8. Truly none of it was accidental
We know by now that Swift prefers to leave no detail left to chance. But even the choreography contained Easter eggs, it turns out. During the song “Mastermind,” Swift sings about her love for all things cryptic and Machiavellian.
“We recreate a chessboard and when I signal to the dancers to move to different spots on the board, they actually create the exact sequence for a checkmate.”
She couldn’t lose.
9. How ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ era got added to the show
TTPD is an album about the Eras Tour chapter of Swift’s life, making it all the more stunning that it then became an era on the Eras Tour. She recalls conceptualizing and rehearsing the new set in secret.
“I wanted it to be minimalist, white, stark and bold,” she writes. “There was nothing else in the show like it, and it was such an exciting challenge to try to improve upon a show I already loved. … It was ambitious as hell but we pulled it off, creating what I think is the most dramatic, cathartic, female-rage driven part of the night.”
Another fun TTPD tidbit: the mirrored platform that Swift flies around on during “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” and “Down Bad” was actually “operated by a crew member, who lays inside the platform and drives it from the inside,” she reveals.
10. Swift ‘always knew’ how the show should begin
The Eras Tour opens with a snippet of “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” before launching into the high-energy “Cruel Summer.” Swift shares her instinct told her that those two songs were the perfect way to start out the three-and-a-half hour show.
“I always knew the Lover era should open the show, and specifically the line ‘it’s been a long time coming,’ ” she wrote. “Because it has been!”
11. The surprise song mashups take ‘a lot of rehearsing’
The Eras Tour began with a single surprise song on acoustic guitar and another one on piano. But after nearly running out of songs she hadn’t played before, Swift decided to mix things up by performing mashups of multiple songs (we still haven’t gotten over that “Cassandra” x “Mad Woman” x “I Did Something Bad” mashup).
“I started mashing up 2 or 3 songs that go together thematically or rhythmically, so by the end of the tour I was playing between 4-5 mashed up songs a night in the acoustic set,” she writes. “It takes a lot of rehearsing to get the mashups just right, but when the crowd screams like crazy when I transition into a new song, it’s beyond worth the prep time involved.”
12. How Swift navigated under the stage
In the “Behind The Scenes” chapter of the book, fans get a glimpse at multiple never-before-seen BTS shots of Swift backstage (and under the stage).
At the end of the Red set, one photo shows that two stagehands are waiting for Swift to be lowered under the stage before they grab the guitar and microphone from her. She’s also shown crawling on top of the aforementioned giant air bag under the stage following the surprise song stage dive.
13. TS 12 is coming eventually
Not that we expected Swift to hang up her guitar after the Eras tour, but there’s certainly been speculation about how long she could keep up her relentless pace of creating.
Thankfully, she ended her introduction with a welcome phrase, immortalized in her own handwriting: “See you next era…”
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