Taylor Swift wrapped up her UK leg of her Eras tour last night by bringing on guests Florence Welch and her longstanding co-writer and producer Jack Antonoff at the last of her Wembley shows.
Welch came on to duet on Florida!!!, a collab from the recent Tortured Poets Department album – the first time the track has been performed on the tour – and then introduced Antonoff to the crowd, saying: “I get to make music with one of my best friends in the world” before they played Death By A Thousand Cuts and Getaway Car.
Taylor Swift and Florence Welch performed "Florida!!!" live for the first time during Swift's concert at Wembley Stadium in London this evening pic.twitter.com/Vhkl1GIe6nAugust 20, 2024
They weren’t the only guests Swift has pulled out on her recent run of Wembley shows. Last week she brought on Ed Sheeran to duet on Everything Has Changed from Swift’s 2012 Red album, End Game and his own Thinking Out Loud.
📹| Taylor Swift y Jack Antonoff recrearon la icónica creación del puente de la canción ‘Getaway Car’. #LondonTSTheErasTour pic.twitter.com/9DXO9UVTW1August 20, 2024
Thankfully the second batch of Wembley dates passed off without incident. Swift’s three shows in Vienna had had to be cancelled following a foiled terrorist plot. It meant that stage times had to tweaked, with the headliner coming on at the significantly earlier time of 7pm. Wembley also tried to dissuade ticket-less fans from congregating outside the venue to experience the concert aurally, a practice that has quickly become known as ‘Tay-gating’.
It brings to a close the UK leg of the record-breaking tour, which has criss-crossed Europe all summer. In the UK she’s played to nearly 1.2 million people and generated an estimated (and much needed) £1 billion to the UK economy. She’s broken Michael Jackson’s record of the number of shows any solo artist has performed at Wembley on one tour.
Her eight-night stand at the iconic North London venue equals Take That’s similar-length residency on their 2011 Progress tour. Meanwhile, geophysicists recorded seismic waves generated by fans dancing at the Edinburgh date literally made the earth move, shifting the ground move by some 23.4 nanometres.
Swift will now have a much-needed break before the Eras tour returns to North America for one final run of dates that will finish in Vancouver in December. It’s estimated that by then Eras will have generated more than $2 billion in ticket revenue alone. That will make it the most lucrative tour in music history, surpassing Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which of course ran for far longer, partly due to the interruption of Covid.
Then the only question will be: how on Earth can she top that?
