Getting tickets
On Tuesday last week, I wrote a piece for Guardian Australia about missing out on tickets to the Eras tour. My Swiftie daughter had introduced me to Taylor Swift and we bonded together over her music and at her concerts. 1989 in particular – a groundbreaking record for Swift – had a pivotal role in our lives: it was released just before I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and soundtracked that moment in my family’s life. As I recovered from major surgery, her song Out of the Woods was on repeat.
Reliving those memories with my daughter as we lined up online made missing out all worthwhile. Until something happened that was even better: a member of Taylor Swift’s team read the piece, reached out to my editors and gifted us two tickets to the Sunday night concert in Sydney. “Oh my GOD!!! I cannot believe this is happening,” I wrote in an email, ecstatic. “How is this even happening!!!” We packed our bags to make the long drive to Sydney from Bendigo for the show. It felt unreal – such a generous gift – and the show was incredible. It was so heartening to see all the parents with their young daughters; the mums and dads wearing glitter, getting into the spirit. There was so much love in the stadium that night, not just for Taylor, but also for each other. – Bridget Robertson
The hype before the show
For me, it was all the moments surrounding the concert. Overhearing Irish backpackers talking about how amazing all the Taylor Swift Australia hype is while floating in the ocean near them. Or my sister sending me pictures from her night shifts at the hospital where nurses had made her friendship bracelets. The little girls dressed in sparkles and cowboy hats with 13 written on their hands, running around excitedly outside Accor Stadium, just like I did when I was their age attending my first Swift concert. But oh how everything has changed since then. The Eras tour made the younger me – a diehard Swiftie – feel seen and finally embraced. And that was before the concert even started … – Claire Keenan
Getting ready with friends
A couple of hours before the show, all my friends were crammed into my tiny flat preparing for a three-and-a-half-hour marathon. Two were furiously bejewelling each other’s hair, one was carefully glitter-ifying the 13 he wrote on his hands, while another explained how comfortable her custom-made cowboy boots were. Swift soundtracked all of this. No matter how hard it is to clean up glitter, it was well worth the joy. – Sanjana Jose
Kameron Saunders
Swift isn’t the only star on her stage – her dancer Kameron Saunders was my favourite part of this Australian tour. For each night’s performance of We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Saunders delivered a different Australianism in place of the iconic “like, ever”. On the first night I attended, he said “Yeah nah”, with “Naur” and “Nah mate” on following nights. Fans rallied on TikTok for Saunders to quote The Castle – and on Sydney’s second night (which I also attended), the scream couldn’t have been louder for his perfectly delivered “Tell him he’s dreamin’!” – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
August
A three-hour extravaganza entails some difficult questions: when to hydrate? When to take a bathroom break? What to eat to ensure you do not faint into a sea of 80,000 neighbours? These are tough decisions, but please learn from my mistakes and do not, in your haste, ingest a box of stadium calamari. You will be doubled over in pain for the first 120 minutes.
Luckily, 120 minutes is also the time it takes for Taylor Swift to reach the best song in her oeuvre: the lovelorn ballad August (no follow-up questions please). In certain corners, the phrase “salt air” is sufficient to induce an instant frenzy; hearing it caterwauled at ear-splitting decibels on Sunday’s show in Sydney warded away the last of the stomachache like an ancient ritual. The clouds parted; a bird flapped overhead; my skin cleared. – Michael Sun
Running into the riggers
Look, I’m not saying that Taylor Swift fans all look the same, but if you are at one of her shows and amid a sea of glitter you see a row of grizzled blokes in steel-cap boots standing together watching, you’re going to go over and ask who they are. “Are you roadies?” I asked one of these men at her first Melbourne show.
“We’re the riggers!” he replied.
It explained the proud stepdad energy they were all giving off. Given these guys must have set up thousands of stages and watched thousands of shows in their time, I needed to know: was the Taylor Swift spectacle actually as impressive as it seemed to me? “It is fucking amazing mate,” he said. I don’t think Swift could get a better endorsement than that. – Sian Cain
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