Gallery • 7 Photos

Catherine Palmer

Taylor Swift performing the "Reputation" era.

Famed musician Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has taken the music industry by storm, selling out all across the country. The tour kicked off in Glendale, AZ, on Mar. 17, 2023, and it will end with a five-show stay in Inglewood, CA, on Aug. 9, 2023. All over the school, students and teachers alike are lining up to get their tickets.

The scramble for tickets has been causing people to undergo extreme measures to acquire them. While some people choose to go through Ticketmaster – which has been under blast for not providing adequate services when it crashed instantaneously upon Swift’s release of the presale – others choose to get tickets from other people through reselling. Mia Zell (7), however, stands out. She, instead of getting tickets for one of the nights that Swift performed in Texas, chose to go to Glendale, AZ, on the second night of the Eras Tour and watch Swift perform there.

“We didn’t get them [tickets] at, like, whenever they first were sold. We got them from a reseller, and they were actually pretty cheap. We were already in Colorado for spring break, and then we just took a flight to Arizona. There were a lot of people there that, like, I could tell they were going to see Taylor Swift,” Zell said. “The hotels there, they were really trashy, and they were, like, $800.”

An example of another person who got tickets through reselling is Samantha McLellan (8).

“We got into the waiting list, and then when it was our turn, we put the tickets in. Then the first time, it didn’t work and Ticketmaster crashed. Second time, we put in all the card information, everything… it crashed again. And then, we never got tickets. Two months before the show, my mom’s friend was reselling the tickets… so then, we got the tickets to the show,” McLellan said.

On the other hand, some people chose to get tickets through Ticketmaster. When Taylor Swift first released the pre-sale for her tour on Nov. 15, 2022, Ticketmaster crashed immediately due to a large influx of people trying to get tickets right away. However, despite the crash, Taylor Swift sold over 2.4 million tickets on the day of the presale, setting a record for the most concert tickets sold by an artist in a single day.

“It was really long because I’m going with a bunch of my friends and one of their moms bought the tickets. We just Venmoed her. I know she waited a really long time. Ticketmaster was always bugging and freezing,” Fleur Bullot (8) said.

The Eras Tour has been described by Swift as a “journey through all my musical eras,” intended to showcase the four most recent studio albums that she wasn’t able to tour due to COVID-19. The show lasts for over three hours and consists of performances of 44 songs, divided into 10 acts. Bullot plans to attend Swift’s performance at one of Houston’s shows at the end of April.

“I’m very excited for ‘Ready For It.’ I feel like the beat’s gonna be really fun, and just dancing and singing,” Bullot said. “I’ve been listening to her [Swift] since I was, like, really young. I don’t know – I haven’t been, like, a huge, crazy fan, but I’ve always really liked her music.”

Another exciting part of the tour that has gotten Swifties excited are the two promised surprise songs per tour, that change for every location. An example of this is on Mar. 18, 2023, in Glendale, AZ, which was the second night of the tour. Swift’s two surprise songs were “This Is Me Trying” and “State of Grace.”

“The best part of the Eras Tour, I would say, was the suspense of hearing what the surprise song would be. The surprise song was ‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’ and then ‘Ours’ from ‘Speak Now,’” McLellan said. “I would say the bridge [of ‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’] is my favorite. Something about Taylor is that her lyrics and stuff… they’re really, like, relatable. They’re not relatable just to her, but they’re not too vague either. They’re really simple but they’re so relatable, and it’s like, she’s such a good lyrical genius.”

Swift also tried her hardest to make the tour engaging, frequently interacting with the audience and displaying improved musicianship, vocal quality, charisma, versatility, and most of all – stamina.

“She gave hints for the songs, and like, I got the hint so I knew what was next. Like, for example, she was like ‘you guys make me feel so powerful’ and she was like, going on like that for five minutes. Finally, she said ‘what I’m tryna to say is, you guys make me feel like the man,’ and there’s a song called “‘The Man,’” Zell said.

The Eras Tour is running from Mar. 17, 2023 in Glendale, AZ, to Aug. 9, 2023 in Inglewood, CA, and will be hitting 20 different cities.