If you are anything like me, you are constantly bombarded with content from Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Seriously, it’s to the point where it is incessant. I opened TikTok the other day and counted five SwiftToks in a row, and I shamelessly consumed all of them.
But with that in mind, it is more and more apparent that the tour is full of surprises, so I feel like I need to be on constant watch. The surprise songs alone are enough to keep me hooked — I check them every night like clockwork. Every time she plays a song I enjoy before my tour date, I die a little inside.
BUT, even more than these surprise songs are the little surprises she throws into the show itself. Earlier in the tour, she replaced the song “Invisible String” with “The 1” with no notice, and once Phoebe Bridgers joined the tour as an opener, she added the song “Nothing New” to the permanent setlist.
And as of last week, the biggest surprise thus far has occurred: She announced Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is coming in July. This leads me down my latest conspiracy theory rabbit hole that she will change the permanent setlist again to include more songs from the Speak Now era.
The current setlist only contains one song from Speak Now, “Enchanted.” The performance is beautiful and well thought out, but it is leaving the Speak Now girlies dying for more songs. And from a business perspective, it makes total sense to not include songs from Speak Now until its release. Why would she want to draw more attention to an album that she is trying to replace with her own version? Including these songs in the setlist right now would only build up their popularity and cause her to lose profit from them.
However, once Speak Now TV is released, then it changes the landscape completely. She will have her own versions out for people to listen to, so it would do more help than harm to include these songs in the permanent setlist.
The question that remains now is if she does add songs from Speak Now to the setlist, which ones will they be? She has already played a few songs from the album as surprise songs such as “Mine,” “Sparks Fly” and the titular track “Speak Now,” but who is to say she won’t play them again for the sake of promoting the album? Or, she may take a different route and add some songs that haven’t been played yet, such as “Haunted” or “Better Than Revenge.” Regardless, I think I would absolutely lose my mind if she did this, and if she could make this change before her Santa Clara show, I would incredibly appreciate it.
Now, obviously, this is all speculation and is coming from someone who is a little too invested in Taylor Swift, but it is interesting to think about. With Taylor’s reach and the size of these shows, she is changing the game of the concert experience, leaving her fans constantly hooked and glued to tour updates. So for our sake, Taylor, please keep the surprises coming.