Why Taylor Swift’s Eras Road Trip Feels Like the Career-Capping Beatles Tour That Never Happened
11.08.2023 - 01:41
/ variety.com
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic What, in pop music history, is anyone to compare Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour to? If you’re at all flummoxed by that question, join the club, populated by scores of journalists and commentators who’ve tried and failed to find reasonable parallels. “I promise that you’ll never find another like me,” Swift sang a few years ago, and although she meant that as a sing-along, not a superstar’s statement of purpose, truer words really never were spoken On a pure business level, everyone can agree that it’s unprecedented.
Pollstar reported recently that, by estimates, the Eras Tour will be the first tour to cross the billion-dollar mark in grosses (Elton John’s multi-year farewell tour holds the current record, with $939 million), and that this $1B milestone will likely be reached some time in March, when she is over in Asia. Mind you, if this projection proves true, she’ll have achieved it seven months before the tour actually ends in Toronto in November of 2024, if that Canadian stop does even represent the actual wrap-up of her time on the road.
No one needs to waste a moment wondering if anyone has ever matched her commercial draw, then. When was the last time an artist sold out six nights at a stadium in Los Angeles, with such a demand for resale tickets that she easily could have booked six more, still without sating demand? The world hasn’t seen that, and won’t, again, in any foreseeable future.
Cutural impact is a little harder to make specific superlative claims for. Even without wanting to be mean about it, some who remain resistant to Swift’s charms would like to see her touring success as part of an ever-repeatable series of cyclical phenomenon.