After a two-month hiatus, Taylor Swift returned to the stage today, embarking on the European leg of the Eras Tour. Swift performed the first of four nights in Paris, about three weeks after she released her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Soon after the album’s release, fans were convinced Swift would add The Tortured Poets Department to the Eras Tour, based on the star’s social media activity. On April 25, Swift posted a YouTube Short video of her rehearsing for the tour, in which the album’s opening song “Fortnight” could be heard. The caption read: “A fortnight til Paris.”
In an interview with Radio France, Swift’s French tour promoter said she would be including new songs from the album on the next leg of the Eras Tour. “We are going to discover a slightly modified show since she has released a new album,” he said.
As the show kicked off in Paris on Thursday evening, all signs pointed to The Tortured Poets Department‘s inclusion on the setlist. Fans noted that it was included in the tour intro:
Taylor Swift makes changes to the Eras Tour set in Paris
Swift added The Tortured Poets Department to the Eras Tour intro and reordered the setlist on the first night in Paris. The “Lover” portion of the show previously ended with the song “The Archer,” but on Thursday, Swift skipped it, going from “Lover” to “Fearless.” After the “Fearless” era, Swift went right into the “Red” era instead of “Evermore,” and followed that up with songs from Speak Now and Reputation. Fans noted that Swift skipped performing “Long Live” from Speak Now, which she added to the setlist last July.
Other changes followed when Swift went into the “Folklore” era. While the “Evermore” and “Folklore” eras typically occurred at different parts of the show, in Paris, Swift announced she was combining them, since they are “sister albums.”
“On the Eras Tour, we have now reunited the sisters, combined them into one chapter. You can call it “Folkmore,” you can call it “Everlore,” she said, before performing “Champagne Problems” (from Evermore) followed by “August” (from Folklore).
According to Pollstar, in December 2023, the Eras Tour became the highest-grossing tour of all time and the first-ever tour to gross over $1 billion.
Read More: All the Song Mashups Taylor Swift Has Played During the Eras Tour
How The Tortured Poets Department is included in the Eras Tour
Swift introduced the “Tortured Poets” section of the Eras Tour after a performance of “Bad Blood,” with the set turning into an image of a long road. She opened the new era with a performance of “But Daddy I Love Him.”
The second song in the “Tortured Poets” era was a shortened version of “So High School,” followed by a performance of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
Swift then sang “Down Bad,” as an image of a UFO flew above her, before performing the album’s opening track, “Fortnight.” The next song from Tortured Poets was “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”
Then, Swift changed into a gold jacket, while a jazzy tune played, before singing “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”
But the “Tortured Poets” era wasn’t over. After “Paris,” Swift performed the melancholy “loml,” track 12 fromthe new album, before diving in to the “Midnights” section of the show with “Lavender Haze.”
The Tortured Poets Department made history as the most streamed album in a single day, accumulating over 300 million streams—beating out the previous record holder: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. It also became the fastest album to amass over one billion streams in just five days, making it the most streamed album in a week with over 799 million streams. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 2.61 million equivalent album units (this includes vinyls, CDs, cassettes, and digital album downloads). Swift celebrated the album’s success with a post to Instagram sharing photos of her and her collaborators making the project.
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The caption reads, “2.6 million ARE YOU ACTUALLY SERIOUS?? Thank you for listening, streaming, and welcoming Tortured Poets into your life. Feeling completely overwhelmed,” she writes. “I was already so fired up to get back to the tour but you doing THIS?? May 9th can’t come soon enough.”