Taylor Swift's Eras Tour leaves US after months of making history and causing chaos
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Taylor Swift's Eras Tour in the U.S. will come to an end Wednesday as Swift closes out her 20-city odyssey in Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium.
Taylor is preparing to embark on the international leg of her tour in just a few weeks, but she'll return to North America in the fall of 2024, having announced last week she'll be back to hit Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Toronto.
Overall, it has not been a cruel summer for Swift or her staff.
The Eras Tour generated millions of dollars in revenue and has been credited with boosting the country's economy. For example, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve office, Swift is personally responsible for a spike in tourism, which boosted hotel revenues for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began.
TICKETMASTER APOLOGIZES TO TAYLOR SWIFT, FANS OVER SALES DISASTER
Before taking the show worldwide, Swift gave her entire staff millions of dollars in bonuses, Fox News Digital confirmed.
Sources confirmed to People magazine that Swift's gifts totaled $55 million and were extended to all members of her crew, including technicians, riggers, caterers and dancers.
Here's a look at some headline-making moments from Swift's Eras Tour.
Ticketmaster snafu
Before the tour even began, Ticketmaster, which launched the presale of The Eras Tour tickets, could not accommodate the unprecedented demand. Millions of loyal fans waited in hours-long queues over a span of two days only to be shut out.
Ticketmaster apologized and admitted bot attacks also contributed to the fiasco.
Despite the disastrous outcome and public scrutiny, Ticketmaster revealed "a new sales record was set" by The Eras Tour.
Swift expressed her disappointment for the disruption.
"It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans," she wrote on social media. "We've been doing this for decades together and over the years, I've brought so many elements of my career in house. I've done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans' experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do.
"It's really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse. There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I'm trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward.
"I'm not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really p---es me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them. And to those who didn't get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs," she added. "Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means."
Security guard outburst
Taylor Swift performs onstage during Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour at Levi's Stadium on July 28, 2023 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management )
Bad blood was percolating during one of Swift's shows earlier this spring.
Performing her second of three shows at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Swift's lively concert was interrupted by a disturbance off-stage. While performing her hit song "Bad Blood," Swift could be heard yelling, "She's fine. She wasn't doing anything!"
As the song builds to the chorus, Swift grows more agitated, yelling, "Hey! Stop!"
It turns out, Swift was yelling at a security guard.
Fox News Digital spoke to a fan at the concert, who detailed the confusion over the situation.
"As Swifties, we were confused whether it was part of the song or not because of the nature of the song," she explained of the hit track off Swift's 1989 album. "But we knew something was off, especially because Taylor doesn't speak to her fans that way."
In a video shared to her friend's TikTok account, Maryland resident Kelly Kelly revealed she was the fan Swift was protecting.
"Basically, the guard had been harassing our group all night. … He just kept telling us not to touch the rail, and like every time we did anything, he was like on top of us," she began.
"We're dancing, we're having fun and he didn't like it. Taylor noticed that I was having fun and that he didn't like it, and she didn't like it. And then he basically like got escorted out, and then they offered us free tickets for tonight."
Kelly also spoke to "Good Morning America" about the incident, explaining she and her friends had front row seats at the concert.
"He kept telling me to stop. He kept telling me to like calm down and not to dance," she recalled. "And I guess she [Swift] noticed, and she yelled at him and told him to leave me alone and that I wasn't doing anything wrong."
Onstage surprises
Swift is famous for writing about her previous relationships, but she shocked fans in July when she brought out ex-boyfriend Taylor Lautner during one of her Kansas City performances. Their relationship, which inspired the song "Back to December" off Swift's album, "Speak Now," was re-released this summer.
Swift chose to debut a music video for one of her "vault tracks" from "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)," which co-stars Lautner. He emerged on stage and shared a moment with Swift.
(L-R) Presley Cash, Taylor Swift, Joey King and Taylor Lautner speak onstage for night one of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on July 07, 2023 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by John Shearer/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS
Some onstage surprises came as a shock for not only the audience, but Swift too.
While performing in Chicago, Swift unexpectedly swallowed a bug, much to the audience's amusement.
Turning away from the crowd to cough, Swift said, "I swallowed a bug, I'm so sorry.
"It's totally fine," she reassured everyone, "It's just stupid.
"Oh delicious. Oh god. Is there any chance none of you saw that?" she joked.
In May, during a show in Foxborough, Massachusetts, while sitting down at her piano to perform one of her surprise songs, Swift's piano began to make noises, and she denied touching the keys.
"I didn't play that, so that means that," Swift said, before the seemingly possessed piano struck again. Swift had been playing in torrential downpours the previous evening in Massachusetts, so she suggested that may be the reason it began again.
"This has clearly broken my keyboard," she said. "Because it was literally underwater. I didn't know how any of the instruments were working last night. So this is broken. I'm just going to get the guitar, it's going to be fine."
Wild weather
Taylor Swift performs during The Eras Tour at Gillette Stadium on May 20, 2023 in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Photo by TAS Rights Management/Getty Images)
During the second show of her three-night stint in Massachusetts, Swift and her fans were subjected to a downpour.
"This is the rainiest rain show that ever rain-showed. Ever, ever, ever. Oh my god," Swift told the audience.
While making her two-night stop in Seattle, Swift's fans actually caused seismic activity, similar to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake, Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a Western Washington University seismologist and geology professor, explained.
Additional seismologists told The New York Times that, in conjunction with all the dancing and jumping from fans, the sound from the concert likely contributed to activity.
Celebrity fans
Swift's concert was so popular, it seemed like nearly all of Hollywood made an appearance at one of her 53 shows.
While playing MetLife Stadium in New Jersey at the end of May, musicians, including Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes, actors Paul Rudd and Miles Teller and even NFL star Aaron Rodgers all went viral for their appearances at the show, sending fans into a tizzy.
In New Jersey, Swift also brought out rapper Ice Spice to perform the remix to "Karma."
Ice Spice and Taylor Swift perform onstage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at MetLife Stadium on May 27, 2023 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
Swift's close friends Selena Gomez and model Gigi Hadid have also been spotted at smaller venues throughout the tour, along with stars like Jennifer Garner, Flavor Flav, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.
On the first night, while skipping down the stage and singing her song "22," Swift completed a ritual she does at all of her shows by presenting a young fan with her black top hat at the end of the platform before concluding the number.
The late Kobe Bryant's young daughter Bianka, 6, got to experience something out of her own wildest dreams when Swift chose her as the recipient.
Swift took off her signature black hat and kneeled down to give the little girl a hug. She and Bianka exchanged a few words before Swift put the hat on her head.
Swift's next stop is in Mexico Aug. 24.