It’s Taylor Swift’s party, and she’ll repeat surprise songs if she wants to!
“I want to be as creative as possible with the acoustic set moving forward and I don’t want to limit anything or say, ‘Oh, if I played this song, I can’t play it again,’” Swift, 34, said during her Sunday, February 18, Eras Tour concert in Melbourne, Australia. “So, from now on, I don’t want to take any paint colors out of the paintbox [or] tools out of the toolbox.”
She continued, “I want to be able to play songs more than once if I feel like it and I want to be able to make changes to songs. Does that sound OK?”
Swift kicked off her Eras Tour in March 2023, celebrating all of her past “eras” of music. The setlist features an acoustic section, where Swift rotates two other songs from her catalog.
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“That was really to challenge me to, like, really get to all the ones that I don’t just naturally gravitate towards,” she explained on Sunday, per social media footage. “I feel really proud about having done that.”
Sunday was Swift’s third concert in Melbourne, where she added a mash-up of “Come Back/ Be Here” and “Daylight,” as well as a separate rendition of “Teardrops on My Guitar” to the setlist. The 14-time Grammy winner further acknowledged that her surprise song choices were not just for the fans in the Melbourne Cricket Grounds stadium.
I’M SORRY TAYLOR BUT I’M NDJDJDJDKDK #MelbourneTSTheErasTour pic.twitter.com/MAgvwIF4Hf
— Angelica (Taylor’s Version) (@angelicakyria13) February 18, 2024
“We’re very lucky to have a lot of people who watch this on the internet and care about the shows if they’re not here,” Swift gushed to the attendees.
When Swift began her Eras shows, a selection of fans broadcasted her performance via social media for fans around the world. Swiftie-run social media accounts also shared updates regarding her surprise song selection at each gig.
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Swift previously explained why she wanted to switch up her setlist during a March 2023 concert in Texas.
“One thing we said about the Eras Tour: ‘You think you can just go online, you think you can just scroll and know the setlist?’” Swift said during her concert in Arlington. “You think you can just come prepared with little flashcards [that list the song order and my outfits]? Let it be said about the Eras Tour, we’re tricksy. That’s what we are [and] we enjoy a good, healthy setlist hijinks.”
That being said, Swift added a caveat for songs from her 2022 album, Midnights, so that she could sing them more frequently. For her 2024 shows, Swift reset all of her available options.
“I decided that in 2024, when we go back on tour, I’m just gonna open back up all the songs for surprise songs,” Swift said during her Brazil concert in November 2023. “I feel like, for one year, we’ve really gotten through a lot of songs, so I’m just gonna make all the songs fair game when we go back on tour. There’s some songs that I still really, really wanna play, so I’m gonna try and get through all of them.”
Swift will still be on the road when her next album, The Tortured Poets Department, drops in April, but it is currently unknown if she will add TTPD songs to the setlist or feature them in the acoustic set.
