🫶 A Swiftie's Guide to The Eras Tour

It's been a long time coming...

Feb 07, 2024

Dear Reader,

The Eras Tour in 2024 has officially kicked off! Night 1 in Tokyo happened earlier today - quite bright and early actually, the show began at 4am for me 😅 How about you? Whether you’re seeing a show in person this year, watching over livestream, or catching highlights later, here is my Eras Tour Guide to make sure you are ready for it!

In this Guide you’ll find:

Attending The Eras Tour
- Top Tips for Going to The Eras Tour
- What to Pack in Your Eras Tour Bag
- Eras Tour Chants, Claps + Customs
Watching Over Livestream
Timings and Time Zones
The Current Setlist
Surprise Songs
- Tracking Surprise Songs
- Blank Surprise Song Tracker
A Final Bonus

Attending The Eras Tour

If you’re going to The Eras Tour this year, I am SO excited for you! You’re going to have The Best Day 🤩 Here’s some tips to help you get the most out of your experience.

Top Tips For Going to The Eras Tour

I put together this post with 13 Top Tips for going to the Eras Tour. I also shared these tips in a YouTube video, with extra background and info.

If you’re hoping to take some high-quality videos at your Eras Tour show, I also made a YouTube video with my tips for filming the Eras Tour. My main tip is to mix up the way you’re capturing content: Variety is good!

What to Pack in Your Eras Tour Bag

What you pack in your Eras Tour bag can make a big difference. I’ll list everything I packed in mine below, and link to the items my sister and I used. I hope it can help give you some ideas of what to pack in your own bag! Make sure to check your stadium’s regulations for what kind of bag (clear) and size of bag they allow, plus stipulations on what can be in it - every stadium is different.

Clear Stadium Approved Bag
Wallet-sized purse
Cute printed ticket
Portable phone charger/battery pack
Ear plugs
Face masks
A “Blank Space” pen
Snacks (ours had to be wrapped in clingfilm)
Rain ponchos (that we didn’t end up needing!)
Portable popsocket phone stand
An empty ziplock bag, just in case

I made a YouTube video with more info on each item, plus some items I didn’t bring but brought back with me - here’s the link if you fancy watching: Unpack My Eras Tour Bag With Me.

Eras Tour Chants, Claps + Customs

There’s a lot of rituals that Swifties do throughout the Eras Tour show. You definitely don’t have to take part in all of them, but they can be super fun. These are the main ones I know about:

Fearless: After the bridge, place your hands in a heart shape above your head.
You Belong With Me claps: Oh, I remember you driving to my house, In the middle of the night, I'm the one who makes you laugh, When you know you're 'bout to cry *clap clap*
Marjorie: Turn on your phone's flashlight and hold it up, swaying it back and forth.
Delicate: We can't make any promises, Now can we, babe? But you can make me a drink Chant “1, 2, 3, Let’s go b*tch!”
Bad Blood: Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes, You say sorry just for show, If you live like that, you live with ghosts Chant “You forgive, you forget, but you never let it go.”
Bad Blood: Yell before the first chorus, “She's fine! She wasn't doing anything…Hey…stop!…Hey stop!”
Anti-Hero: Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism, Like some kind of congressman? Chant “Taylor, you’ll be fine.”
Bejeweled: And by the way Chant “Where are you going, Taylor?” I'm going out tonight
Karma: You could shout, “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs”
Making and giving out friendship bracelets: This isn’t a chant or a clap, but a super fun custom that came from the You’re On Your Own Kid lyrics, “So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it.”

Did I miss any?!

Watching Over Livestream

If like me, you’ll be watching Eras Tour shows over livestream, I’ve compiled my top tips for tuning into livestreams on this post. Here’s a quick summary:

My go-to livestream is @tessdear on TikTok/@tessbohne on Instagram
@tstourtips also shares the expected livestreams on tour day, to give you some more options!
Otherwise, I just type “eras tour” into the search bar, toggle to the LIVE section (on TikTok), and look for current Lives going on.
Stadiums can have really bad service, so don’t worry if your live cuts out! Just wait for the streamer to get it back (Tess is so good!), or switch to another one.

Timings and Time Zones

These are the timings for Tokyo’s shows on Feb 7-10th in JST (Japanese Standard Time):

6pm - Show Starts, Taylor is on!
7pm (+1 hour) - Reputation Era
8:30pm (+2.5 hours) - Surprise Songs
9:15pm (+ 3.25 hours) - Show Ends

For Australia’s upcoming shows, Frontier recently released information saying that the show is due to start at 6:20pm. Sabrina Carpenter will be the opening act, and so if timings are similar to the Latin America shows (where Sabrina also opened), I’m guessing Taylor will go on around 8pm. I’ll create a new time zone chart for Australia’s shows, so look out for that on my Instagram feed.

Speaking of, here’s the Eras Tour Time Zone Chart I created for Tokyo! It includes all 38 time zones. Time zones are tricky, and there’s so many of them, so I did my best 😅 I’m also adding countdowns to my Instagram Stories for the start of the show and the surprise songs, if you want to double check there on tour days.

The Current Setlist

The show this morning in Tokyo went as expected, following the same setlist we know and love. I organized all of the songs by Era to make an Eras Tour Setlist poster. Here’s a link to the Instagram post.

I also put together a playlist of the current setlist. If you want to prep for your own Eras Tour show, and/or just want to rock out to the Eras Tour setlist whenever, give it a listen! Here’s the playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube, as well as clean versions on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.

Surprise Songs

Of course we love the setlist that we get to hear every show. But there’s something so exciting and special about the acoustic set (I’m picturing Taylor Swift announcing, Welcome to the Acoustic Set!). Predicting and tracking surprise songs has become one of my fav parts of the Eras Tour experience.

Last year Taylor Swift shared some surprise song rules, that she often (but not always) follows in her surprise song selections. These include:

Each song can be performed once.
Exception: If Taylor messes up while performing the song, she can sing it again.
Exception: If the song is from her Midnights album, she can sing it multiple times - because Midnights is (for now!) her latest studio album.

There were a few times she didn’t quite stick to those rules. But for the most part she did, and she really got through a wide range of her discography.

In her final show of 2023, Taylor said she was resetting the board and starting with a clean slate in 2024! So it sounds like she may stick to the same rules? So now every song is back up for grabs.

Tracking Surprise Songs

Last year I started designing posts to show the surprise songs for each night of the tour. For the background I blend two colors together, one for the era of each song (i.e. last night’s surprise songs were from Midnights and Red, so the background blends from dark blue to red). I also love thinking of little graphics to add that go with each song. Here’s a post with all the 2023 surprise song posts.

I’m keeping it up in 2024! Here’s the post for Tokyo Night 1’s surprise songs. And yes, I am still freaking out over the fact that Taylor Swift sang Dear Reader!! 🥹😭

To easily keep track of which songs have been sung, I also created a Surprise Song tracker. For that, I added every Taylor Swift song onto their respective Eras Tour square. Every time Taylor sings a song, I add a heart (of the appropriate Era color) next to the song. If she repeats a song, I just add extra hearts. This is what my Surprise Song Tracker looked like at the end of 2023.

Yesterday I reset the board, to start off new in 2024! The newly updated board after Tokyo N1 is the second photo in my Tokyo N1 Surprise Song post.

Blank Surprise Song Tracker

I got a request to make a blank version of my Surprise Song Tracker as well, so that you could add to it yourself! So I made it into two templates on Canva - one instagram post size, and one 8.5x11, if you’d like to print it out. If you do use it and share it, tag me @bitesbybekah! I’d love to see it 🫶

(I’ve never done this before, so please let me know if the links/templates don’t work!)

A Final Bonus

Since Dr. Taylor Alison Swift decided to kick off the Eras Tour surprise songs with the namesake of this very newsletter, Dear Reader, here’s a full length video of the performance (from @rikachuuu on TikTok) - just in case you missed it 💙

Anyways, I hope you find this Eras Tour Guide helpful! Let me know if you have any questions and/or if I missed anything. I’ll answer any questions in the comments, and include requests in a future updated version of this post. As always, I’ll be sharing frequent updates on all things Eras Tour over on my Instagram - hope to see you there. In the meantime…

You know I adore you 💕,

Bekah

🎶 Can I Ask You a Question? 🎶

✈️ Will you go to any Eras Tour shows in person this year?
📢 Which Eras Tour chant is your fav? Did I miss any?!
🎶 What is your dream surprise song combo?
💌 If you have any questions and/or requests for what you’d like to see in future Dear Reader newsletters, let me know! Leave a comment, and/or shoot me an email.

Dear Reader