Will we ever see another pop spectacle as epic as Taylor Swift ’s Eras tour? As the singer prepares to bring her z eitgeist-defining show to Dublin for three nights at the Aviva Stadium , she has already sold an estimated six million Eras tickets, generating a blockbusting $1 billion box office so far. With six months – and likely another $1 billion – yet to run, Eras is by some distance the highest-grossing concert tour of all time. It has also literally caused the earth to move: the British Geological Survey revealed that stomping by Swifties at one of her gigs in Edinburgh this month registered on its seismic-activity detectors .
How far Swift has travelled since June 2006, when, aged just 16, she released her debut single, Tim McGraw. Written about a high-school sweetheart – they both loved the country singer – it got to number 40 in the United States, where it was greeted as the work of a fresh voice in country music. Little could anyone have suspected that it also represented the first baby steps by an artist soon to bestride 21st-century pop.
[ Taylor Swift and the Eras Tour at the Aviva Stadium, Dublin: all you need to know, from setlist to stage times and more ] In the 18 years since then the singer has released 11 albums that have navigated country, pop, folk and rock while at all times sounding quintessentially Taylor Swift. (There are also four Taylor’s Versions re-recordings of earlier LPs, a project she embarked on after falling out with her first re.
