The first time I heard Taylor Swift play “Fearless” was 16 years ago, at her first UK concert at King’s College London Student Union. I was 17, it was the first time my friends and I had travelled to London without an adult, the first time we’d met any other fans, the first time the handful of songs we so treasured would escape our teenage bedrooms and be shared with other people. None of the 250 of us there were convinced it would really be her, until she skipped out onto the tiny stage in a sparkly black dress, black cowboy boots and glittery guitar.
“Fearless”, from the album to be released two months later that would change her life for ever, was her last song of the night and we left with it ringing in our ears and beating in our hearts, shaking until 4am on the National Express coach home. At the opening night of the UK leg of the Eras tour at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield stadium, I tried to sing along to “Fearless” but sobbed instead. Everything has changed, but there was the same Swift, same sparkly dress, black cowboy boots and glittery guitar, transporting me and every other fan there with her for the last 18 years to every shade of hope, wonder, innocence and pain of our adolescence and letting us embrace it all.
The most powerful thing about the Eras Tour is not the billions of dollars, the boosts to national economies, the ticketing frenzy, the TikTok sensation, but in how it allows a generation to experience real nostalgia for the first time. Seeing.