Taylor Swift
Aviva Stadium, Dublin
★★★★★
Taylor Swift gets straight to the point as her Eras tour finally reaches Dublin. “It’s been a long time coming,” she sings, having materialised amid a blur of peacock-bright dancers, wearing a rainbow jumpsuit that sparkles in the soft evening light. How right she is: Swiftmania has hurtled around the world since the singer began her blockbusting greatest hits show in Arizona last year and now it at last reaches the Aviva Stadium, making landfall in a roiling wave of tears and cheers.
With chalky clouds bunched above Dublin, Swift appears on a glittering walkway just after 7.15pm, negotiating her autumnal ballad Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince. The song is one of her darker numbers but at the Aviva it is received as a ray of light by the 50,000 or so lucky enough to obtain tickets for the first of three sold-dates at the venue (where celebs in attendance include a Graham Norton, Brian O’Driscoll and Amy Huberman and a back-from-abroad Ryan Tubridy).
[ In pictures: Taylor Swift’s exhilarating Eras tour concert in DublinOpens in new window ]
Not since the glory days of Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna has a pop star so completely owned their moment as Swift has in 2024. As she begins her exhilarating and riveting three hour-plus concert in Dublin 4, the sense of occasion is almost too huge to quantify. In the city centre, Swift fans have made their presence felt since morning, while the 3Arena, which Swift headlined in 2015, has been converted into a huge merchandise stall, where Swifties have patiently queued for T-shirts and tote bags.
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Swift and Ireland have some history. She first played Dublin in March 2011 on the Speak Now tour, clocking in with a piffling 13 tunes (compared with the 45 or so she negotiates at the Aviva) while in 2021 she is believed to have lived for a number of months in a converted a 200-year-old coach-house near Ranelagh in Dublin. She also participated in the sacred Irish ritual of entering a GAA club lotto draw when she spent Christmas 2018 at Glin Castle in Limerick.
Wicklow receives top billing in the Swiftie Irish power rankings however having been name checked in Sweet Nothing from 2022′s Midnights. She’ll come around to that album later in the night – but the focus at the start of the performance, literally divided into the different “eras” of her career, is her 2019 LP, Lover.
“Oh hi,” she says before diving into Cruel Summer, her dreamy epic that shines amid the gathering gloom. Then it’s headlong into her 17 years as a songwriter, as she moves from the high-school angst of You Belong With Me and Love Story, from Fearless, to her masterpiece Red and the jilted fury on I Knew You Were Trouble and All Too Well – her magisterial lament which she stretches out to a seismic 10 minutes .
“You know this but nobody does it like you,” Swift tells the Dublin crowd early in the evening, perhaps buttered up by the flowers U2 have sent to her hotel. “I’m already seeing people in the audience who should be winning awards for their performances. Up on stage we’re all going, ‘this is going to be a fun night’. Backstage I could tell you guys were already going insane.”
The compliments have just begun. She scratches us under the chin all over again when dipping into her folk-infused pandemic long players, Folklore and Evermore.
“Irish people out are such good storytellers, the folklore from Ireland is unmatched ... It may be 50 per cent you just have the best accents,” Swift says before uncorking one of the highlights of the set – a thunderously hushed Champagne Problems.
Darkness has descended when she arrives at her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department. A break-up record written in the aftermath of her split from long-term boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, Swift has dubbed this portion of the evening “Female Rage: The Musical” – though the mood on Down Bad and Fortnight is more lingering sadness than anger. This is followed by a “surprise song” segment, where she reaches for deep cut State of Grace from Red and, finally, a concluding twirl through the best of Midnights.
As one banger follows another, the production is the equal to the music. The catwalk extending into the audience swirls with colour. Dancers romp and weave – one goes so far as to shout “póg mo thóin!” at the end of We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.
The most impressive special effect is Swift herself. Her multitude of costume swaps see her transform from prom queen to boot-stomping pop diva and, during the Evermore segment, a sort of Brothers Grimm prog-rock wood elf; for the 1989 portion of the evening she meanwhile goes all in with a three-piece outfit patterned after the Irish flag.
These wardrobe changes provide a breather for Swift but even more so for the crowd who spend most of the evening on their feet, shrieking, swooning and taking selfies. It’s an outpouring of fandom astonishing to behold, delightful to be swept up in – and which thrillingly confirms Swift as an artist who comes along just once in an era.
